Zechariah

Liturgical Consultation: Worship and Justice

On the fourth day of the ninth month, in the fourth year of King Darius,

the people of Bethel sent Sharezer and Regem-melech, along with their men, to seek the Lord’s favor;

and to question the priests of the house of the Lord, God of hosts, and the prophets: “Must we mourn and fast in the fifth month as we have done these many years?”

And the word of the Lord, God of hosts 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 months during these seventy years, did you truly fast for me—for me, indeed?

Were you not those who decided to eat and to drink or not to do so?

Remember the message that the Lord proclaimed through earlier prophets when Jerusalem was peacefully inhabited, along with the surrounding region, including the Negeb and the western foothills.”

Again, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah:

Render fair judgment; be kind and merciful to one another.

Do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the alien, or the poor; do not scheme evil in your hearts against each other.

But they refused to listen and stubbornly turned their backs, stopping their ears.

They hardened their hearts, like diamonds, so they would not hear the law or the words the Lord, the God of hosts, spoke through his spirit by the earlier prophets.

Then the Lord, God of hosts, in his great anger, declared that just as they had not listened when he called to them, they would not listen when they cried out to him, he would not listen.

The Lord said he would scatter them like a whirlwind among nations they did not know, and the land behind them would be devastated, with no one passing through it. As a result, a beautiful land was made desolate.”