On December 7 of the fourth year of King Darius's reign, another message came to Zechariah from the LORD.

The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech, along with their attendants, to seek the LORD's favor.

They were to ask this question of the prophets and the priests at the Temple of the LORD of Heaven's Armies: "Should we continue to mourn and fast each summer on the anniversary of the Temple's destruction, as we have done for so many years?"

The LORD of Heaven's Armies sent me this message in reply:

"Say to all your people and your priests, 'During these seventy years of exile, when you fasted and mourned in the summer and in early autumn, was it really for me that you were fasting?

And even now in your holy festivals, aren't you eating and drinking just to please yourselves?

Isn't this the same message the LORD proclaimed through the prophets in years past when Jerusalem and the towns of Judah were bustling with people, and the Negev and the foothills of Judah were well populated?' "

Then this message came to Zechariah from the LORD:

"This is what the LORD of Heaven's Armies says: Judge fairly, and show mercy and kindness to one another.

Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor. And do not scheme against each other.

"Your ancestors refused to listen to this message. They stubbornly turned away and put their fingers in their ears to keep from hearing.

They made their hearts as hard as stone, so they could not hear the instructions or the messages that the LORD of Heaven's Armies had sent them by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. That is why the LORD of Heaven's Armies was so angry with them.

"Since they refused to listen when I called to them, I would not listen when they called to me, says the LORD of Heaven's Armies.

As with a whirlwind, I scattered them among the distant nations, where they lived as strangers. Their land became so desolate that no one even traveled through it. They turned their pleasant land into a desert."