Zechariah · chapter 7 of 14
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Zechariah 7 begins with a question from messengers of Bethel in the fourth year of Darius (518 BC): should they keep weeping and fasting in the fifth month, as they have since the temple was destroyed? The Lord answers by asking whether they were truly fasting for him, and recalls what the earlier prophets demanded: true justice, mercy and compassion, without oppressing the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner or the poor. Their fathers hardened their hearts, and so the exile came.
Almost two years have passed since the night visions, and the temple is nearly finished. In the fourth year of King Darius, a delegation asks the priests and prophets whether they should keep the fast that remembered the destruction of Jerusalem. The question, apparently ritual, opens a deep teaching about what God expects of a people who fast. Chapters 7 and 8 form a unit.
In the fourth year of King Darius, on the fourth day of the ninth month, the word of the Lord comes to Zechariah. Bethel has sent Sharezer and Regem-melech and their men to entreat the favor of the Lord. They ask the priests of the house of the Lord of hosts and the prophets whether they should keep weeping and fasting in the fifth month, as they have done for so many years.
The Lord's answer is a question for all the people and the priests: when they fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for seventy years, was it for him that they fasted? And when they ate and drank, was it not for themselves? He reminds them that these are the words he proclaimed by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and at rest.
The word of the Lord comes again to Zechariah with a command: render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner or the poor, and let none devise evil against another in his heart. But the fathers refused to pay attention: they turned a stubborn shoulder, stopped their ears and made their hearts like flint, so as not to hear the law or the words that the Lord sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great anger came from the Lord. As they did not hear when he called, so he would not hear when they called; he scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations that they had not known, and the land was left desolate behind them, and they made the pleasant land a desolation.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
The Lord asks whether, when they fasted for seventy years, they were truly fasting for him. The question challenges religion as ritual and puts the heart ahead of outward practice.
The Lord commands true judgment and kindness and compassion among brothers. Here is the essence of what God expected of his people, and what the former prophets had said before the exile.
The widow, the fatherless, the sojourner and the poor must not be oppressed, nor evil plotted against a neighbor. The list of the most vulnerable reminds us that true faith shows in how we treat those who cannot repay the favor.
The fathers made their hearts like flint so as not to hear the law or the words the Lord sent by his Spirit. The cause of the exile was not a lack of warning but a persistent refusal to listen.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: In the fourth year of King Darius, on the fourth day of the ninth month. — Zechariah 7:1
Answer: Whether they should keep weeping and fasting in the fifth month, as they had for years. — Zechariah 7:2-3
Answer: Whether they were truly fasting for him during those seventy years. — Zechariah 7:5
Answer: To render true judgment and show kindness and compassion. — Zechariah 7:9
Answer: The widow, the fatherless, the sojourner and the poor. — Zechariah 7:10
Answer: They turned a stubborn shoulder, stopped their ears and made their hearts like flint. — Zechariah 7:11-12
Zechariah 7 asks about the motive behind religious practices. Fasting, prayer or church attendance can be done out of habit, for image or out of real love for God. In a small group you can talk about which practices we keep without thinking and how to connect them with the way we treat people.
The chapter also ties faith to concrete justice: widows, orphans, foreigners and the poor. Anyone who wants to please God cannot ignore them. And the closing warning reminds us that hardening the heart against God's voice has consequences.
Zechariah 7 answers the question about fasting with a call to justice and mercy and with the memory of the exile as a warning. Chapter 8 continues with the full answer: the Lord promises to return to Zion and to turn the fasts into feasts of joy.
The fast of the fifth month remembered the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BC (2 Kings 25:8-9). The one of the seventh month probably remembered the murder of Gedaliah. Zechariah 8:19 also mentions the fasts of the fourth and tenth months.
No. What he questions is fasting without heart, done without thinking of God and without justice toward the neighbor. Other prophets give the same warning, and in the next chapter the Lord promises that the fasts will become feasts.
The Hebrew uses a very hard stone. The image describes a heart that will not be marked by God's word. It is the opposite of a heart ready to listen and obey.