4Then this word of the LORD Almighty came to me: 5“Ask all the people of the land, and their 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? 6And when you did eat, and drink, did not you eat and drink for yourselves? 7Are these not the words which the LORD has proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were inhabited and in prosperity, when men inhabited the Negev and the Shephelah (western foothills)?” 8And again this word of the LORD came to Zechariah, 9“This is what the LORD Almighty says, “Execute true justice, and show mercy and compassion to one another; 10And do not oppress the widow, nor the fatherless, the sojourner, nor the poor; and let none of you plot evil against his brother in your heart.” 11But they refused to listen, and stubbornly pulled away their shoulder, and stopped their ears, so that they would not hear. 12Yea, they made their hearts as hard as flint, and would not hear the law, and the words which the LORD Almighty had sent by His Spirit through the earlier prophets; provoking great wrath from the LORD Almighty. 13Therefore, it has come to be that as He called, and they would not hear; so now they called, and I would not hear, says the LORD Almighty: 14But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations where they were strangers. Thus, the land they left behind was desolate, that no one dared travel through it; this is why the pleasant land lay desolate.