Zechariah 7:3

They ask whether they should keep mourning and fasting in the fifth month as in the exile years. The question concerns whether self-imposed fasts should continue now that restoration has begun.

Cross-references · 19

• Zech 8:19“This is what the LORD of Hosts says: The fasts of the fourth, the fifth, the seventh, and the tenth months will become times of joy and gladness, cheerful feasts for the house of Judah. Therefore you are to love both truth and peace.”
• Jas 4:8–10Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
• 1 Cor 7:5Do not deprive each other, except by mutual consent and for a time, so you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again, so that Satan will not tempt you through your lack of self-control.
• Mal 2:7For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the LORD of Hosts.
• Hos 4:6My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as My priests. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.
• Matt 9:15Jesus replied, “How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while He is with them? But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; then they will fast.
• Zech 7:5“Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for these seventy years, was it really for Me that you fasted?
• Deut 33:10He will teach Your ordinances to Jacob and Your law to Israel; he will set incense before You and whole burnt offerings on Your altar.
• Jer 52:12–14On the tenth day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign over Babylon, Nebuzaradan captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.
• Neh 9:1–3On the twenty-fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting and wearing sackcloth, with dust on their heads.
• Eccl 3:4a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
• Neh 8:9–11Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to all of them, “This day is holy to the LORD your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the Law.
• Deut 17:9–11You are to go to the Levitical priests and to the judge who presides at that time. Inquire of them, and they will give you a verdict in the case.
• Zech 12:12–14The land will mourn, each clan on its own: the clan of the house of David and their wives, the clan of the house of Nathan and their wives,
• 2 Kgs 25:8–9On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign over Babylon, Nebuzaradan captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, entered Jerusalem.
• Hag 2:11“This is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘Ask the priests for a ruling.
• Ezek 44:23–24They are to teach My people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to discern between the clean and the unclean.
• Isa 22:12–13On that day the Lord GOD of Hosts called for weeping and wailing, for shaven heads and the wearing of sackcloth.
• Joel 2:17Let the priests who minister before the LORD weep between the portico and the altar, saying, “Spare Your people, O LORD, and do not make Your heritage a reproach, an object of scorn among the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

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