In the fourth year of King Darius of Persia, the Word of the Lord came to Zechariah. Zechariah was among the exiles who had returned from the 70-year Babylonian captivity. The people were inquiring of the priests as to whether they should continue in their religious rites of fasting during the fifth and seventh months. God spoke to Zechariah, telling him to say that God does not want religious rituals. When the rituals were performed, the people were not thinking about God.
Through Zechariah God told the people how God wanted them to live: “Dispense true justice, and practice kindness and compassion each to his brother; do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.”
Prior to God judging and destroying Jerusalem, the people were practicing religion but were not treating each other very well. They were dishonest, devious, and self-centered. The Bible says that we are to ‘love our neighbors as ourselves.’ We are not to be self-centered. Rather we are to be concerned about the needs of others over the needs of ourselves. God does not want us to practice religion through mindless rituals. Rather, He wants us to live our religion, treating each other well.
