YHWH Charges Them With False Motives In Their Fasting (Zechariah 7:4-7).
‘Then came the word of YHWH of Hosts to me saying, “Speak to all the people of the land and the priests saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month, even these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, even to me? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?' ” '
God's reply through Zechariah is not just to the questioners. It is to all the people of the land and to the priests. It is uncompromising. During the whole seventy years they have abounded in fasts, and in feasts as well, but the truth is that their hearts were not directed rightly. Their fasting was all religious ritual and show. They expressed sorrow for what they had lost by the catastrophe, and they expressed grief over their present physical state, but what they mourned was their own loss, not the sins which had brought it about. Their fasts rather gave them great self-satisfaction and were for personal aggrandisement.
‘All the people of the land.' Here this probably indicates all Jews in and around Jerusalem probably reaching at least as far as Bethel. It may indicate those who had initially returned and had helped to build the Temple, who now felt a little chagrined about the arrival of newcomers. In some cases the phrase can indicate a certain free property owning class with some say in affairs, but not here.
The fast on the seventh month may have been connected with the Day of Atonement. Alternately it may have been connected with the assassination of Gedaliah, the governor after the fall of Jerusalem (2 Kings 25:19).
We can compare with this attitude Jesus' charge against the Pharisees (Matthew 6:16-18), that when they indulged in fasting, it did not result in them in turning to God in such a way as to become more responsive to His laws and more obedient to His moral requirements. They were rather taken up with themselves and their own religiosity and not with God (compare Luke 18:10-14). We can compare especially the words of Isaiah 1:10-20, which perfectly express what he is saying.
And the same applied at their celebrations of their feasts. They ate and drank, but it was not in true gratitude and response to God, but purely in self-indulgence and in self-commendation.
In other words it is not enough for us to have a vague sense of unworthiness. What God requires from us is a full awareness of our specific sins so that we face up to them and turn from them. Then we will recognise that we are rebels against God.
“Should you not hear the words which YHWH has cried by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and her cities round about her, and the South and the lowland were inhabited?”
This verse both looks back to what he has just said, and looks ahead to the following verses. He now stresses that the people have not yet awakened to their own real need to listen to what the former prophets had said. Those prophets had prophesied when all was well, when Jerusalem and the cities round about her were prosperous and well populated, and the South and the lowland were also well populated. But the people then had not listened to the prophets. They had not repented of their sins. They had not striven to obey their God. They had not ceased to do evil and learned to do well. They had not been concerned for the poor and needy. Rather their ways had been sinful, and they had not listened to the voice of God (see especially Isaiah 1:17).
So God's stress is that instead of being concerned with questions of fasting the people now needed to consider their ways. Let them do what their fathers had failed to do, listen to the former prophets, repent of their sins and selfishness, admit their failure in their attitude towards God and sin, and respond to Him with a full heart, putting right what was wrong in their midst.
We are reminded by this that there is always a danger of our attitude to God becoming too superficial. We can be so caught up in religious activity that we neglect true goodness and compassion where it is most needed. And it is the latter that God requires. The Gospel is not a social Gospel, but it makes great social demands and should have great social effects.