3and to speak to the priests assigned to the Temple of the LORD of the Heavenly Armies along with the prophets, asking, "Am I to go about mourning, denying myself throughout the fifth month, as I have these many years?"
5"Talk to everyone in the land, as well as to the priests. Ask them, 'When you were fasting and mourning during the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, were you really fasting for me?
7Isn't this what the LORD proclaimed through the former prophets, when a prosperous Jerusalem was inhabited, as were its surrounding cities, the Negev, and the Shephelah?'"
12They made their hearts hard like a diamond, to keep from obeying the Law and the messages that the LORD of the Heavenly Armies sent by his Spirit through the former prophets.
13Therefore, just as when I cried out and they would not listen, so also they will cry out, and I will not listen,' says the LORD of the Heavenly Armies.
14I will scatter them to all of the nations, which they have not known.'" Now the earth was left desolate after them. As a result, no one came or went because they had turned a pleasant land into a desert.
