Fasting, Meditation Two

Fasting, Meditation Two

“Then the word of YHWH of armies came to me:

‘Ask all the people of the land and the 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?

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

Are these not the words YHWH 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 YHWH came again to Zechariah,
This is what the YHWH Almighty said:

‘Administer true justice:
show mercy and compassion to one another,
do not hard-press the widow,
or the fatherless,
the foreigner
or the poor.
Do not plot evil against each other in your hearts.’”

(YHWH to the people of Judah, through the Prophet Zechariah
Zechariah 7.4–10  NIV 2011 some translation edits and emphasis added)

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About the author

I’m a husband, father, and one of those friends who has a terrible habit of not returning phone calls.  I’m really just trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus, and I enjoy meeting great people along the way and maybe having a chance to spend time talking about things deep and trivial.

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