Zechariah 7:2

"Now they of Bethel had sent Sharezer and Regemmelech, and their men, to entreat the favor of Jehovah, and to speak unto the priests of the house of Jehovah of hosts, and to the prophets, saying, Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?"

"Now they of Bethel ..." Despite some questions regarding the text in this place, our version is as clear and sensible, and even more so, than any of the proposed alterations. A delegation of the returnees from Babylon, then living in Bethel, the site of the old pagan shrine where the golden calves had once been set up, are here represented as coming to Jerusalem to inquire of the prophets and priests regarding the keeping of one of the popular fast days which had been observed by the Jews for some 70 years.

The situation had been brought about by the fact that great progress was being made in rebuilding the temple; property was increasing; and there appeared to be some doubt as to the keeping of a fast day on the anniversary of the destruction of the first temple. Indeed, times had changed; a new temple was rising; and it was obviously inappropriate to keep weeping and fasting for the old one.

Their coming to Jerusalem was significant; because in that action, there lay the general acknowledgment that Jerusalem was the site of the altar where they were required to worship, and that God's will would be made known from that city.

"Sharezer and Regemmelech ..." "Sharezer is regarded as a Babylonian name, meaning `protect the king.'"[4] "Regemmelech means `king's friend'";[5] and the significance of these names points to the period of the Babylonian captivity, and shows how the old Jewish custom of naming their children with names that honored God had given place to names oriented toward the pagan land where they were captive. It was high time indeed for God to have rescued them from a land that in time would have totally corrupted them.

"Should I weep in the fifth month ..." merely means, should we continue to keep the fast day. Keil identified this as. "The fifth month (Ab) on the tenth day; because, in Jeremiah 52:12,13, that was the day in which the temple and Jerusalem were destroyed by fire."[6] It appears, however, that this one fast day was made a test case for a total of several fast days which throughout their history the Jews had insisted upon observing. Keil listed these other fast days:

1. In the seventh month and third day, a fast marked the anniversary of the murder of Godallah (2 Kings 25:25,26).

2. In the fourth month and ninth day, they commemorated the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 39:2; 52:6,7).

3. In the tenth month and tenth day, they wept and fasted for the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:1; Jeremiah 39:1).

The particular fast day inquired about in this passage was that on the tenth day of the fifth month; but it is clear that whatever the judgment of the prophets might have revealed on this matter, it would also have been properly applied to all the others. The fifth day of the fifth month, remarkably, had been the anniversary of a number of disasters in Israel:

1. The decision of God not to allow the fathers to enter the promised land.

2. The destruction of the first temple.

3. The destruction of the second temple.

4. The conquest of the city of Bother in the time of Bar-Cochba.

5. The destruction of Jerusalem.[7]

Now the most important thing about all of these fasts was that God had neither commanded nor authorized any one of them! Only one day in the year, the Day of Atonement, had God commanded His people to fast; yet they had added all these others! In the times of the Pharisees, that class of bigots even fasted "twice in the week? (Luke 18:12).

At this point, we anticipate the prophet's answer, which in fact was "No!" although it was stated in the form of some six observations from which that was the obvious and mandatory deduction. The primary reason for this was that all they were doing was actually "will worship," having nothing at all to do either with what God commanded or authorized. For this reason, we strongly disagree with many of the comments founded on these passages. For example, "It shows that ... the prophets cared infinitely more for righteousness than for ritual."[8] What it actually shows is that God cared infinitely more for righteousness (which included the observances of ritual which he had commanded) than for the observance of rituals which men themselves had invented and adopted! We shall give other examples of this in the notes on the passages.

In this series on the Minor Prophets, there have been numerous instances in which similar passages have been used to "prove" that God cares nothing for observances of his ordinances and is interested only in what is allowed to be moral or ethical. This is absolutely wrong.

"The true fasting, which is well pleasing to God, consists not in a pharisaical abstinence from eating and drinking, but in the fact THAT MEN OBSERVE THE WORD OF GOD AND LIVE THEREBY.[9]

This preoccupation with weeping, mourning, and fasting represented a radical change in Jewish religious life. Weeping and sorrow replaced hymns and thanksgivings; and Watts affirmed that, "The practice has survived into this century at the so-called `Wailing Wall' in Jerusalem."[10] One other thing should be noted regarding that fast the men were asking about, the tenth day of the fifth month. It is mentioned in 2 Kings 28:8ff and in Jeremiah 52:13ff; but one of them cites the seventh day, and the other the tenth day. Mitchell pointed out that:

The Babylonians entered the temple on the seventh day and profaned it until the ninth, when they set fire to it and left it to burn until the tenth." (A quotation from the Jewish scholar Rodkinson, in the Babylonian Talmud).[11]