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?
Should ye not hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity - rather, thus supply the ellipsis, '(Should ye) not (do) the words which, etc;' as their question virtually was as to what they should do (Zechariah 7:3); "hearing" is not mentioned until Zechariah 7:12. "The sense is, It is not fasts, and such-like ceremonial performances, that Yahweh requires of you, but that ye should keep His precepts, given to you at the time when Jerusalem was in its integrity. Had ye done so then, ye would have had no occasion to institute fasts to commemorate its destruction, for it would never have been destroyed (Zechariah 7:9-14). (Maurer.) Or, as margin, 'Are not these the words of the older prophets, who similarly denounced the hypocrisy, and the consequent punishment, of fasts without obedience to God, when the people came similarly, as now in Zechariah's day affecting to desire to know the will of God? (Isaiah 58:2-3; Jeremiah 14:12.) Remember how your former prophets threatened a curse for disobedience, which the event has so awfully confirmed. If ye follow them in sin, ye must follow them in suffering. The English version is good sense: ye inquire anxiously in order to hear about the fasts, whereas ye ought to be anxious about hearing the lesson taught by the former prophets, and verified in the nation's punishment: penitence and obedience are what God mainly requires, rather than fasts.
When men inhabited the south and the plain? - "the south" х wªha-Negeb (H5045)], the Negeb, a hilly tract; the word means, literally a dry and desert land, such as were the mountains in Judea. In contrast to "the plain," wªhashªpeelaah (H8219), the Shephelah (low-lying region). This champaign region lay southwest of Jerusalem. They then inhabited securely the region most unguarded. No part of the whole country was uninhabited.