Zechariah 7:14

"But I will scatter them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they have not known. So that all the land was desolate after them, so that no man passed through nor returned: for they laid the pleasant land desolate."

Here again we have a change of tense: "I will scatter ... the land was desolate after them"; but there is a discernible reason for it. The prophecy, "I will scatter ... etc." had just been fulfilled in the Babylonian captivity and in the Assyrian captivity preceding it; but this was by no means to be the end of the "scattering of Israel," which would occur again after their final rejection of the Messiah, the destruction of their temple, their capital, their political entity, and the dispersion of the Jewish population all over the world throughout history; hence, the use of the future tense here. The immediate switch to the past tense refers to the desolation and destruction that had already accompanied the scatterings already accomplished. "What had happened in the past was a sign of what would happen to them in the future."[26] Zechariah doubtless expected the returnees to draw a conclusion from all of this, which Gill stated thus:

"Therefore, those who mourned the just punishments of God (by keeping all those fast days) had best leave off such meaningless ceremonies and themselves heed the teaching of the former prophets."[27]

This concludes the second of the six statements made by Zechariah in response to the inquiry of the delegation from Bethel.