And when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?
When they ate and when they drank, they ate for themselves and drank for themselves, rather than to honor God. Their fasting and mourning were likewise not directed to God but were centered on themselves. That self-serving fasting and mourning in the fifth and seventh months had continued for seventy years, so that both their religious fasting and their common eating and drinking were done for self and not for God.
The verse exposes religious observance centered on outward acts and self as empty, rather than devotion to God. In place of such self-centered observance, God called them to hear the words He had cried by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, to hear His commands and to treat others with justice, mercy and compassion. That call meant executing true judgment, showing mercy and compassions every man to his brother, oppressing not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor, and letting none imagine evil against his brother in his heart.
They were warned not to refuse to hearken, nor to pull away the shoulder, stop the ears, and make the heart as an adamant stone lest they hear the law, because such refusal brings great wrath from the Lord of hosts, scattering them among the nations and laying the pleasant land desolate. They had disregarded the Word of the Lord, lived for themselves, and neglected the very work God had appointed them, which would have made them laborers together with God as a moral light amid the darkness of the world. The self-serving spirit in the verse is the same spirit seen in the selfish practices and disregard for God's law condemned in the passage. The verse warns against religious observances centered on oneself and calls people to heed God's admonitions and set their lives in order.
When they ate and when they drank, they ate for themselves and drank for themselves, rather than to honor God. Their fasting and mourning were likewise not directed to God but were centered on themselves. That self-serving fasting and mourning in the fifth and seventh months had continued for seventy years, so that both their religious fasting and their common eating and drinking were done for self and not for God.
The verse exposes religious observance centered on outward acts and self as empty, rather than devotion to God. In place of such self-centered observance, God called them to hear the words He had cried by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and in prosperity, to hear His commands and to treat others with justice, mercy and compassion. That call meant executing true judgment, showing mercy and compassions every man to his brother, oppressing not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor, and letting none imagine evil against his brother in his heart.
They were warned not to refuse to hearken, nor to pull away the shoulder, stop the ears, and make the heart as an adamant stone lest they hear the law, because such refusal brings great wrath from the Lord of hosts, scattering them among the nations and laying the pleasant land desolate. They had disregarded the Word of the Lord, lived for themselves, and neglected the very work God had appointed them, which would have made them laborers together with God as a moral light amid the darkness of the world. The self-serving spirit in the verse is the same spirit seen in the selfish practices and disregard for God's law condemned in the passage. The verse warns against religious observances centered on oneself and calls people to heed God's admonitions and set their lives in order.