1. In the fourth year of Darius the king, the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, on the fourth day of the ninth month, Kislev.
2. Bethelsarezer sent Regem-melech and his men to implore the favor of the Lord
3. 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 as I have been doing these many years?”
4. Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me:
5. 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 these seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?