Do not Oppress the Widow or the Fatherless

The Israelites have been returned to their homeland and now during the reign of King Darius in the Persian Empire, a group of seemingly devoted Israelites came to the temple to pray and ask God if they should continue fasting and mourning during the fifth and seventh month. The Lord who knew anticipated their question gave the answer through Zechariah. The Lord's answer was indirect and first asked if they were sincere in their fast. The second point was that instead of fasting, it would have been better for them if they had initially obeyed God before the invasion by Babylon.

God continued passing His message through Zechariah that His desire are for His people to show justice, mercy, compassion, not oppress the widow, orphans, foreigner and the poor, also not to have evil in their hearts toward each other. And God described how they disobeyed and went against all His desires. They ignored God's true prophets and their messages. The result is that God did not listen to them when they asked for help, when God used their enemies to scatter His people.




Zechariah 7
Obedience Better than Fasting

1 Now in the fourth year of King Darius it came to pass that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, on the fourth day of the ninth month, Chislev, 2 when the people[a] sent Sherezer,[b] with Regem-Melech and his men, to the house of God,[c] to pray before the Lord, 3 and to ask the priests who were in the house of the Lord of hosts, and the prophets, saying, “Should I weep in the fifth month and fast as I have done for so many years?”

4 Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying, 5 “Say to all the people of the land, and to the priests: ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, did you really fast for Me—for Me? 6 When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves? 7 Should you not have obeyed the words which the Lord proclaimed through the former prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous, and the South[d] and the Lowland were inhabited?’”

Disobedience Resulted in Captivity

8 Then the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, 9 “Thus says the Lord of hosts:

‘Execute true justice,
Show mercy and compassion
Everyone to his brother.
10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless,
The alien or the poor.
Let none of you plan evil in his heart
Against his brother.’
11 “But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. 12 Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the Lord of hosts. 13 Therefore it happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen,” says the Lord of hosts. 14 “But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate.”