Like the previous verse, this one also has the form of a question, but this time a positive answer is expected. Good News Translation restructures it as a positive statement, and translators who have put a statement in verse 5 should do the same again. Contemporary English Version again keeps the form of a question, but indicates that the question expects a positive answer. Translators who used a question in verse 5 should also use a question here.

When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves?: In some languages it may be better to express this as two separate sentences, such as “When you eat, you do it for your own pleasure. And when you drink, you do it for your own pleasure.” In other languages a single word carries the meaning “to eat and drink,” and in situations like this, there is no need to make two statements.

This verse explains and clarifies the previous one. Some hearers might have claimed that when they fasted, of course it was in honor of the LORD. So, in order to challenge this, the prophet adds the second question. It was obvious that when people ate and drank, they themselves got pleasure from it, even if the occasion was a religious one. The prophet suggests by this that just as the people ate and drank selfishly, so they fasted selfishly, whatever motives they might profess. They showed more concern for the ritual of fasting than for the meaning behind the fasts. They should have repented for their wrong actions which had led to the events that the fasts commemorated. In some languages the argument may be clearer if stated the opposite way, combining the second part of verse 5 with verse 6 as follows:

• When you eat and drink, you do it for your own benefit. In the same way, when you fasted and mourned these seventy years in the fifth and seventh months, you did it for your own benefit. You did not really honor me.

Quoted with permission from Clark, David J. & Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Zechariah. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2002. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .