Zechariah 7:5

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 spake:

and to the priests; who were consulted on this occasion:

saying, When ye 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, 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 w 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 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 ye 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

Isaiah 58:3.

w T. Bab. Pesachim, fol. 54. 2.