Zechariah 7:7 [Should ye] not [hear] the words which the LORD hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when [men] inhabited the south and the plain?
Ver. 7. Should ye not hear the words which the Lord hath cried] q.d. Hath he not spoken loud enough, long enough? Hath he not sufficiently declared his will concerning these external actions, and especially concerning a fast profaned through wickedness, Isaiah 58:8; Isa 58:4 Jeremiah 14:12, and elsewhere. Sed surdo fabulam; But a story falling on deaf ears. All hath been but as a trumpet sounded in a dead man's ear; you are altogether uncounsellable, untractable; and all that hath been spoken hath even been spilt upon you.
Should ye not the words] So the original runs, by a concise and short kind of speaking, well befitting a sharp reproof. Should ye not hear them and heed them? which, if you had done, you might have spared that labour of coming to us; and out of the former prophecies have resolved yourselves.
When Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity] But then their hearts were fat as grease, and the prosperity of those fools destroyed them; who, if they had hearkened to wisdom, had dwelt safely; and lived quietly from the fear of evil, Proverbs 1:32,33. Surely as those that lie on downy pillows cannot hear well; so such as be at ease in Sion cannot profit by good counsel. It is by correction that God openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instructions, Job 33:16 .
When men inhabited the south and the plain] Heb. the south of the plain, that is, the bounds and borders, that part of the country that lieth most open to the inroads of the enemy, and hath most of all felt the desolations of war. See Jeremiah 17:26; Jeremiah 32:44 .