Fasting

Fasting in scripture is the deliberate withholding of food — and sometimes drink, oil, ornament, and music — as the body's posture before God in grief, danger, repentance, intercession, or extended communion. It is not a discipline standing on its own; it shows up paired with weeping, sackcloth, ashes, prayer, and confession, and the prophets are willing to scorch any version of it that has been pulled apart from those companions. The UPDV preserves most of the major fasting passages: Israel's defeats and bereavements, the proclaimed fasts of the kings and the exilic generation, Daniel's three weeks, Esther's three days, Nineveh's repentance, Joel's call, Isaiah's critique, the long fasts of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, the bridegroom saying, and Paul's catalogue of his ministry's hungers. The narrative spine in Acts is not in the UPDV, and Matthew's explicit teaching on private fasting (Mt 6:16-18) and the saying about the bridegroom (Mt 9:14-15) are likewise outside the UPDV; what it does have is enough to show the topic's full shape from the Pentateuch through the catholic epistles.

Fasting in Bereavement

The earliest UPDV-preserved fasts are funeral fasts. When the men of Jabesh-gilead recover Saul's body and the bodies of his sons from the Philistines, "they took their bones, and buried them under the tamarisk-tree in Jabesh, and fasted seven days" (1 Sam 31:13); the same act is recorded again in Chronicles, where the valiant men "buried their bones under the oak in Jabesh, and fasted seven days" (1 Chr 10:12). David and his men, when they hear the news, "mourned, and wept, and fasted until evening, for Saul, and for Jonathan his son, and for the people of Yahweh, and for the house of Israel; because they fell by the sword" (2 Sam 1:12). At Abner's burial David swears off food until sundown: "God do so to me, and more also, if I taste bread, or anything else, until the sun is down" (2 Sam 3:35). Earlier, Jonathan rises in fierce anger from Saul's table and "ate no food the second day of the month; for he was grieved for David, because his father had done him shame" (1 Sam 20:34) — fasting as the body's protest at injustice within the family.

David also fasts forward, not only backward. While the child born to Bathsheba is dying, "David implored God for the child; and David fasted, and went in, and lay all night on the earth" (2 Sam 12:16). When the child dies he eats; his slaves are baffled, and he answers them with the line that names the logic underneath every intercessory fast: "While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who knows whether Yahweh will not be gracious to me, that the child may live?" (2 Sam 12:22). With the death the cause is closed: "But now he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Sam 12:23).

Fasting Before Battle and Under Threat

When Israel is shattered twice by Benjamin in the matter of the Levite's concubine, the survivors return to Beth-el and "wept, and sat there before Yahweh, and fasted that day until evening; and they offered burnt-offerings and peace-offerings before Yahweh" (Judg 20:26) — fasting as the precondition of being heard before the next attempt. Saul, on the night before his last battle, has "eaten no bread all the day, nor all the night" (1 Sam 28:20), but his fast is involuntary terror, not appeal. Jehoshaphat's response when the Moabite-Ammonite coalition advances is the model: "Jehoshaphat feared, and set himself to seek to Yahweh; and he proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. And Judah gathered themselves together, to seek [help] of Yahweh: even out of all the cities of Judah they came to seek Yahweh" (2 Chr 20:3-4).

Esther, faced with annihilation, sends back to Mordecai: "Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast⁺ for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast in like manner; and so I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish" (Esth 4:16). When the decree first becomes known the response is general: "in every province, wherever the king's commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes" (Esth 4:3). Ezra, leading the return caravan and unwilling to ask the Persian king for an armed escort, takes the same path: "Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek of him a straight way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance... So we fasted and implored our God for this: and he was entreated of us" (Ezra 8:21,23).

Daniel, on the night Darius has put him in the lions' den, has unwilling fasting company: "Then the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting; neither were instruments of music brought before him: and his sleep fled from him" (Dan 6:18). The detail captures a recurring marker — when food, ornament, and music drop out together, scripture is signaling a fast even where it does not use the word.

Proclaimed Fasts and National Repentance

Fasts are also proclaimed at the political level. At Mizpah, Samuel gathers Israel and "they drew water, and poured it out before Yahweh, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against Yahweh" (1 Sam 7:6) — the formula already complete: gathering, fasting, confession. After Elijah's word of judgment, Ahab "rent his clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly" (1 Kings 21:27). Jezebel had earlier exploited the same form for judicial murder, ordering the elders of Jezreel: "Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people" (1 Kings 21:9) — a reminder that the rite, like every other public act of worship, can be turned to lying ends. Under Jehoiakim a fast is called as the Babylonian threat closes in: "all the people in Jerusalem, and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem, proclaimed a fast before Yahweh" (Jer 36:9).

At Nineveh the proclamation is universal. The king, hearing Jonah, "arose from his throne, and laid his robe from him, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes" (Jon 3:6), and decrees: "Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; don't let them feed, nor drink water; but let them be covered with sackcloth, both man and beast, and let them cry mightily to God: yes, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows whether God will not turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we will not perish?" (Jon 3:7-9). The people themselves had moved first: "the people of Nineveh believed [the Speech of] God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them" (Jon 3:5).

