Zechariah 7:4

"Then came the word of Jehovah of hosts unto me, saying, Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month, even these seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?"

Whereas this inquiry had come from a people's delegation at Bethel, the message of Zechariah was directed not only to all the people, but particularly also to those priests who had invented the unauthorized fasts and led the people in the perversion of the worship of God. Through them, the message applies to all who would come afterward, even down to the present time. What people invent for themselves, by way of religious ordinances and devices, is worthless. Such are not "unto the Lord." They, in fact, have nothing to do with God. "The answer to the question here is no."[12] The fasts were worthless, not because God disapproved of fasting in principle, but because these particular fasts were not related to God's commandments.

"In the seventh month ..." This was the fast commemorating the murder of Gedaliah, and was one of several such fasts. See chapter introduction. That event had occurred, "in 587 B.C., just seventy years ago, when the greater part of the remnant of the Jews, contrary to the prophet's warning, fled into Egypt to escape punishment for the crime."[13]

"That fast (like the others) was not of godly sorrow for past offences, but of selfish regret for loss of their country and their liberty. They pitied themselves, but they had not learned to fear Jehovah."[14]

Here again is a convenient place for the liberal scholars to insert their dogma to the effect that: "What Yahweh requires primarily is not the keeping of fasts, but the observance of those moral demands which he had made of their ancestors."[15] Or as Dummelow has it, "God demands not fasts, but observance of moral laws."[16] Of course, when it is understood that such statements must be limited in application to the fasts, rituals, and ordinances that originate with men, it leaves clear the truth that God also is concerned that men obey the ordinances, etc. which God Himself has made binding upon mankind.

Regarding those particular fasts of the Jews under consideration here, "Sin was the cause of them; and if sin were forsaken, the fasting would no longer be necessary."[17]