Zechariah Chapter 7 – When Fasting Becomes Empty
You know, sometimes we do the right thing… but for all the wrong reasons. And that’s exactly where Zechariah chapter 7 takes us. It’s a chapter that starts with a question about fasting, but ends up going deep into the heart of why we do what we do. It’s not just about religious rituals. It’s about motivation. About sincerity. About whether we’re actually listening to God or just playing religious dress-up.
Let’s walk through it together.
The Setting – A Question That Sounds Simple
The chapter opens in the fourth year of King Darius—so a couple years after Zechariah’s earlier visions. By now, some rebuilding work on the Temple was already underway. The people had been through a lot: exile, return, and the messy, slow process of restoring their national and spiritual life.
Then, a delegation comes from Bethel to Jerusalem with a question. These men—Sharezer and Regem-Melech—were sent to ask the priests and prophets:
“Should we keep mourning and fasting in the fifth month, as we have done for so many years?”
Sounds innocent enough, right? Just a yes-or-no question. But it’s never that simple. Because underneath the question is a deeper one: Why are we even doing this?
The Fifth Month Fast – What’s That About?
This fast wasn’t one of God’s original commands from the Law of Moses. It came later, during the exile, as a memorial of the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon (Jeremiah 52). Every year, the people mourned and fasted in the fifth month to remember their loss.
Now here they were—Temple being rebuilt, life moving on—wondering: “Do we still need to keep doing this?”
On the surface, they wanted clarity. But God’s response, through Zechariah, shows that He wasn’t impressed by their question. He wanted to deal with the heart.
God’s Answer – Not What They Expected
Zechariah doesn’t give them a yes or no. Instead, he asks them:
“When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months these seventy years, was it really for Me that you fasted?”
Boom. There it is. The heart of the issue. God is basically saying: “Let’s be honest—this wasn’t about Me, was it? You were going through the motions.”
That’s the sting. They’d been religiously observing this fast for seventy years, but God is telling them it wasn’t actually worship. It was tradition without heart. Duty without devotion.
And He pushes even further—“When you were eating and drinking, weren’t you just feasting for yourselves?”
So, whether fasting or feasting, it was still self-centered. God is pointing out that you can be in the Temple, you can be keeping traditions, but your focus can still be completely on yourself.
The Real Thing God Wanted All Along
Zechariah then takes them back to what God had always said through the earlier prophets:
“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.”
Notice what’s missing? Ritual fasting. Sacrifices. Festivals. It’s not that those things were bad, but without justice, mercy, and compassion—they’re just noise.
God’s heart has always been for His people to love Him and love others. That’s the beating center of His law. He’s saying: “This is what I wanted from the beginning, not empty ceremonies.”
The Tragic Past – Why They Went Into Exile
But the people in the past didn’t listen. They refused to pay attention, turned their backs, and stopped their ears. Zechariah paints a picture of stubborn rebellion. They made their hearts like flint—hard, unyielding—against God’s Word.
The result? God sent prophets, warnings, and instructions, but they shrugged them off. And so the Lord allowed disaster to come. They were scattered among the nations. The land they once called home became desolate. Nobody went in or out. A place once full of life turned into silence.
It wasn’t that God wanted to destroy them. It was that their stubborn refusal to listen led them into judgment. Their rituals didn’t save them, because rituals never can without real repentance.
Bringing It Back to Us
This is where the chapter kind of sneaks up on you. Because it’s easy to read and think, “Oh, those Israelites… always missing the point.” But if we’re honest, we do the same thing.
We can go to church every Sunday, read our Bibles, even pray—but if our hearts are far from God, it’s all just… performance. We can fast and still be proud. We can sing worship songs and still hold grudges. We can tithe and still ignore injustice.
The point Zechariah is making—God doesn’t want just outward religion. He wants us. Our hearts. Our attention. Our obedience in the way we treat others.
Why This Chapter Matters Today
The world is full of religious activity. People light candles, recite prayers, wear religious symbols, keep holy days. None of those are wrong by themselves. But without love for God and neighbor, they’re hollow.
Zechariah 7 reminds us:
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God isn’t impressed by tradition for tradition’s sake.
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He sees through our religious masks.
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The real evidence of worship is justice, mercy, and compassion.
And maybe, just maybe, we need to ask ourselves the same question the people of Bethel should have asked: “Why am I doing this? Is it for God or just for me?”
Final Thoughts – A Heart Check
So, here’s my takeaway after sitting with this chapter for a while:
It’s easy to let faith drift into habit. You pray before meals because… well, you’ve always done that. You sing the songs in church because the words are on the screen. You fast because the calendar says so.
But Zechariah 7 challenges us to pause and check our motives. Not to ditch every tradition, but to fill them with meaning again. To make sure that when we fast, it’s about humbling ourselves before God—not earning points or keeping up appearances. To make sure our worship spills over into everyday life—in how we treat the people around us.
Because in the end, God’s looking at the heart. Always has. Always will.
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