When you eat, and when you drink, don’t you eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?
Parallel translations
- KJV And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?
- BSB And when you were eating and drinking, were you not doing so simply for yourselves?
- NKJV When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves?
- NASB And when you eat and drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?
- NLT And even now in your holy festivals, aren’t you eating and drinking just to please yourselves?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Even their eating and drinking served themselves, not God. The verse warns that ordinary life, like worship, can be wholly self-directed rather than God-directed.
Overview
God presses the indictment: just as their fasts were self-serving, so were their feasts. The contrast highlights that all of life, whether abstaining or enjoying, should be lived to the Lord (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:31). The diagnosis exposes a heart turned inward, the root problem behind hollow religion.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- 1 Cor 11:20–21When therefore you assemble yourselves together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.
- 1 Cor 11:26–29For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
- Col 3:17Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him.
- Hos 8:13As for the sacrifices of my offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it; But Yahweh doesn’t accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity, and punish their sins. They will return to Egypt.
- 1 Cor 10:31Whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
- Deut 12:7There you shall eat before Yahweh your God, and you shall rejoice in all that you put your hand to, you and your households, in which Yahweh your God has blessed you.
- Hos 9:4They won’t pour out wine offerings to Yahweh, neither will they be pleasing to him. Their sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat of it will be polluted; for their bread will be for their appetite. It will not come into Yahweh’s house.
- Deut 14:26You shall trade the money for whatever your soul desires, for cattle, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatever your soul asks of you; and you shall eat there before Yahweh your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household.
- Jer 17:9–10The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?
- 1 Chr 29:22and ate and drank before Yahweh on that day with great gladness. They made Solomon the son of David king the second time, and anointed him before Yahweh to be prince, and Zadok to be priest.
- 1 Sam 16:7But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Don’t look on his face, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for I don’t see as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.”
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Christ at the center
The Branch who is both priest and king, the shepherd struck and the flock scattered, the king coming humble on a donkey, the one they pierced, the fountain opened for sin — Zechariah is dense with Christ.
How Zechariah 7:6 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.