⁴ The message of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies then came to me, ⁵ “Speak to all the people and priests of the land as follows: ‘When you fasted and lamented in the fifth and seventh^[a] months through all these seventy years, did you truly fast for me—for me, indeed? ⁶ And now when you eat and drink, are you not doing so for yourselves? ⁷ Should you not have obeyed the words that the Lord cried out through the former prophets when Jerusalem was peacefully inhabited and her surrounding cities, the Negev, and the foothills^[b] were also populated?’”