Not Fasting, but Righteousness
What happens when a community fails to hear what God is saying to them? With social change and a more cosmopolitan community people find themselves asking (and being asked) all sorts of questions they never thought of asking, or preferred not to think about, as long-standing customs and unquestioned traditions come under the microscope. Some people seem able happily to survive without honouring practices which have always been regarded as essential to a faithful life. Some feel under threat. Some genuinely want to consider what matters and what doesn’t.
In this case it was a matter of religious ceremonial to do with fasting and abstinence from strong drink (v 3). A minor question perhaps to some, like whether I need to close my eyes when I pray or kneel to say my prayers, but not minor to the people asking the question. Think of many similar examples from your own experience.
Zechariah’s first response is to suggest they examine their motives. All those years they insisted on doing ‘whatever it was’ why did they do it and why was it so important? Was it real, or simply a matter of custom and habit? Was it to gain a feeling of security? A fear, perhaps, that something terrible might happen if they didn’t? Searching questions for believers in every generation.
To find an answer Zechariah suggests they listen to what the prophets were always telling them in what they liked to think of as the golden age or the days of prosperity. What mattered to the prophets was how they lived their life. Basic human rights and the way they behaved towards their fellow humanity before arguments about the minutiae of religious belief or practice (vv 9-10).
Then comes the sting in the tale. They didn’t listen then and they are not listening now, and in some cases resolutely set themselves against it (v 11). Was this perhaps why they found themselves in the troubles they had just been going through (v 14)?