Eleven: Justice and Mercy, not Fasting - Zech 7:1-14
- Nov 30, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 23, 2025
1 In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, the month of Kislev. 2 The people of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regem-Melek, together with their men, to entreat the LORD 3 by asking the priests of the house of the LORD Almighty and the prophets, ‘Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years?’
4 Then the word of the LORD Almighty came to me: 5 ‘Ask all the people of the land and the priests, “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted? 6 And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves? 7 Are these not the words the LORD proclaimed through the earlier prophets when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest and prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills were settled?”’
8 And the word of the LORD came again to Zechariah: 9 ‘This is what the LORD Almighty said: “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.”
11 ‘But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. 12 They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was very angry.
13 ‘“When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,” says the LORD Almighty. 14 “I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations, where they were strangers. The land they left behind them was so desolate that no one travelled through it. This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.”’
During the 2020 Covid pandemic Mr and Mrs Holier-Than-Thou were very good at keeping the rules. They always wore facemasks whenever they went out. They sanitised their hands at every opportunity, often twice if they could. They kept an exaggerated distance from other people. When they went shopping (individually, of course) they would tut at a single mum who’d brought her toddler with her, pointing out the sign that advised people to shop alone. And although they were in good health themselves, they never offered to shop for an elderly neighbour. “It wouldn’t be right,” they said.
During the first lockdown they received regular food parcels from the Local Authority. They didn’t need them, but they hoarded them anyway. And what Mr and Mrs Holier-Than-Thou enjoyed most of all was phoning in to radio talk shows to ask about some detailed interpretation of the rules. They were surprised when they weren’t warmly congratulated on how well they were keeping them.
Mr and Mrs Holier-Than-Thou would have felt right at home in 6th Century BCE Bethel. Because the present passage from Zech 7 is all about people who liked the rules but missed the point.
Zech 7 is the third time in the book we are given an actual date. It is now the fourth year of King Darius, 518 BCE. And, because Jews began each month on the new moon, and we can calculate when the new moons were for any given year, we know this took place on 7th Dec, 518 BCE. This is a couple of years after Zechariah’s initial prophecies and all those unusual visions. So the Temple rebuilding project must have been well underway. And that seems to have been the reason for this visit.
Let’s outline the story.
The people of Bethel, twelve miles north of Jerusalem, sent a delegation of men with impressive-sounding names, to ask permission to relax their fasting practices in the fifth month of every year.
The fifth month was the month that Jerusalem had been destroyed, about 70 years previously.
Weeping and fasting on the anniversary made a lot of sense at the time – it had been a devastating blow to the nation’s sense of identity, and a lot more besides. But, now the Temple was almost rebuilt, maybe it was time to ease off. This does sound reasonable, at first sight.
There is some debate among scholars about the names in v2. Thomas McComiskey, for example, would translate the verse as “Now Bethel – [that is in particular] Sharezer and Regem-melech and his followers – had sent to entreat the Lord…” Joyce Baldwin on the other hand, noting that Bethel is only 12 miles north of Jerusalem and that this is four months after the fast, suggests that the delegation came all the way from Babylon. She thinks Bethel-Sharezer is a personal name – the Babylonian equivalent appears in a Babylonian text dating from this time, and there is a Nergal-Sharezer in Jer 39:3. Removing a single letter from the Hebrew text would allow this translation: “So Bethel-Sharezer [an important exile, we presume] sent Regem-Melech and his men [from Babylon] to entreat the Lord….” Whichever is the correct translation, it’s clear that an important delegation was asking Zechariah for the Lord’s direction about their fasting practices.
What would we expect Zechariah to answer? ‘Yes, that’s fine, it’s time to stop your fasting and treat the month as a normal month?’ Or ‘No, keep it up for another year or two, until the Temple is fully rebuilt and we can consecrate it properly?’
No one would have anticipated Zechariah’s angry outburst! For Zechariah, inspired by God’s Spirit, sees right through their mealy-mouthed request. “When you fasted and mourned… for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?” asks God (v5). And conversely, “When you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for yourselves?” (v6).
All that religious observance was just for show. Or to make the fasters feel better. Or to outdo their neighbours. Or to win points with God. And God is not impressed.
This is what impresses me, says God. “Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other” (v9-10).
There is something similar in Is 58:6-7: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter…?”
As Joyce Baldwin astutely observes (p148), “It was easy to spend fast-days mourning their losses, but harder to face up to God’s continuing demands.”
In v7 it is natural to assume that “the words of the Lord proclaimed through the earlier prophets” refer to the criticism of fasting in vv5-6, which is in line with Is 58:1-14. The earlier prophets, though, had even more to say about justice, mercy and not oppressing the helpless (v9-10) so it is possible that v7 refers forward to v9-10 rather than backwards to v5-6. To make this work, however, we have to treat v8 (“the word of the Lord came again to Zechariah”) as an unnecessary editorial insertion, and argue that the editor who did this misunderstood Zechariah’s original intention.
Zechariah then reminds his listeners just how wrong their forebears got it, to warn them against falling into the same trap. He describes their obstinacy in five different ways, in vv11-12:
1. They refused to pay attention
2. Stubbornly they turned their backs
3. They stopped up their ears
4. They made their hearts as hard as flint
5. And they just wouldn’t listen.
Zechariah conjures up the image of an ox that refuses to be yoked to a plough. If you’ve ever tried to put a toddler in a pushchair that doesn’t want to be put in a pushchair – all straight elbows and arched back – you’ll know exactly what that’s like.
In the end the people got exactly what they deserved – God’s anger – and then he became as unresponsive as they had been. “When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,” says the Lord Almighty (v13). Then the Exile. “I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations, where they were strangers” (v14). The pleasant land they had left behind, which used to be settled and prosperous, became desolate and abandoned.
And now Zechariah’s listeners were facing the same danger. They were guilty of religious observance without justice, of thoughtless worship without compassion. These would bring down God’s wrath as they had done 70 years before.
Zechariah does in fact answer the specific question about fasting, but not until 8:19. We will note in the next blog what occasioned fasting in the fifth and the seventh months.
We know from the Gospel accounts that Jesus fasted in the wilderness. But this was in preparation for his ministry, and certainly didn’t rob him of justice or compassion. In his teaching he rather assumed we were going to fast from time to time – to demonstrate repentance, perhaps, or renewed commitment to God. But he did warn against doing it for show.
“Do not look sombre as the hypocrites do,” he said. “Wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to people that you are fasting, but only to your Father” (Matt 6: 16-18). And his criticism of the Pharisees for arguing over the finer points of the Law while neglecting justice and compassion could have come straight from Zechariah. “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!” he told them (Matt 23:24).
Many Christians fast to some degree during the season of Lent, the six-and-a-half weeks leading up to Easter. Some will give up a meal or two each week. Others cut down on chocolate or alcohol. Still others spend a bit more time in prayer, or take on a voluntary act of service for the period. These are all good things, and Jesus certainly doesn’t tell us not to. But he – and Zechariah before him – would warn us about our attitude.
‘Don’t be like the Holier-Than-Thous!’ I think he would say. If we harbour pride in our hearts, or smugness about our wonderful self-discipline; if we take advantage of someone weaker than ourselves or refuse to forgive our enemy; if we make unkind comments about the foreigner or the poor, online or out loud; then any fasting we do is useless. In fact, it is worse than useless, positively harmful, because it insulates us from the really important issues of justice, mercy and compassion.
Such attitudes incur the wrath of God. And make the pleasant land desolate.
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