When they had sent unto the house of God Sherezer and Regem-melech, and their men, to pray before the LORD,
In the fourth year of King Darius, on the fourth day of the ninth month Chisleu, Sherezer and Regem-melech and their men were sent to the house of God to pray before the Lord. Their errand was to speak to the priests and the prophets with the question whether they should continue weeping in the fifth month and separating themselves as they had done for so many years. The answer given through Zechariah was that when they had fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, they had not fasted to God, and when they ate and drank, they ate and drank for themselves.
Instead they should have heeded the words proclaimed by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous. What God required was to execute true judgment, to show mercy and compassion to one another, to refuse to oppress the widow, the fatherless, the stranger, or the poor, and to harbor no evil against a brother in the heart. Refusing to listen, pulling away the shoulder, stopping the ears, and making the heart as adamant stone against the law and the words sent by His Spirit through the former prophets brings great wrath, so that as He called and they would not hear, they will call and He will not hear, but He will scatter them with a whirlwind among nations they do not know and lay the pleasant land desolate.
In the fourth year of King Darius, on the fourth day of the ninth month Chisleu, Sherezer and Regem-melech and their men were sent to the house of God to pray before the Lord. Their errand was to speak to the priests and the prophets with the question whether they should continue weeping in the fifth month and separating themselves as they had done for so many years. The answer given through Zechariah was that when they had fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, they had not fasted to God, and when they ate and drank, they ate and drank for themselves.
Instead they should have heeded the words proclaimed by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous. What God required was to execute true judgment, to show mercy and compassion to one another, to refuse to oppress the widow, the fatherless, the stranger, or the poor, and to harbor no evil against a brother in the heart. Refusing to listen, pulling away the shoulder, stopping the ears, and making the heart as adamant stone against the law and the words sent by His Spirit through the former prophets brings great wrath, so that as He called and they would not hear, they will call and He will not hear, but He will scatter them with a whirlwind among nations they do not know and lay the pleasant land desolate.