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The message of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies then came to me, “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? And now when you eat and drink, are you not doing so for yourselves? 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?’”

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Footnotes

  1. Zechariah 7:5 tn The seventh month apparently refers to the anniversary of the assassination of Gedaliah, governor of Judah (Jer 40:13-14; 41:1), in approximately 581 b.c.
  2. Zechariah 7:7 sn The foothills (שְׁפֵלָה, shephelah) are the region between the Judean hill country and the Mediterranean coastal plain.

Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me: “Say to all the people of the land and the priests: When you fasted and lamented in the fifth month and in the seventh for these seventy years, was it for me that you fasted?(A) And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink only for yourselves? Were not these the words that the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, along with the towns around it, and when the Negeb and the Shephelah were inhabited?”

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