JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

fasting and fast days
such as abstention from “washing, anointing, wearing shoes,
and cohabitation” (Yoma 8:1; cf. Targ. Jon., Lev. 16:29).
Fasting is attested in the oldest strata of biblical literature
and there can be no doubt that spontaneous fasting was
widespread from earliest times both among individuals and
groups. In the ritual practiced in the First Temple, fasting was
clearly a permanent feature (Isa. 1:13, lxx; Jer. 36:9, “before the
Lord”; cf. Joel 1:14; 2:15–17). The death of a national leader (e.g.,
King Saul) could initiate a day-long fast (II Sam. 1:12), or, alternatively,
the fast might be observed for seven days (I Sam.
31:13). The authority to proclaim a public fast was vested in the
elders of the local community, who, however, could be pressured
by the royal palace to proclaim a fast (e.g., for Naboth’s
undoing, I Kings 21:8–12).
The purposes of fasting are various. Its most widely attested
function, for the community as well as the individual,
is to avert or terminate a calamity by eliciting God’s compassion.
For example, God mitigates Ahab’s punishment because
he fasted and humbled himself (I Kings 21:27–29). King David
fasted in the hope that “the Lord will be gracious to me and
the boy will live. But now that he is dead why should I fast?”
(II Sam. 12:22–23). Many other passages also indicate the use
of fasting as a means of winning divine forgiveness (e.g., Ps.
35:13; 69:11; Ezra 10:6), implying that fasting is basically an act
of penance, a ritual expression of remorse, submission, and
supplication.
Fasting was practiced as a preparation for communing
with the spirits of the dead or with the Deity, as when Saul
fasted the day before the appearance of Samuel’s apparition
(I Sam. 28:20). To be vouchsafed a theophany, Moses fasted
for as long as 40 days (Ex. 34:28 [twice, according to Deut. 9:9,
18]; Elijah, I Kings 19:8). On the two occasions when Daniel’s
prayers were answered by means of a vision (Dan. 9:20ff.;
10:7ff.), his preparatory rituals included fasting (Dan. 9:3;
10:3). That death occasioned a fast is implied by the couriers’
surprise when King David refused to fast after the death of the
infant son born to him by Bath-Sheba (II Sam. 12:21).
When a calamity, human or natural, threatened or struck
a whole community, a public fast was proclaimed. Thus, Israel
observed fasts in its wars against Benjamin (Judg. 20:26), the
Philistines (I Sam. 7:6; 14:24), and its Transjordanian enemies
(II Chron. 20:3); similarly fasts were observed in the hope of
averting annihilation by the Babylonians (Jer. 36:3, 9; see below)
and by the Persians (Esth. 4:3, 16). The purpose of fasts
during wartime was to seek God’s direct intervention (e.g.,
I Sam. 7:9ff.) or advice as transmitted through an oracle (e.g.,
Judg. 20:26–28). Fasting served as a means of supplicating God
to end a famine caused by a plague of locusts (Joel 1:14; 2:12,
15), and to alleviate the oppression of foreign rule (Neh. 9:1).
As a preventive or intercessory measure, fasting was used to
avert the threat of divine punishment, exemplified by the fast
declared for Naboth’s alleged cursing of God (I Kings 21:9) and
after Jonah’s prophecy of Nineveh’s doom (3:5).
The biblical evidence thus far cited indicates that fasting,
both individual and collective, was a spontaneous reac-
tion to exigencies. In the pre-exilic period there is no record
of specific fast days in the annual calendar (except the Day of
Atonement), although some Bible critics even conjecture that
this, too, was originally an emergency rite and was fixed on the
tenth of Tishri only at the end of the First Temple. There is a
record of a fast day in Jeremiah’s time (Jer. 36:3ff.), but this too
originated as an emergency rite (“a fast day was proclaimed,”
verse 9) and was not repeated. That portion of Deutero-Isaiah
which describes a fast (Isa. 58:3ff.) became the haftarah
reading for the Day of Atonement morning service, but the
text can hardly be speaking of an observance of the Day of
Atonement (cf. v. 4).
Fixed fast days are first mentioned by the post-Exilic
prophet Zechariah who proclaims the word of the Lord thus:
“The fast of the fourth month, the fast of the fifth, the fast of
the seventh and the fast of the tenth…” (Zech. 8:19; cf. 7:3, 5).
Jewish tradition has it that these fasts commemorate the critical
events which culminated in the destruction of the Temple:
the tenth of Tevet (the tenth month), the beginning of the
siege of Jerusalem; the 17th of Tammuz (the fourth month),
the breaching of the walls; the ninth of Av (the fifth month),
when the Temple was destroyed; and the third of Tishri (the
seventh month), when Gedaliah, the Babylonian-appointed
governor of Judah, was assassinated. Some scholars maintain
that these fast days are much older, marking the beginning of
a Lenten period which preceded the seasonal festivals, and to
which only later tradition affixed the events of the national
catastrophe. It is argued that the historical basis for the four
fast days coinciding with the events ascribed to them is weak
in the light of present knowledge. Jeremiah dates the destruction
of the First Temple to the tenth of Av (52:12ff.), whereas
II Kings claims the seventh (25:8ff.); there is, however, no biblical
witness for the ninth. It is surprising that a permanent fast
day was proclaimed for the murder of Gedaliah, who was a
Babylonian puppet and not a member of the House of David.
Lastly, there is no scriptural authority for the 17th of Tammuz
as the date for the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, the claim of the Book of Zechariah (e.g.,
7:5) that the four fasts were instituted upon the destruction
of the state cannot be discounted. If, as it is now suggested,
the fast recorded in Jeremiah was prompted by the sacking
of Ashkelon (November/December 604 b.c.e.) and by the
similar fate which threatened Jerusalem, it is then conceivable
that four different fast days sprang up simultaneously as
a reaction to the trauma of destruction and exile. Moreover,
would Zechariah have been asked whether the fasts should
be abolished if the historical reality of the Second Temple had
not rendered them meaningless? Indeed, the people consulted
the prophet Zechariah about abolishing the fasts only when
the Second Temple was approaching completion (Zech. 7:1;
cf. Ezra 6:15), a time which coincided with the end of the 70
years of exile predicted by Jeremiah (Zech. 7:5; cf. Jer. 25:12).
There is no need to look for other reasons to account for the
proclamation of the fasts than the destruction of Jerusalem
and the Temple.
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