To RETURN, turn back, repent — the central verb of the prophets, and the engine of Zechariah 1. 'Return (shuvu) to me, and I will return (ashuvah) to you' (1:3) makes repentance reciprocal: not a work that earns God's favor but a turning that God both initiates and answers (Malachi 3:7 quotes the same line). The word threads the chapter — the fathers who would not turn (1:4), the fathers who finally turned back and confessed (1:6), and God himself who has 'returned to Jerusalem with compassion' (1:16). Its noun teshuvah is the Hebrew word for repentance to this day. → first discussed at Zechariah 1:3