Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh [month], even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, [even] to me?
Ver. 5. Speak unto all the people of the land], Not to the ambassadors only: as the cause is common, so let the answer be public; for they were all too well conceited of their external services, bodily exercises, and made much ado about a trifle, a practice of their own devising, neglecting the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith, Matthew 23:23 .
And to the priests] Who themselves were to seek belike; and having been the authors and observers of these customs, were backward to abolish them, as those that rested in them without true repentance, faith, and new obedience.
When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month] sc. For the slaughter of Gedaliah and the sad consequence thereof, 2Ki 25:22 Jeremiah 41:1 .
Even those seventy years] Wherein ye have lost full seven score fasts; and were not a bit the better for them, because they fasted rather to get off their chains than their sins; they rested in their fasts, in the work done, neither regarding how nor why they should fast. Now God weighs men's actions by their aims. And with him, though a good aim doth not make a bad action good (as we see in the case of Uzzah), yet a bad aim makes a good action bad, as in Jehu's reformation. He had a squint eye to his own ends in all (as the eagle hath an eye upon her prey when she flies highest), and so consulted ruin to his own house.
Did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?] Did you propound me to yourselves? Or gat I anything by the hand? Did you serve me? and not yourselves rather upon me? Was it not sinful self-love and base self-seeking that put you upon these practices? looked you any higher therein than only to the satisfying of your own carnal humours? God was not in all your thoughts. This Daniel saw and acknowledged with grief and shame, Daniel 9:13 "All this is come upon us: yet made we not our prayer before the Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand thy truth: therefore hath the Lord watched upon the evil and brought it upon us," &c. The Jews no doubt had prayed much and often during that seventy years' captivity; yet Daniel denies that they had prayed to any purpose; because they had failed both quoad fontem et quoad finem, they had acted from evil principles, and had been carried on by self-respects. They had not that true heart spoken of by the apostle, Hebrews 10:22, but that wicked mind mentioned by the wise man, Proverbs 21:27. The sacrifice of the wicked is abominable; how much more when he brings it with a wicked mind; either as thinking to deceive the God of heaven, or at least to stop his judgments, and still the noise of his own conscience by his external services. Thus Ephraim bore fruit to himself, but proved an empty vine, Hosea 10:1; when as the spouse (that fruitful vine on Christ's house side) kept her fruit for her beloved, Song of Solomon 5:4; who therefore fed heartily upon it; and not upon her vine only, but her milk too; not upon her honey only, her finer and sweeter services, but upon her honeycomb too, that had much wax in it, meaning her more worse and coarser performances. If the heart be upright all is well between Christ and his people. O labour for that truth in the inward parts, that we may be, with "Apelles, approved in Christ," Romans 16:10; that he may say of us, as once he did of Nathaniel, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile." Great virtues not sweetened with sincerity are no ornaments unto us, and great infirmities not soured with hypocrisy are no great deformities. Those God acknowledgeth not, these he imputeth not.