And do not be like your fathers, whom the former prophets accused, saying: Thus says the Lord Almighty: Turn away from your evil ways and from your evil practices. But they did not give heed to listen to me, says the Lord.
Only receive my words and my statutes, all that I command by my spirit to my servants the prophets, who overtook your fathers. And they answered and said: Just as the Lord Almighty determined to deal according to your ways and according to your practices, so he has done to you.
On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, this is the month Sabat, in the second year under Darius, a word of the Lord came to Zechariah son of Barachias, son of Addo, the prophet, saying:
I looked in the night, and behold, a man mounted on a red horse, and he was standing between the two shady mountains; and behind him were red horses and dappled-grey and spotted and white.
And they answered the angel of the Lord who stood between the mountains and said: We have patrolled all the earth, and behold, all the earth is inhabited and is at rest.
And the angel of the Lord answered and said: Lord Almighty, how long will you not have mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, which you have disregarded? This is the seventieth year.
And the angel who spoke with me said to me: Cry out, saying: Thus says the Lord Almighty: I have been jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy.
Therefore thus says the Lord: I will return to Jerusalem in compassion, and my house shall be rebuilt in her, says the Lord Almighty, and a measuring line shall yet be stretched out over Jerusalem.
And the angel who spoke with me said to me: Cry out, saying: Thus says the Lord Almighty: Cities shall yet overflow with good things, and the Lord shall yet have mercy on Zion and shall yet choose Jerusalem.