A Call to Repentance

In the eighth month of the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah the prophet, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo saying,

“Do not be like your fathers, to whom the former prophets proclaimed, saying, ‘This is what the Lord of armies says: “Return now from your evil ways and from your evil deeds.”’ But they did not listen or pay attention to Me,” declares the Lord.

“Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever?

But did My words and My statutes, which I commanded My servants the prophets, not overtake your fathers? Then they repented and said, ‘Just as the Lord of armies planned to do to us in accordance with our ways and our deeds, so He has dealt with us.’”’”

Patrol of the Earth

On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, that is, the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah the prophet, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, as follows:

speaking to the priests who belong to the house of the Lord of armies, and to the prophets, saying, “Shall I weep in the fifth month and fast, as I have done these many years?”

Are these not the words which the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and carefree along with its cities around it, and the Negev and the foothills were inhabited?’”

They also made their hearts as hard as a diamond so that they could not hear the Law and the words which the Lord of armies had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets; therefore great wrath came from the Lord of armies.

“The Lord of armies says this: ‘Let your hands be strong, you who are listening in these days to these words from the mouth of the prophets, those who spoke in the day that the foundation of the house of the Lord of armies was laid, so that the temple might be built.

False Prophets Ashamed

“On that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for defilement.

“And it will come about on that day,” declares the Lord of armies, “that I will eliminate the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered; and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land.

Also it will come about on that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive;

but he will say, ‘I am not a prophet; I am a cultivator of the ground, because a man sold me as a slave in my youth.’