“The Lord was extremely angry with your fathers.

But I am very angry with the nations who are at ease and feel secure; for while I was only a little angry, they furthered the disaster [against the people of Israel].”

Now Joshua was clothed with filthy (nauseatingly vile) garments and was standing before the Angel [of the Lord].

‘What are you, O great mountain [of obstacles]? Before Zerubbabel [who will rebuild the temple] you will become a plain (insignificant)! And he will bring out the capstone [of the new temple] with loud shouts of “Grace, grace to it!”’”

(and behold, a [round, flat] lead cover was lifted up); and there sat a woman inside the ephah.”

Then I looked up, and there were two women coming out with the wind in their wings; and they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heavens.

“Speak to all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years [that you were in exile], was it actually for Me that you fasted?

Should you not hear the words which the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous along with her cities around her, and the South (the Negev) and the foothills were inhabited?’”

“but I scattered them with a storm wind among all the nations whom they have not known. Thus the land was desolate after they had gone, so that no one passed through or returned, for they [by their sins] had made the pleasant land desolate and deserted.”

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Let your hands be strong, you who in these days hear these words from the mouths of the prophets who, on the day that the foundation of the house of the Lord of hosts was laid, foretold that the temple might be rebuilt.

For before those days there were no wages for man or animal; nor was there any peace or success for him who went out or came in because of his enemies, for I set all men against one another.

As for you also, because of the blood of My covenant with you [My chosen people, the covenant that was sealed with blood]
I have freed your prisoners from the waterless pit.

Then I eliminated the three [incompetent, unfit] shepherds [the civil rulers, the priests, and the prophets] in one month, for I was impatient with them, and they also were tired of me and despised me.

I took my staff, Favor, and broke it in pieces, breaking the covenant which I had made with all the peoples.

So the covenant was broken on that day, and thus the most wretched of the flock who were watching me realized that it was the word of the Lord.

Then I broke my second staff, Union, into pieces to break the brotherhood between Judah (the Southern Kingdom) and Israel (the Northern Kingdom).

And one will say to him, ‘What are these wounds between your arms?’ Then he will answer, ‘Those wounds I received in the house of my friends.’