Zechariah 7

Based on the Old Testament calendar, this message is dated December 518 BC. There came a delegation of folks from Bethel, 10 miles (16km) to the north and bit east. We recall a significant number of people escaped the Babylonian Exile and lived briefly under Gedaliah as governor. Some of them revolted, murdered Gedaliah and fled to Egypt, dragging Jeremiah along with them. However, a few stayed faithful to the new government and lived mostly in Bethel. During the long seventy years of isolation in a land mostly depopulated, they had developed the custom of solemn fasts to commemorate different events connected to the destruction of Jerusalem. The fifth month of every year they fasted for the burning of Jerusalem; the seventh month was for the murder of Gedaliah.
If the Covenant People sense a moving the Spirit of God to fast and weep over sin and its awful consequences, only a fool would resist the call. When it becomes a mere ritual, it’s worse than pointless; it mocks God and His Word. What’s the difference between feasting and fasting? Were any of the ritual observances a matter of truly seeking God’s face? Zechariah relays God’s message that they should search their own hearts about this. Were they genuinely sorry they had participated in ignoring the warnings from the former prophets back before Babylon invaded?
What does it look like when Israel obeyed the Covenant? It was a closely knit community of familial care. Unthinkable is the image of any unfortunate people suffering genuine want, because their wider community family would look after them. This is the moral imperative and there is no excuse for resentment and dishonesty. No one can explain why Israel left this community stability behind like some long forgotten tattered tent fluttering in the desert winds, while they lived in wood paneled stone houses and sharp dealings with each other. The simplicity of mercy and community welfare had not been a part of Israeli life for centuries, yet was precisely what God required as the very foundation of the Covenant. Because of this, the vast storehouse of blessing was exchanged for an ocean of wrath and sorrow.
God cried out the them even as He began closing His fist to strike, calling them back to simplicity and purity before Him. After the wrath began to rain down upon them, it was too late to wail His name. Was this in their minds when they made a show of weeping those seventy years isolated in Bethel? When God’s people make war against their own covenant with Him, they should not expect Him to keep them together as a nation in their own homeland. Their identity was their mission to reveal Him and His moral imperatives by living them. Without that, they were dust in the wind, to be scattered among the rest of humanity. All the more so did this come true when they murdered the Messiah.