Zechariah 7 Commentary

In Zechariah 7, the prophet receives a delegation of returning exiles from Bethel, who want to entreat the LORD to know whether they should continue to fast annually to commemorate and lament the temple's devastation. Through a series of questions, the LORD answers the people, telling them their religious activities are meaningless because they are heartless.

Then, Zechariah gives them an example of what such disobedience looks like, and the attendant moral consequences. He sums up the moral standard by which the Judeans living prior to the Babylonian captivity were supposed to have lived. Unfortunately, they failed to meet the requirements, prompting God to discipline them through exile. The outline is as follows:

1. Zechariah receives a delegation of returning exiles from Bethel, inquiring whether they should continue to fast yearly to commemorate and lament the temple's destruction. The LORD tells the prophet to inform them that their fasting and feasting did not please Him because they were heartless rituals (vv. 1–7).
2. Zechariah spells out four requirements that sum up the ethical teaching of the pre-exilic prophets. He reminds the post-exilic community of Judah that their forefathers' rejection of that teaching was why God invoked the provisions of His covenant/treaty and punished them severely by scattering them abroad at the mercy of foreign nations (vv. 8–14).