True religion contrasted with mere ceremonies, and the result of disobedience to God
7
📚And it came about in the fourth year of King Darius 📖, that the word of the LORD came to Zechariah, on the fourth day of the ninth month, Kisleu, 2 📚when they had sent Sherezer and Regemmelech, and their men, to the house of God 📖 to pray before the LORD, 3 📚and to speak to the priests who were in the house of the LORD of hosts, and to the prophets, saying, “Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done these many years?” 7:3 This fast had been observed for seventy years (v 5). Evidently this ceremony began as a memorial to the destruction of Jerusalem which took place in the fifth month (2 Kings 25:8-9).⚜
4 📚Then the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying, 5 📚“Speak to all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, those seventy years, did you fast for me, really for me? 6 📚And when you ate, and when you drank, were you not eating for yourselves, and drinking for yourselves?
7:5-6 The fast on the seventh month was a memorial to the assassination of Gedaliah the governor of Judah (2 Kings 25:25). The Lord rebukes the people through Zechariah. He says that whether fasting or feasting they thought only of themselves. They were not really concerned with God and His honor and glory. Compare Isa 58:1-9. They cared more for their ceremonies than for God.⚜
7 📚Should you not have listened to the words which the LORD cried out through the former prophets 📖, when Jerusalem and its towns around it were inhabited and prosperous, when men inhabited the south and the plain?”
8 And the word of the LORD came to Zechariah, saying, 9 📚“The LORD of hosts is speaking and saying this: Administer true justice, and each one of you show mercy and compassion to his brother. 10 📚And do not oppress the widow, or the fatherless, the foreigner, or the poor. And do not plot evil in your heart against his brother.
11 📚“But they refused to listen, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, so that they would not hear. 12 📚Yes, they made their hearts like flint, so that they would not hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts sent by his Spirit 📖 through the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the LORD of hosts.
13 📚“Therefore it came about, that as the LORD cried out and they would not hear, so they cried out and I would not hear, says the LORD of hosts.
14 📚But I scattered them 📖 with a whirlwind among all the nations whom they had not known. So the land was desolate behind them, so that no one went there or returned; for they had made 📖 the pleasant land desolate”.