Speak unto all the people of the land
Of Judea, who had sent these men on this errand, and whom they represented, and in whose name they spoke: and to the priests ;
who were consulted on this occasion: saying, When you fasted and mourned in the fifth ;
on the seventh or tenth day of the fifth month Ab, on account of the temple being burnt by Nebuchadnezzar: and seventh [month] ;
the month Tisri, which answers to September; on the third day of this month a fast was kept on account of the murder of Gedaliah, ([Reference Jeremiah 41:1]) though Kimchi says he was slain on the first day of the month; but, because that was a feast day, keeping a day for a fast on this occasion was fixed on the day following: even those seventy years ;
of their captivity, during which they kept the above fasts.

The Jews say ^F23 there was no fast of the congregation, or public fast, kept in Babylon, but on the ninth of Ab, or the fifth month only; and if so, other fasts here, and in ([Reference Zechariah 8:19]) , must be private ones. These seventy years are to be reckoned from the nineteenth of Nebuchadnezzar, when the city was destroyed, to the second or fourth of Darius: did you at all fast unto me, [even] to me ?
the fast they kept was not according to the command of God, but an appointment of theirs; nor was it directed to his glory; nor was it any profit or advantage to him; and therefore it was nothing to him whether they fasted or not; see ([Reference Isaiah 58:3-7]) .

FOOTNOTES:

F23: T. Bab. Pesachim, fol. 54. 2.

Albert Barnes Commentary Zechariah 7:5

Zechariah 7:5

Zechariah 7:5

SCRIPTURE