Zechariah 7:7

Zechariah 7:7

5 “Say to all the people of the land, and to the priests: ‘When you ^afasted and mourned in the fifth ^band seventh months ^cduring those seventy years, did you really fast ^dfor Me—for Me?

6 ^aWhen you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves?

7 Should you not have obeyed the words which the Lord proclaimed through the ^aformer prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous, and ^bthe South and the Lowland were inhabited?’ ”

Disobedience Resulted in Captivity

8 Then the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying,

9 “Thus says the Lord of hosts:
^a‘Execute true justice,
Show¹ mercy and compassion
Everyone to his brother.

10 ^aDo not oppress the widow or the fatherless,
The alien or the poor.
^bLet none of you plan evil in his heart
Against his brother.’

11 “But they refused to heed, ^ashrugged their shoulders, and ^bstopped their ears so that they could not hear.

12 Yes, they made their ^ahearts like flint, ^brefusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets. ^cThus great wrath came from the Lord of hosts.

13 Therefore it happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so ^athey called out and I would not listen,” says the Lord of hosts.

14 “But ^aI scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate.”

Commentaries:

Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown

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Should ye not hear the words—rather, "Should ye not do the words," as their question naturally was as to what they should do (Zechariah 7:3); "hearing" is not mentioned till Zechariah 7:12. The sense is, It is not fasts that Jehovah requires of you, but that ye should keep His precepts given to you at the time when Jerusalem was in its integrity. Had ye done so then, ye would have had no occasion to institute fasts to commemorate its destruction, for it would never have been destroyed (Zechariah 7:9-14) [MAURER]. Or, as the Margin, "Are not these the words" of the older prophets (Isaiah 58:3; Jeremiah 14:12) which threatened a curse for disobedience, which the event has so awfully confirmed. If ye follow them in sin, ye must follow them in suffering. English Version is good sense: Ye inquire anxiously about the fasts, whereas ye ought to be anxious about hearing the lesson taught by the former prophets and verified in the nation's punishment; penitence and obedience are required rather than fasts.

the plain—southwest of Jerusalem. They then inhabited securely the region most unguarded.

**Other Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown entries containing Zechariah 7:7:**

Jeremiah 17:26
Zechariah 7:1

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Zechariah 7:8 >>

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