Add parallel Print Page Options

and to ask the priests of the house of the Lord of hosts, and the prophets, “Must I weep and abstain in the fifth month[a] as I have been doing these many years?” Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me: Say to all the people of the land and to the priests: When you fasted and lamented in the fifth and in the seventh month[b] these seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?(A)

Read full chapter

Footnotes

  1. 7:3 Weep…fifth month: a mourning ritual commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple on the seventh day of the fifth month in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (ca. 587/586 B.C.; see 2 Kgs 25:8).
  2. 7:5 Seventh month: the time of a fast in memory of the murder of Gedaliah, the governor installed by the Babylonians after they conquered Jerusalem (see 2 Kgs 25:25; Jer 41:1–3). Seventy years: see note on 1:12.

by asking the priests of the house of the Lord Almighty and the prophets, “Should I mourn(A) and fast in the fifth(B) 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(C) and mourned in the fifth and seventh(D) months for the past seventy years,(E) was it really for me that you fasted?

Read full chapter