Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh [month], even those seventy years, did ye really fast unto me, [even] unto me?
The temple was almost rebuilt when men from the town of Bethel came to Jerusalem with a question: should they still keep the fast that marked its destruction? God's reply turns the question back on them and asks who those seventy years of fasting were for.
The fast they asked about marked a loss that the rebuilding was undoing.
Men sent from Bethel to the house of the Lord ask the question. They came to pray, and to ask the priests and prophets in Jerusalem whether they should go on weeping in the fifth month and fasting as they had done for so many years. The fast of the fifth month was in memory of the destruction of the first temple. Now they were rebuilding the temple, and they finished it within two years after this (Ezra 6:15). Was it necessary to continue this fast?
Wanting to be free of the fast said more about them than about the fast.
A fast should be the expression of a state of heart, or it could have no value before God. So if the men of Bethel had the state of heart the fast should have expressed, they could not have asked whether to keep it up. If they had grasped what their captivity in Babylon meant, or how sad the state of the restored remnant was, they would have welcomed the return of the fast. It would have been a chance to pour out their tears and pleas together before God. Instead they felt it a burden, and wanted it abolished.
God widens the question. He names a second fast they had not mentioned, and He tests their feasting the same way.
The Lord adds a fast in the seventh month, which was another fast in memory of the murder of Gedaliah by Ishmael (Jer. 41:1-2). The Lord makes it a serious question. Were these fasts out of concern for His glory, or did Israel have selfish motives? And when they ate and drank instead of fasting, were they not doing it all for themselves? They were not eating and drinking to the glory of God. Whether or not the fasts had begun with proper motives, they did not continue that way.
Grief over what the disaster cost them is not the same as grief over what caused it.
Had they fasted to the Lord or to themselves? Did they mourn because trouble had come on them? Or because that trouble came from the dishonour and shame they had brought on God? … They had fasted to themselves and cried over their own calamity, but had failed to repent. They wept over their own fate. They never asked what caused God's judgments, and they never mourned over their condition. To be sad about ruin is not the same as humbling yourself before the Lord.
Their careful observance never touched the real problem.
Ordinances, whatever they may do, never take the place of practical righteousness, and still less of faith, in the sight of God. There may be, and there often is, the greatest zeal for an outward institution where the heart is far from Him. … The prophet shows that the Lord had scattered the people despite their ritual observances. So turning back to those rituals was in no way the true remedy for a low or evil condition, though they might have their place alongside the weightier matters.
The wait before the answer is part of the answer.
This word of Zechariah reminds me of the way the Lord Jesus acted in a similar case. He never just answered a question. He took it up in a way that stirred the conscience and heart of the one asking. He looked at the moral state of the one asking, not at the subject of the question. So Zechariah here. He humbles, exhorts, and teaches before he gives the answer. But when he does give the answer, he gives it fully and wonderfully. He tells them that their fasts shall become feasts.
So what does a fast God accepts look like?
Fasting must be for Him. It must express how humbled we feel, because we have been unfaithful to Him from the very beginning. True humiliation will always bring us back to the point where our path deviated from God's path.
- Question — Bethel asked whether a seventy-year-old fast could stop. Wanting to be rid of it showed that the heart the fast was meant to express was not there.
- Counter-question — God asks not whether they fasted but for whom. He adds a fast they never mentioned, and He tests their eating and drinking the same way.
- Diagnosis — They wept over their own calamity without repenting. Being sad about ruin is not the same as humbling yourself before the Lord.
- Limit — Ceremony never replaces practical righteousness or faith. The strictest outward zeal can live beside a heart far from God.
- Answer — God works on the conscience first, and only then replies. His reply turns their fasts into feasts.
And when ye ate, and when ye drank, was it not you that were eating and drinking?
Men came to the prophet with a simple, practical question. Should they keep up the fast they had kept for seventy years? God's reply does not settle the calendar. It asks who all this fasting — and all this eating and drinking — had been for.
God does not give a yes or no. One writer sees here the same method the Lord Jesus used with people who came to Him with questions.
He never simply answered a question. He took it up in a way that stirred the conscience and heart of the person asking. He looked at the moral state of that person, not at the subject of the question. So it is with Zechariah here. He humbles, exhorts, and teaches before he gives the answer. But when he does come to give the answer, he gives it fully and wonderfully. He tells them that their fasts will become feasts.
Both halves of their lives, the fasting and the feasting, ran on the same fuel.
It was true that they had carefully kept the fasts of the fifth and the seventh months for seventy years. They showed every outward sign of grief and mourning. But they did not fast to the Lord. As He asks through the prophet, "Did you at all fast for Me, for Me?" No. Whether fasting, or eating and drinking, they did it for themselves and to themselves. God and His claims were nowhere in their thoughts. It is a striking illustration of how far a man can go in deceiving himself with religious observances.
The same drift shows up elsewhere in Scripture, in the way feasts changed hands.
The Lord makes it a serious question. Were these fasts out of concern for His glory, or did Israel have selfish motives? And when they ate and drank instead of fasting, were they not doing this entirely for themselves, rather than to the glory of God? Whether or not the fasts began with proper motives, they did not continue that way. They had degenerated into merely formal and selfish observances. Later we read of "the Passover of the Jews" (John 2:13) and "the Jews' Feast of Booths" (John 7:2). Yet Leviticus 23:4 called these "the feasts of the LORD" when God set them up.
