Zechariah 5-8

Zechariah 5

¹Then again lifting up my eyes I saw a roll in flight through the air.

²And he said to me, What do you see? And I said, A roll going through the air; it is twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.

³Then he said to me, This is the curse which goes out over the face of all the land: for long enough has every thief gone without punishment, and long enough has every taker of false oaths gone without punishment.

⁴And I will send it out, says the Lord of armies, and it will go into the house of the thief and into the house of him who takes a false oath by my name: and it will be in his house, causing its complete destruction, with its woodwork and its stones.

⁵And the angel who was talking to me went out and said to me, Let your eyes be lifted up now, and see the ephah which is going out.

⁶And I said, What is it? And he said, This is an ephah which is going out. And he said further, This is their evil-doing in all the land.

⁷And I saw a round cover of lead lifted up; and a woman was seated in the middle of the ephah.

⁸And he said, This is Sin; and pushing her down into the ephah, he put the weight of lead on the mouth of it.

⁹And lifting up my eyes I saw two women coming out, and the wind was in their wings; and they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they took the ephah, lifting it up between earth and heaven.

¹⁰And I said to the angel who was talking to me, Where are they taking the ephah?

¹¹And he said to me, To make a house for her in the land of Shinar: and they will make a place ready, and put her there in the place which is hers.

Zechariah 6

¹And again lifting up my eyes I saw four war-carriages coming out from between the two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass.

²In the first war-carriage were red horses; and in the second, black horses;

³And in the third, white horses; and in the fourth, horses of mixed colour.

⁴And I made answer and said to the angel who was talking to me, What are these, my lord?

⁵And the angel, answering, said to me, These go out to the four winds of heaven from their place before the Lord of all the earth.

⁶The carriage in which are the black horses goes in the direction of the north country; the white go to the west; and those of mixed colour go in the direction of the south country.

⁷And the red ones go to the east; and they made request that they might go up and down through the earth: and he said, Go up and down through the earth. So they went up and down through the earth.

⁸Then crying out to me, he said, See, those who are going to the north country have given rest to the spirit of the Lord in the north country.

⁹And the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

¹⁰Take the offerings of those who went away as prisoners, from Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, and from the family of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah, who have come from Babylon;

¹¹And take silver and gold and make a crown and put it on the head of Zerubbabel;

¹²And say to him, These are the words of the Lord of armies: See, the man whose name is the Branch, under whom there will be fertile growth.

¹³And he will be the builder of the Temple of the Lord; and the glory will be his, and he will take his place as ruler on the seat of power; and Joshua will be a priest at his right hand, and between them there will be a design of peace.

¹⁴And the crown will be for grace to Heldai and Tobijah and Jedaiah and the son of Zephaniah, to keep their memory living in the house of the Lord.

¹⁵And those who are far away will come and be builders in the Temple of the Lord, and it will be clear to you that the Lord of armies has sent me to you.

Zechariah 7

¹And it came about in the fourth year of King Darius, that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month Chislev.

²Now they of Beth-el had sent Sharezer and Regem-melech to make a request for grace from the Lord,

³And to say to the priests of the house of the Lord of armies and to the prophets, Am I to go on weeping in the fifth month, separating myself as I have done in past years?

⁴Then the word of the Lord of armies came to me, saying

⁵Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, When you went without food and gave yourselves to grief in the fifth and the seventh months for these seventy years, did you ever do it because of me?

⁶And when you are feasting and drinking, are you not doing it only for yourselves?

⁷Are not these the words which the Lord said to you by the earlier prophets, when Jerusalem was full of people and wealth, and the towns round about her and the South and the Lowland were peopled?

⁸And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying,

⁹This is what the Lord of armies has said: Let your judging be upright and done in good faith, let every man have mercy and pity for his brother:

¹⁰Do not be hard on the widow, or the child without a father, on the man from a strange country, or on the poor; let there be no evil thought in your heart against your brother.

¹¹But they would not give attention, turning their backs and stopping their ears from hearing;

¹²And they made their hearts like the hardest stone, so that they might not give ear to the law and the words which the Lord of armies had said by the earlier prophets: and there came great wrath from the Lord of armies.

¹³And it came about that as they would not give ear to his voice, so I would not give ear to their voice, says the Lord of armies:

¹⁴But with a storm-wind I sent them in flight among all the nations of whom they had no knowledge. So the land was waste after them, so that no man went through or came back: for they had made waste the desired land.

Zechariah 8

¹And the word of the Lord of armies came to me, saying,

²These are the words of the Lord of armies: I am angry about the fate of Zion, I am angry about her with great wrath.

³This is what the Lord has said: I have come back to Zion, and will make my living-place in Jerusalem: and Jerusalem will be named The town of good faith; and the mountain of the Lord of armies The holy mountain.

⁴This is what the Lord of armies has said: There will again be old men and old women seated in the open spaces of Jerusalem, every man with his stick in his hand because he is so old.

⁵And the open spaces of the town will be full of boys and girls playing in its open spaces.

⁶This is what the Lord of armies has said: If this is a wonder to the rest of this people, is it a wonder to me? says the Lord of armies.

⁷This is what the Lord of armies has said: See, I will be the saviour of my people from the east country, and from the west country;

⁸And I will make them come and be living in Jerusalem and they will be to me a people and I will be to them a God, in good faith and in righteousness.

⁹This is what the Lord of armies has said: Let your hands be strong, you who are now hearing these words from the mouths of the prophets, that is to say, in the days when the base of the house of the Lord of armies has been put in place for the building of the house, that is the Temple.

¹⁰For before those days there was no payment for a man's work, or for the use of a beast, and there was no peace for him who went out or him who came in, because of the attacker: for I had every man turned against his neighbour.

¹¹But now I will not be to the rest of this people as I was in the past, says the Lord of armies.

¹²For I will let the seed of peace be planted; the vine will give her fruit and the land will give her increase and the heavens will give their dew; and I will give to the rest of this people all these things for their heritage.

¹³And it will come about that, as you were a curse among the nations, O children of Judah and children of Israel, so I will give you salvation and you will be a blessing: have no fear and let your hands be strong.

¹⁴For this is what the Lord of armies has said: As it was my purpose to do evil to you when your fathers made me angry, says the Lord of armies, and my purpose was not changed:

¹⁵So in these days it is again my purpose to do good to Jerusalem and to the children of Judah: have no fear.

¹⁶These are the things which you are to do: Let every man say what is true to his neighbour; and let your judging give peace in your towns.

¹⁷Let no one have any evil thought in his heart against his neighbour; and have no love for false oaths: for all these things are hated by me, says the Lord.

¹⁸And the word of the Lord of armies came to me, saying,

¹⁹This is what the Lord of armies has said: The times of going without food in the fourth month and in the fifth and the seventh and the tenth months, will be for the people of Judah times of joy and happy meetings; so be lovers of good faith and of peace.

²⁰This is what the Lord of armies has said: It will again come about that when peoples and those living in great towns come,

²¹And the people of one town go to another and say, Let us certainly go with a request for grace from the Lord, and to give worship to the Lord of armies, then I will go with you.

²²And great peoples and strong nations will come to give worship to the Lord of armies in Jerusalem and to make requests for grace from the Lord.

²³This is what the Lord of armies has said: In those days, ten men from all the languages of the nations will put out their hands and take a grip of the skirt of him who is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for it has come to our ears that God is with you.