[and] to address this inquiry to the priests of the House of GOD and to the prophets: “Shall I weep and practice abstinence in the fifth month, as I have been doing all these years?”
Say to all the people of the land and to the priests: When you fasted and lamented in the fifth and seventh months all these seventy years, did you fast for my benefit?
Look, this is the message that GOD proclaimed through the earlier prophets, when Jerusalem and the towns about her were peopled and tranquil, when the Negeb and the Shephelah were peopled.
They hardened their hearts like adamant against heeding the instruction and admonition that GOD of Hosts sent to them by divine spirit through the earlier prophets; and a terrible wrath issued from GOD of Hosts.
I dispersed them among all those nations that they had not known, and the land was left behind them desolate, without any who came and went. They caused a delightful land to be turned into a desolation.