Commentators differ here. One writer traces the problem further back, to where these fast days came from.
But why did they keep these fast days? Why do they still keep them? The Lord asks, "Is it to Me, to Me?" No, it was not for the honour and glory of God; their own selfish interests were at the bottom of it. In fact God had never asked them to fast. These were man-made institutions, and highly displeasing to the LORD... When the fast was over, the eating and drinking was not for the Lord, but for themselves. It was obedience the Lord required. Had they listened to the words spoken by the prophets, they would not have been in captivity. There would have been no need for a solemn fast.
Another leaves open that the fasts may have begun with proper motives, and puts the fault in what they became.
There is a sorrow that circles back to self.
No, they had fasted to themselves and cried over their own calamity, but had failed to repent. They had lamented their own fate. They never asked what caused God's judgments, and never mourned over their condition. To be sad about ruin is not the same as humbling yourself before the Lord.
The answer is not more grief. It is grief that turns in a new direction and arrives somewhere.
Fasting must be for Him. It must express our feelings of humiliation, because we have been unfaithful to Him from the very beginning. True humiliation will always bring us back to the point where our path turned away from God's path.
- Question — They asked about a date on the calendar. God asked about the state of their hearts.
- Direction — They aimed fasting and feasting alike at themselves. God had no place in their thoughts.
- Drift — Practices that begin well can change owners, the way "the feasts of the LORD" became the Jews' feasts.
- Diagnosis — Being sad about ruin is not the same as humbling yourself before God. Grief that never asks what caused the judgment is grief spent on self.
- Destination — True humiliation retraces the path back to where it left God's path. There the answer waits: their fasts will become feasts.
Are not these the words that Jehovah cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and at peace, and her cities round about her, when the south and the lowland were inhabited?
God had never asked Israel to keep these fast days. So in verse 7 He points them to warnings He had already sent, in the years when Jerusalem was still prosperous.
Instead of ruling on the fast, God asks what the fasting was for.
The Lord asks, "Is it for Me, for Me?" No, it was not for the honour and glory of God. Their own selfish interests were at the bottom of it. Indeed God had never asked them to fast. These institutions were man-made... It was obedience the Lord required. If they had listened to the words spoken by the prophets, they would not have been in captivity. There would have been no need for a solemn fast.
God sent those warnings in the good years, not in the ruined ones. That timing is the whole point.
The earlier prophets had announced judgment at a time when the people still enjoyed rest and peace. Had they fasted then? Then it had surely been the time to sit in sackcloth and ashes so the Lord might remove His wrath. Nineveh, a city outside Israel, had acted better than Israel. God did not carry out the judgment He had predicted there (Jonah 3:5, 10). No, they had fasted to themselves and cried over their own calamity, but had failed to repent... To be sad about ruin is not the same as humbling yourself before the Lord.
Zechariah was not saying anything new. Isaiah had said it before the captivity, and the people ignored it.
In verse 7 the Lord reminds Israel that He had spoken to the nation in this same way through the prophets before the captivity, "when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous, with her cities around her." Isaiah is the sharpest on this point (Isaiah 58:3-7). He wrote in the days of the kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, before Judah went into captivity. They had before ignored God's messages and suffered for it. Let them take a warning that they may rightly respond now!
Verse 7 points back to the earlier prophets. The verses right after it summarise what those prophets said.
At first sight the eighth verse looks like the start of a new message. A closer look shows that the Lord is simply giving a summary, through Zechariah, of the words He had "proclaimed by the former prophets." So verses 9 and 10 give the substance of His earlier messages to His people. Verses 11 and 12 show how the people refused His word. Verses 13 and 14 show that the crushing judgments which fell on Israel and the land came from their hardened hearts and sinful rebellion.
They kept measuring their grief. The question was where it came from.
They kept wondering whether they had mourned enough over their national disasters, which showed the Lord's anger against His people. Instead, they should have gone back and asked what caused their sorrows. They would then have learned that their rebellion against God had brought their troubles on them... However sincerely we humble ourselves before God for past sins, blessing will not return until we go down to the roots of our failure and test everything by the word of God.
The principle runs wider than fasts.
Religious ceremonies, whatever they may do, never take the place of practical righteousness in God's sight, and still less of faith. People often show the greatest zeal for an outward observance while their heart is far from Him.
The danger did not die with the exile.
The moral evils that wrecked the nation were still at work among the people who had returned to the land. A remnant may return but the deep-rooted tendency to develop the old evils remains. Let us never forget that.
- Hear — God had already spoken. The fast was no substitute for doing what He said.
- Timing — the warnings came while the land was still prosperous. That was the moment for sackcloth and ashes.
- Motive — they fasted for themselves, not for Him. Their own interests were at the bottom of it.
- Root — sadness over ruin is not repentance. Blessing returns only when we find the root of the failure and test it by God's word.
- Carry-over — the old evils came home with the people who returned. The warnings still needed hearing.