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 8:19Yahweh of Armies says: “The fasts of the fourth fifth, seventh, and tenth months shall be for the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts. Therefore love 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 7:5Don’t deprive one another, unless it is by consent for a season, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer, and may be together again, that Satan doesn’t tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
• Mal 2:7For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of Yahweh of Armies.
• Hos 4:6My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you, that you may be no priest to me. Because you have forgotten your God’s law, I will also forget your children.
• Matt 9:15Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.
• Zech 7:5“Speak to all the people of the land, and to the priests, saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, really to me?
• Deut 33:10They shall teach Jacob your ordinances, and Israel your law. They shall put incense before you, and whole burnt offering on your altar.
• Jer 52:12–14Now in the fifth month, in the tenth day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, who stood before the king of Babylon, came into Jerusalem.
• Neh 9:1–3Now in the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, with sackcloth, and dirt on them.
• Eccl 3:4a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
• Neh 8:9–11Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, “Today is holy to Yahweh your God. Don’t mourn, nor weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law.
• Deut 17:9–11You shall come to the priests who are Levites, and to the judge who shall be in those days. You shall inquire, and they shall give you the verdict.
• Zech 12:12–14The land will mourn, every family apart; the family of David’s house apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart;
• 2 Kgs 25:8–9Now in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which was the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem.
• Hag 2:11“Yahweh of Armies says: Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying,
• Ezek 44:23–24They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.
• Isa 22:12–13In that day, the Lord, Yahweh of Armies, called to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to dressing in sackcloth:
• Joel 2:17Let the priests, the ministers of Yahweh, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, “Spare your people, Yahweh, and don’t give your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’”

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