Commentary on Zechariah

Commentary on Zechariah 7

COMMENTARY ON ZECHARIAH 7 n the fourth year of King Darius the word of the Lord came to Zechariah on the fourth day of the ninth month, which is Chislev. The king sent Sharezer and Arbeseer to Bethel, and his men with him, to placate the Lord, telling the priests in the house of the Lord almighty and the prophets, Sanctification was initiated here in the fifth month, as I have already done for enough years now (Zec 7.1–3).l.l.l.1 The word of the Lord of hosts came to me: Say to all the people of the land and to the priests, If you fasted and lamented in the fifth and the seventh months, and this for seventy years, surely you did not fast for me? If you eat and drink, is it not for yourselves you eat and drink? Are not these the words the Lord spoke by means of the prophets in former times when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous along with the cities round about, and the mountain country and the plains inhabited ? (vv.5–7) .l.l.2 These are the people who were given over by God to degrading passions and a deprived mentality by showing reverence for creation rather than the creator, forfeiting God’s truth and judging God to be of no account, thus becoming guilty of unseemly behavior. Just as it is salutary to abstain from the flesh of serpents, therefore (the flesh of the serpent being godless teachings and wrong ideas), so it is beneficial and preferable to abhor and shun “the grapes gathered from the vine of Sodom” and the 1. The text of Didymus’s commentary on these verses is corrupt; and, as it happens, the text of Heb. and LXX is also suspect, the sense depending on division of Heb. words and recognition of proper names. Jerome also despairs of its condition, and Theodore avoids direct textual citation. The overall sense is clear, a delegation arriving to ask advice on continuing penitential practices (though only Theodoret testifies to the precise question about fasting included above); a fragment containing a reference by Didymus to Heb 10.5–6 and Ps 40.6–8 suggests he has grasped the author’s drift. 2. A further lengthy section of Didymus’s commentary is mutilated. 133 wine drawn from it, which is “the wrath of serpents and the lethal wrath of asps.”3 There is need to practice fasting performed in this way, and thus with weeping and wailing to practice a like penitence. Quite abhorrent and harmful, on the other hand, is the fasting practiced by those who abstain from the bread of life and the flesh of Jesus, which is the bread of life, the bread of truth come down from heaven, from which no one should abstain, food of life as it is.4 There are references to this twofold fasting scattered throughout the divinely-inspired Scripture, including a direction about the commendable kind in Joel the prophet, “Sanctify a fast, proclaim a service,” and elsewhere there is an announcement, “Fasting with prayer and almsgiving delivers from death.”5 Of the culpable kind, on the other hand, vile and impious men make this complaint to God: “Why did we fast without your noticing? Why did we humble ourselves without your knowing?” In response to those making the impious complaint he says, “It was not this fast I chose,” but abstinence from harmful foods accompanied by good works. He is saying, “Break your bread with the hungry; if you see someone naked, clothe them, and bring the threadbare poor into your house. Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will spring up quickly.”6 To those who fasted and mourned improperly in the fifth and seventh months, the Lord says, Lo, you spent all of seventy years in Babylon, deported by the actual norms of captivity. The fast you held was not acceptable to me, eating and drinking at your pleasure, not regulating your conduct by the words given by means of the prophets of former times when Jerusalem was in134 DIDYMUS THE BLIND 3. Rom 1.24–28; Dt 32.32–33. 4. Jn 6.33, 35, another eucharistic reference in the spiritual development of Zechariah’s thought. 5. Jl 1.14; 2.15; Tob 12.8–9. Again Didymus’s hermeneutical procedure is clear: instead of focusing on the situation of Zechariah’s restored community and its penitential...