But let us now examine in detail the different parts of the answer.
The first " word of Jehovah " which the prophet was commissioned to speak not only to the deputation from Bethel, but to " all the people of the land" whose thought the men of Bethel expressed, " and to the priests" who, instead of answering to the ideal " messengers of Jehovah of hosts " (Mai. iii. 5), and being able to give answer in such an emergency, had, in Haggai's and Zechariah's time, sunk to the same level as the people was designed to show the worthlessness before God of mere outword acts, or forms of repentance and piety, if the inner spirit of them be wanting.
" When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh, even these seventy years, did ye at all fast unto Me, even Me f "
In these words the Lord overthrows the false notion which they may have entertained, which certainly the Jews now do entertain, that fasting in itself is a meritorious act. He admits that they had fasted long, " seventy years," and often, not only in the fifth but also " in the seventh month," which was the fast appointed for the murder of Gedaliah, which completed the calamities of Jerusalem, and led to the migration of the little remnant to Egypt for fear of the vengeance of the Chaldeans.
Moreover, they were very thorough and earnest about their fasts; they not only abstained from food (as in Jewish fasts still, which are one unbroken abstinence from food and drink from sunset to sunset), but they accom panied their fasting with mourning and lamentations the word used in the 5th verse being used for mourning for the dead or for special great public calamities and yet their observance of these fasts was a matter of utter indifference to God. Why? Because even in their fasting and mourning they were centred on themselves; they fasted not unto God. It was not the outward sign and accom paniment of true sorrow and repentance for sin, but of sorrow for their calamities. They were self-imposed, to
