What Does Zechariah 7:5 Mean?
Speak to all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, When you fasted and wailed in the fifth and seventh month, even these seventy years, did you truly fast for me, even for me?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Speak unto all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh month, even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?THE KEY
Seventy years of fasting cannot answer the verse’s question: whether the fast was directed toward God.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the reader now: fasting and mourning can continue for years without being directed toward God. Its question reaches beneath the visible act to the one for whom it is done.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A practice’s religious form and long duration do not, by themselves, prove that it is centered on God.
THE ROOT
צַמְתֶּם
tsamtem
GROWS FROM
צום
To abstain from food; to fast.
“fasted” in this verse is tsamtem. Hebrew repeats the fasting root, roughly, “the fast, did you fast?”, then puts “to me” in focus. The repetition emphasizes the act, while the question turns on its direction: repeated observance alone does not establish whom it serves.
ALSO GROWS
tsom: A fast; fasting.
צוֹם
The noun form names the practice being questioned.
tsam: He fasted.
צָם
The verb form shares the seed with “fast,” binding the practice to the act itself.
סָפֹד
sāphōd
GROWS FROM
ספד
To lament or wail.
“wailed” in this verse is sāphōd. This root names expressed lament, as well as the lament itself. Alongside fasting, mourning is another repeated observance whose direction the verse asks the reader to examine.
ALSO GROWS
sāphad: To lament or mourn.
סָפַד
The verb names the act rendered “mourned” in this verse.
mispēd: A lamentation or mourning.
מִסְפֵּד
The related noun shows how the root can name the expressed mourning as well as the act.
THE PATTERN
A practice’s outward form does not settle its meaning; its direction, toward God, other people, or oneself, matters.
And when you ate, and when you drank, did you not eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?So that you do not appear to men as those who fast, but to your Father who is in the hidden; and your Father, who sees in the hidden, will give it back to you in the open.Whatever you do, work at it from the living soul, as to the Lord and not to humans.THE THREAD
And when you ate, and when you drank, did you not eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?The next verse turns from fasting to eating and drinking, showing that either restraint or enjoyment can be centered on the self. The continuation makes the question about direction, not the appearance of the act.
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