The Bible Study Podcast, episode 785.

Today, the Bible Study podcast continues the study of the book of Zechariah with chapter 7.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast.

I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

We get another of these short chapters

here in the book of Zechariah, Justice and Mercy, not fasting. 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. The people of Bethel had sent Sherezer and Regim Malek together with their men to entreat

the Lord by asking the priests of the house of the Lord and the prophets, should I mourn and fast

in the fifth month as I have done for so many years? Then the word of the Lord Almighty came to me,

ask all the people of the land and the priests, when you fasted and

mourned in the fifth and seventh month for the past 70 years, was it really for me you fasted?

And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?

Are 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. And the word of the Lord

came again to Zechariah. This is what the Lord Almighty says, administer true justice, show mercy

and compassion to one another. Do not oppose the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the

poor. Do not plot evil against each the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not

plot evil against each other. But they refused to pay attention. stubbornly they turned their

backs and covered their ears. They made their hearts as fast 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.

...