Zechariah 7 explained: Fasting That Missed the Point

A question about fasting (vv. 1-3)

Around 518 BC, while the temple in Jerusalem was being rebuilt, the town of Bethel sent men to ask the priests and prophets whether they should keep fasting in the fifth month. That fast mourned the day Babylon burned the first temple about seventy years earlier, so with a new temple rising, they wondered if the mourning was still needed.

Who was it really for? (vv. 4-7)

Instead of a yes or no, the Lord asks whether their fasting, and their feasting too, had ever really been about him or only about themselves. The seventh month fast likely remembered the murder of Gedaliah, the governor left in charge after Jerusalem fell, and the reply points back to what earlier prophets said when the land was still thriving.

What God actually asked (vv. 8-10)

The message of the earlier prophets is summed up here: be fair, be kind, and do not crush widows, orphans, foreigners or the poor, the people with no one to protect them. The point seems to be that this, not the details of a fast, was the real question all along.

Refusing to listen (vv. 11-12)

Their ancestors are pictured like an ox jerking its shoulder away from the wooden harness, covering their ears and making their hearts as hard as the hardest stone. The Lord's anger is described as the response to years of ignoring the law and the prophets.

Scattered and a ruined land (vv. 13-14)

The text states it bluntly: because they would not listen when God called, God would not listen when they called out, and they were scattered among foreign nations. The once pleasant land was left empty, and the passage lays the blame on the people's own choices, not only on Babylon.

Key verse: Zechariah 7:9

Something to think about

When a ritual or habit of remembering has gone on for years, how would you tell whether it still means something or has quietly become about something else?