Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/264

 truth and peace " are emphatically described as the very things which God hates, $y WK n^!&gt;3 n, eth kol-elleh asher sanethi as if He meant to say, " This is the sum of what I hate "; for they sum up in brief the breaches of both tables of the law that which sets forth man's duty to God, and that which sets forth his duty to his fellow-man.

And because God hates these sins we, too, must hate them, for " religion consists in conformity to God's nature, that we should love what God loves and hate what God hates."

We now come to the last of the four sections into which the whole of chaps, vii. and viii. are divided. Here we have the direct positive part of the reply to the original question by the deputation from Bethel (chap. vii. 13) to ask whether there was still occasion to observe the fasts which had been appointed to celebrate the anniversaries of the destruction of the Temple and the desolation of the land by the Chaldeans: " And the word of Jehovah of hosts came unto me, saying, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts: The fast (or fasting ) of the fourth, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth (months) shall be (or become ) to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts D^to D^yio, moadim fob him (^ good seasons, or holidays ); therefore love truth and peace . The fast of the ninth day of the fourth month was instituted to cele brate the taking of the city by Nebuchadnezzar in the eleventh year of Zedekiah's reign; the fast of the fifth month (the blackest day of all in the Jewish calendar) commemorates the destruction of both the city and the Temple, and many other calamities which, according to Jewish tradition, happened on this same day (some of which are enumerated in my notes on chap. vii. 3); the fast of the seventh month, as already stated in the exposition of chap, vii., was appointed for the murder of Gedaliah; and the fast of the tenth commemorated the commencement