Two years after the night visions ended, a delegation arrives with a genuinely practical question about a ritual — and God’s answer skips the ritual question entirely to ask why nobody seems to remember what actually caused the exile in the first place.
A study in Zechariah 7 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 15 min read
Should I Weep In The Fifth Month
“And it came to pass in the fourth year of king Darius, that the word of the LORD came unto Zechariah in the fourth day of the ninth month, even in Chisleu; When they had sent unto the house of God Sherezer and Regem-melech, and their men, to pray before the LORD, And to speak unto the priests which were in the house of the LORD of hosts, and to the prophets, saying, Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself, as I have done these so many years?”
Zechariah 7:1-3
Nearly two years have passed since chapter 1’s opening date, and the temple’s construction is now well underway (the very building this delegation arrives at). Their question concerns a fast observed on the anniversary of Jerusalem’s own destruction by Babylon (2 Kings 25:8-9) — with the temple actively being rebuilt, was this annual mourning ritual still necessary, or could it finally be set aside?
Did Ye At All Fast Unto Me, Even To Me
“Then came the word of the LORD 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 seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me? And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?”
Zechariah 7:4-6
God’s answer never actually addresses whether the fast should continue. Instead, it questions whether the fast had ever meant what the people assumed it meant. The doubled phrase “did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?” presses hard on a single point: seventy years of ritual mourning had been, by God’s own assessment, more about the people’s own grief and self-discipline than about any actual relationship with Him — and the same, He points out, was equally true of their ordinary eating and drinking. Both fasting and feasting had been done “for yourselves,” regardless of which one was happening on any given day.
“Should ye not hear the words which the LORD hath cried by the former prophets, when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, and the cities thereof round about her, when men inhabited the south and the plain?”
Zechariah 7:7
This rhetorical question pivots the whole conversation backward, to exactly the message the pre-exile prophets — Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others — had already delivered while Jerusalem still stood prosperous and full. The implication is pointed: this generation is asking a ritual question about fasting when the more urgent question is whether they have actually learned what those earlier warnings were about in the first place.
Execute True Judgment, And Shew Mercy
“And the word of the LORD came unto Zechariah, saying, Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.”
Zechariah 7:8-10
This is the actual answer to the fasting question, though it never mentions fasting at all — a direct restatement of exactly what the pre-exile prophets had already been saying, the same combination of justice and mercy Micah 6:8 had already summarized as the whole of what God requires. The widow, the fatherless, the stranger, and the poor name the four groups Scripture consistently singles out as most vulnerable to exploitation, and the final clause reaches past visible actions into the heart itself — even private, unexpressed ill will toward a brother falls under this same command.
“But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts.”
Zechariah 7:11-12
“Pulled away the shoulder” pictures someone physically twisting away from a hand trying to guide them, and “stopped their ears” makes the resistance deliberate rather than accidental. “Adamant” describes the hardest stone known in the ancient world — the image is of a hardness that could not be worn down by ordinary pressure, only by something far stronger.
“Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the LORD of hosts: But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations whom they knew not. Thus the land was desolate after them, that no man passed through nor returned: for they laid the pleasant land desolate.”
Zechariah 7:13-14
Verse 13’s exact symmetry — “as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear” — states the whole exile as simple reciprocity rather than arbitrary punishment. The very fast this delegation had traveled to ask about existed only because of exactly the pattern this verse describes.
“‘And the word of the Lord came unto Zechariah, saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother: and oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.’ … This is the word of the Lord to us also.”
Ellen G. White · Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, p. 460
White quotes this exact passage in a personal letter addressing conflict within a church institution, and her application is direct and immediate: “this is the word of the Lord to us also,” not merely a historical record of instructions given to a different generation.
“I cannot think that the closing part of this chapter will be your experience: ‘But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. … But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations whom they knew not.’ … Speak no words of censure. Lay no blame on this one or that one. There is need now of the help that all can bring. Seek to heal the breach that has been made. Do it cheerfully. Do it nobly.”
Ellen G. White · Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, p. 460
White treats the two halves of this chapter as a live choice still available to her own readers, not a closed historical case: the same command to execute true judgment and show mercy, and the same warning about what happens when a hardened heart refuses to hear it. Her own counsel — “speak no words of censure,” “seek to heal the breach” — is exactly the practical, relational application chapter 7’s own abstract commands about justice and mercy were always meant to produce.
