NOTES for Zec 7:14

People are interested in fasting from the standpoint of rules of conduct, but the Lord reminds them why fasting was established. The Lord’s reproach to Zechariah’s contemporaries, that whether they fasted or did not fast they did so not for Him but for themselves, remains relevant today. This is not only because in our time one can often hear, for example, discussions about the benefits of fasting as a means of achieving quasi-medical aims, such as giving the body a rest, when fasting is separated from prayer and faith. Here fasting and not fasting are mentioned together if they are not related to God’s will. Both a fast and a meal can take place before His eyes, for it is no accident that during a sacrifice part of the sacrificial meat was eaten before the Lord by His servants. Through Zechariah the Lord once again recalls what He had already proclaimed through earlier prophets, Isaiah for example: fasting is unthinkable without mercy and compassion.

The Lord also reminds us that He does not listen to those who refuse to hear Him. One can listen without hearing; one can confidently suppose that everything is well with us and fail to notice one’s own deeds, which have become automatic habits...

Not only individuals, but also the entire era of the restoration of the Temple in a certain sense becomes a prefiguration of the time of the Messiah's coming. Much changes with the onset of the new era, in both cases. But much also remains unchanged, as an eternal ordinance of the Almighty. What the prophet Zechariah conveys to the reader in the seventh chapter marks the difference between what is mutable and what is constant, and this difference radically contradicts the popular notions of antiquity and of our time.

The Judeans remaining in Babylon, ruled by the Persian king Darius who favored them, send envoys to Jerusalem with the question of whether they should observe the fasts of the fifth and seventh months that had become traditional. The first of these was established after 587 BC as a sign of sorrow over the destruction of Jerusalem, and the second appeared around the same time in memory of the last Jewish uprising and the murder of Gedaliah, whom Nebuchadnezzar had left to govern conquered Judea. Now the Temple in Jerusalem is being restored — is it necessary to continue mourning the destruction of the former one? The envoys of the Babylonian Judeans expect, as far as one can tell, one of two answers. Perhaps the priests and prophets will decree that the fast should be canceled, since the cause of sorrow has ceased to exist — but perhaps they will decide that it should be kept as a traditional ordinance marking an important turning point in the history of the people...

But the answer that the Lord gives through Zechariah lies in a completely different dimension and strikes with its bitterness. At almost the same time, the Lord speaks of the very same thing through Deutero-Isaiah; it is even possible that both prophets (Deutero-Isaiah and Zechariah) are answering the very same question. In both cases, the Lord rejects traditional fasts as something done by people not for His sake, but for their own sake. "Did you fast for Me?" Zechariah exclaims on behalf of the Lord. "Behold, on the day of your fast you do your own pleasure and exact hard labor from others," He says through Deutero-Isaiah (Isa 58:3). The traditional ritual ordinance turns out to be empty and meaningless, because the Lord is not its goal. One might wonder what else could be the goal of such a religious phenomenon as fasting? No, says the Lord, not for Him, but for themselves did the Judeans fast, to console their grief, to express their sorrow, "that they may be seen by men to be fasting", as the Lord Jesus Christ would articulate this thought. The deeply personal experience of sorrow and repentance took on a public character among the Babylonian Judeans and became ostentatious and insincere.

And the Lord says through Zechariah and Deutero-Isaiah what the Judeans really needed, what was supposed to express their repentance and sorrow. "Thus the Lord of Hosts spoke then [on the eve of the captivity]: render true judgments, and show mercy and compassion every man to his brother," Zechariah reminds them. Deutero-Isaiah says: "Behold, this is the fast that I have chosen: loose the bonds of wickedness, untie the bands of the yoke, and let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke; share your bread with the hungry, and bring the wandering poor into your house..." (Isa 58:6–7). For God, what is important is not the outward expression of remorse, but, in the words of John the Baptist, "fruit worthy of repentance". The prophet Zechariah exclaims with bitterness that it is precisely to mercy, compassion, and active love for one's neighbor that the Lord calls people, and exactly this could have protected Jerusalem from destruction, because this is precisely where God's righteousness lies. "But the Judeans refused to hearken... therefore great wrath came from the Lord," the prophet recalls what his predecessors had long proclaimed.

It is obvious that with the change of historical conditions it is precisely the demand for mercy and compassion that remains unchanged, it is precisely mercy that is the fruit of repentance and purification which the Lord expects. And traditional ordinances, on the contrary, are not even deemed worthy of discussion, so closely are they linked with specific historical circumstances and spiritual tasks of the time. One cannot fail to notice that absolutely the same thing will be said to the Judeans by Christ when He reminds them of the words of the prophet Hosea: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hos 6:6, Mt 9:13). But even then, just as in the times of Deutero-Isaiah and Zechariah, the Judeans will not want to hearken to Him. It is far too convenient for people to replace the fruit of repentance with its outward expression, and this problem is characteristic not only of the Judeans.