Zechariah 7:5-7

Contemporary English Version

^4-5 It was then that the Lord All-Powerful told me to say to everyone in the country, including the priests:

For 70 years you have gone without eating during the fifth and seventh months of the year. But did you really do it for me? ⁶ And when you eat and drink, isn't it for your own enjoyment? ⁷ My message today is the same one I commanded the earlier prophets^[a] to speak to Jerusalem and its villages when they were prosperous, and when all of Judah, including the Southern Desert and the hill country, was filled with people.