Justice and Mercy, Not Fasting
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In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came
to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Kislev.
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The people of Bethel l had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melech,
together with their men, to entreat the LORD
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by asking the priests of the houes of the LORD Almighty and the prophets,
"Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?"
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Then the word of the LORD Almighty came to me:
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"Ask all the people of the land and the priests,
'When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months
for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?
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And when you were eating and drinking,
were you not just feasting for yourselves?
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Aare these not the words the LORD proclaimed through
the earlier prophets when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest
and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills were settled ?' "
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And the word of the LORD came again to Zechariah:
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"This is wht the LORD Almighty says:
'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.
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Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor.
In our hearts do not think evil of each other.'
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"But they refused to pay attention;
stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears.
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They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to
the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by
his Spirit through the earlier prophets.
So the LORD Almighty was very angry.
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" 'When I called, they did not listen;
so when they called, I would not listen,' says the LORD Almighty.
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'I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations,
where they were strangers. The land was left so desolate
behind them that no one could come or go.
This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.' "
