Week 31 Zechariah 7
The chapter begins with men coming to Zechariah and asking him about a fast they had been practicing for years-and-years.
The way they put the question to Zechariah he had two options. Answer a) yes…keep fasting. Answer b) no…stop fasting. But like what happens sometimes in the bible Zechariah didn’t answer the question directly. Instead he told them about other things the Lord wanted to see:
Make fair decisions
Show faithful love and compassion to one another
Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the resident alien or the poor
And do not plot evil in your hearts against one another.
I check a cross-reference to Isaiah where the people were wondering about fasting and Isaiah told them what the Lord preferred:
break the chains of wickedness
untie the ropes of the yoke
set the oppressed free
share your bread with the hungry
bring the poor and homeless into your house
clothe the naked
and don’t ignore your own flesh and blood.
Some of the same practices in both lists. Some of them maybe even harder than fasting.
I like lists like these.
They remind me that the technical formalities of OT religion were supposed to be technical. And also personal.
And they remind me that the prescribed practices of OT religion didn’t end in the Temple court. They were supposed to carry over into my regular day-in-and-day-out.
Note: quotes from Zechariah 7:9-10 (reformatted) & Isaiah 58:6-7 (reformatted & slightly rephrased) (CSB)