Zechariah 7
Big idea: Two years later a delegation arrives with a practical question — should we keep fasting for the destruction of the temple, now that it is being rebuilt? — and gets an answer that ignores the question and asks a better one: when you fasted, was it for me?
The question is not actually answered until 8:19, a chapter later, and the delay is the point: what stands between is the reason the fasts began in the first place.
7:1–7 — Was it for me that you fasted?
The date is December 518 BC, two years into the rebuilding, and the question is reasonable: the fast of the fifth month commemorated the temple's burning, and the temple is going back up. The delegation has come to the priests, which is the correct procedure, and they get a prophet instead.
1 In the fourth year of King Darius, Yahweh’s word came to Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Chislev. 2 The people of Bethel sent Sharezer and Regem Melech and their men to entreat Yahweh’s favor, 3 and to speak to the priests of the house of Yahweh of Armies and to the prophets, saying, “Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?” 4 Then the word of Yahweh of Armies came to me, saying, 5 “Speak to all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, really to me? 6 When you eat and when you drink, don’t you eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? 7 Aren’t these the words which Yahweh proclaimed by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and its cities around her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited?’”
7:8–14 — Execute true judgment
The content of the older preaching is quoted, and it is entirely social: true justice, loyal love and compassion to one another, and four named categories not to be oppressed — widow, fatherless, foreigner, poor — plus a prohibition on plotting harm in the heart. That is the answer to the fasting question, delivered before the question is formally answered.
8 Yahweh’s word came to Zechariah, saying, 9 “Thus has Yahweh of Armies spoken, saying, ‘Execute true judgment, and show kindness and compassion every man to his brother. 10 Don’t oppress the widow, the fatherless, the foreigner, nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against his brother in your heart.’ 11 But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear. 12 Yes, they made their hearts as hard as flint, lest they might hear the law and the words which Yahweh of Armies had sent by his Spirit by the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from Yahweh of Armies. 13 It has come to pass that, as he called and they refused to listen, so they will call and I will not listen,” said Yahweh of Armies; 14 “but I will scatter them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they have not known. Thus the land was desolate after them, so that no man passed through nor returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate.”
Scripture text: World English Bible (public domain).