and to confer with the priests of the Temple of GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies, and also with the prophets. They posed this question: "Should we plan for a day of mourning and abstinence next August, the seventieth anniversary of Jerusalem's fall, as we have been doing all these years?"
for all the people and for the priests: "When you held days of fasting every fifth and seventh month all these seventy years, were you doing it for me?
"There's nothing new to say on the subject. Don't you still have the message of the earlier prophets from the time when Jerusalem was still a thriving, bustling city and the outlying countryside, the Negev and Shephelah, was populated?
Well, the message hasn't changed. GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies said then and says now: "'Treat one another justly. Love your neighbors. Be compassionate with each other.
They steeled themselves against GOD's revelation and the Spirit-filled sermons preached by the earlier prophets by order of GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies. And GOD became angry, really angry,
because he told them everything plainly and they wouldn't listen to a word he said. "So [this is what GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies said]if they won't listen to me, I won't listen to them.
I scattered them to the four winds. They ended up strangers wherever they were. Their 'promised land' became a vacant lot--weeds and tin cans and thistles. Not a sign of life. They turned a dreamland into a wasteland."