Zekharya 7 | Should I Weep in the Fifth Month?

This prophecy is delivered in the fourth year of Daryavesh — two years after the founding of the Temple of the Lord, and two years before its completion. Having passed the halfway point and with signs that the construction will indeed succeed, a delegation is sent “to entreat the Lord” (7:2) and to ask the priests and prophets whether the people should continue to mourn on Tisha b’Av for the destruction of the First Temple, now that the Second Temple stands before them.

Zekharya responds, but instead of answering directly, he begins with verses that circle the question, diverging into broader themes before returning in Chapter 8 to the matter of the fasts: “So says the Lord of Hosts: The fast of the fourth month, and of the fifth and the seventh and the tenth – all of these will be for the House of Yehuda joy and happiness, and times set aside for good. Therefore love truth and peace” (8:19).

This apparent disconnect between the question and the answer led some scholars to suggest that they are unrelated prophecies that later were combined together. But the structure of the chapter reveals a carefully composed whole – The narrative has 8 different subjects, which follow a perfect chiastic pattern: The first part parallels the eighth part, the second to the seventh, and so on:

1.    A delegation arrives to "entreat the Lord" in Jerusalem.
2.    Mourning and fasting in the present.
3.    Violations of ethical commands in the past.
4.    God’s decision to return to Jerusalem.
5.    A blessing of encouragement for Jerusalem’s revival.
6.    Fulfillment of ethical commands in the future.
7.    The transformation of fasts into days of joy.
8.    Many nations will come to "entreat the Lord" in Jerusalem.

In his Yemei Iyun b’Tanakh lecture, Rav Hezi Cohen explains that Zekharya responds to the people like a good Jew: not by answering their question, but by showing them that they’ve asked the wrong one. The people see the Temple rising in splendor, and they ask whether it will be completed, and whether this is the redemption, there for there is no need to remember the past. The prophet replies – The real question is not whether there is a Temple or not, but what is the moral status of the society they live in.

Zekharya echoes a theme heard many times throughout the Prophets – the Temple is not the most important thing. Even when it stood in grandeur, the prophets warned that what mattered most was the moral and spiritual state of the people. The Temple is a very important symbol of God’s presence, but if that relationship is severed, and if society is corrupt, then we have not reached our destination. The Temple does not symbol the destination of redemption, and the building must be filled with values and spirit. When the people continue to improve, and a model society is built — then, and only then, will it be fitting to transform the fasts into days of celebration.

Rav Hezi draws our attention to the contrast between how the people describe the fasts, and how the prophet does. The people ask: “Should I weep in the fifth month, deny myself as I have done these many years?” (7:3) But Zekharya describes it differently: “When you fasted and mourned during the fifth and seventh months these seventy years” (7:5). Not weeping but mourning, not denying themselves but fasting, not “these many years” but seventy years. To the people, the fast was a spontaneous emotional response — mourning and denial, carried on for “many years,” and now perhaps ready to be set aside as sadness comes to an end with the Temple’s rebuilding. But the prophet highlights the halakhic prospective. Mourning is not just weeping but a ritualized act designed to bring us to weep. A fast is not a casual denial, but a structured practice, and it is not merely a matter of “these many years,” but rather a full prophetic process intended to last seventy years — the number emphasized by the prophet Yirmiyahu (Yirmiyahu Chapter 25). Even if the heart insists that the situation is now favorable, the prophet underscores the need to continue laboring toward repair—for that is the purpose of the fast, as emphasized in the Yom Kippur haftara, within the consoling prophecies of the book of Yeshayahu: "No! this is the fast I choose: Loosen the bindings of evil, and break the slavery chain.” (Yeshayahu 58:6).