Zechariah 7-8; Ezra 5:2-6:22; Daniel 6
Today Zechariah returns to a more “conventional” prophetic style. Some people come to Zechariah with a question about fasting, and the LORD responds with questions of His own:
When you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, for these seventy years, was it for Me that you fasted? And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?
Zechariah 7:5-6
In other words, “What is your real motivation? Are you really interested in seeking Me? Or are you just looking out for your own welfare?” Hmmm. Those are good questions for us all as we consider our own prayer life or “acts of worship”…
The LORD then goes on:
Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.
Zechariah 7:9-10
This is a message that keeps coming up in the Scriptures. (Recall the June 14 post on Micah 6:8.) As we can see, God is more concerned with substance than outward form, more concerned with how we treat one another than with “religious” show. The LORD reminds the people that their forefathers failed to heed this message from the earlier prophets, resulting in the Exile. Now we have a new generation in Judah. Will they heed the Word of the LORD?
Will we?
One more thing…
I’m guessing that most of us have heard the story of Daniel and the lions’ den, so I’m (mostly) skipping commenting on that today. I would note, though, that if your mental image of Daniel is as a young man, you might want to reimagine the scene. He is no longer young. Carried off into exile in 605 BC, probably as a young teenager, by the time Daniel finds his way into the lions’ den (539 BC at the earliest, probably later), he is almost certainly over 80 years old…