¹And it came to pass in the fourth year of Darius the king that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, that is Kislev. ²And Sar-Ezer and Regem-Melech and his men sent envoys to Beth-El to entreat the Lord, ³to say to the priests who were at the house of the Lord of hosts and to the prophets, “Shall I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done for so many years now?” ⁴And the word of the Lord of hosts came to me and said, ⁵“Speak to all the people of the land and to the priests, and say, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month for the last seventy years, did you really fast for me? ⁶And when you ate and when you drank, were you not eating for yourselves and drinking for yourselves? ⁷Have you not considered the words which the Lord proclaimed through the intermediacy of the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous, and her cities around her and the south and the plain were also inhabited?’ ” ⁸And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah and said, ⁹“This is what the Lord of hosts says: ‘Judge with true justice and show kindness and compassion, each man to his brother. ¹⁰Do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the foreigner or the poor, and do not devise wickedness in your hearts, one against his brother.’ ” ¹¹But they refused to listen, and they gave a rebellious shoulder, and they made their ears too dull to hear. ¹²And they made their hearts as hard as diamond, preventing them from hearing the law and the words which the Lord of hosts sent by his spirit, through the intermediacy of the former prophets, and there came great anger from the Lord of hosts. ¹³“And it has come to pass, that just as he cried out, and they did not listen, so they will cry out, and I will not listen, says the Lord of hosts. ¹⁴So I have driven them like a storm into all nations which they did not know of, and the land has become waste after them, so that there was no-one passing through or returning, and they made the pleasant land a desolation.”