The post-exilic generation reads its calendar through this lens. After the law is read at the water gate, "in the twenty and fourth day of this month the sons of Israel were assembled with fasting, and with sackcloth, and earth on them" (Neh 9:1). Nehemiah himself, on hearing of Jerusalem's ruined walls, "sat down and wept, and mourned certain days; and I fasted and prayed before the God of heaven" (Neh 1:4). Ezra, after the report of foreign marriages, withdraws into Jehohanan's chamber and "spent the night there, he ate no bread, nor drank water; for he mourned because of the trespass of them of the captivity" (Ezra 10:6). Zechariah preserves the memory of the four exilic fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh, and tenth months; the Yahweh-word turns those marked days inside-out: "The fast of the fourth [month], and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, will be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love truth and peace" (Zech 8:19) — a sign that fasting is bound to grief and is meant to terminate when grief does.

Fasting Joined to Prayer and Confession

Across these scenes the constant companion of fasting is prayer, often with explicit confession. The Mizpah gathering pairs them outright: "they fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against Yahweh" (1 Sam 7:6). Daniel turns to Yahweh "to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting and sackcloth and ashes" (Dan 9:3). Joel makes the call to Yahweh from inside a fast: "Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the old men [and] all the inhabitants of the land to the house of Yahweh your⁺ God, and cry to Yahweh" (Joel 1:14). The psalmist describes the same fold: "as for me, when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth: I afflicted my soul with fasting; And my prayer returned into my own bosom" (Ps 35:13); "When I wept, [and chastened] my soul with fasting, That was to my reproach" (Ps 69:10).

Paul carries the same logic into marriage. Mutual abstinence from intercourse is permitted only "by consent for a season, that you⁺ may give yourselves to prayer, and may be together again, that Satan does not tempt you⁺ because of your⁺ lack of self-control" (1 Cor 7:5) — the principle of self-denial for the sake of prayer, then a return; a temporary, cause-driven fast, not a lifestyle.

The Forty-Day Fasts

A small set of forty-day fasts mark covenant moments. Moses, twice on Sinai: "I remained in the mount forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water" (Deut 9:9), and after the calf, "I fell down before Yahweh, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water; because of all your⁺ sin which you⁺ sinned" (Deut 9:18). Exodus puts the fact tersely: "he was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread, nor drank water. And he wrote on the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments" (Exod 34:28). Elijah, after eating the angel's cake, "went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God" (1 Kings 19:8). Jesus, "led in the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tried by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days: and when they were completed, he was hungry" (Luke 4:1-2). The forty-day pattern joins lawgiver, prophet, and Son: each is alone with God, each at a turning of the redemptive arc.

Daniel's three-week fast belongs alongside these as the longer prophetic fast: "In those days I, Daniel, was mourning three whole weeks. I ate no pleasant bread, neither came flesh nor wine into my mouth, neither did I anoint myself at all, until three whole weeks were fulfilled" (Dan 10:2-3) — an abstention from richer food and from oil, not a total fast, attached directly to the vision that follows.

The Prophetic Critique

The prophets are quick to refuse a fast that has been hollowed out. Isaiah lets the people speak first — "Why have we fasted, [they say], and you don't see? [Why] have we afflicted our soul, and you take no knowledge?" — and answers them in their own day: "in the day of your⁺ fast you⁺ find [your⁺ own] pleasure, and exact all your⁺ labors. Look, you⁺ fast for strife and contention, and to strike with the fist of wickedness: you⁺ do not fast this day so as to make your⁺ voice to be heard on high" (Isa 58:3-4). The chosen fast is redefined by its outward effects: "Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?... Isn't this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you⁺ break every yoke? Is it not to deal your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor who are cast out to your house? When you see the naked, that you cover him; and that you don't hide yourself from your own flesh?" (Isa 58:5-7).

Jeremiah is even briefer: "When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt-offering and meal-offering, I will not accept them; but I will consume them by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence" (Jer 14:12). Zechariah turns the question on the questioners: "When you⁺ fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh [month], even these seventy years, did you⁺ at all fast to me, even to me?" (Zech 7:5). Joel holds the practice and its inward correlate together: "Yet even now, says Yahweh, turn⁺ to me with all your⁺ heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your⁺ heart, and not your⁺ garments, and turn to Yahweh your⁺ God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness, and repents of the evil" (Joel 2:12-13). The rite is preserved; the heart is what must split.

The same critique surfaces in the gospels. The Pharisee in Jesus' parable lists his fasting as part of his case for himself: "God, I thank you, that I am not as the rest of men... I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get" (Luke 18:11-12) — the fast catalogued, alongside the tithe, as a credential rather than as grief or petition.

The Bridegroom's Disciples

The fasting question is brought to Jesus directly: "And John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting: and they come and say to him, Why do John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't fast?" (Mark 2:18); "The disciples of John fast often, and make supplications; likewise also the [disciples] of the Pharisees; but yours eat and drink" (Luke 5:33). Jesus answers by pinning fasting to its own ground in grief and absence: "Can the sons of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they can't fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day" (Mark 2:19-20); Luke records the same: "Can you⁺ make the sons of the bride-chamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?... But the days will come; and when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, then they will fast in those days" (Luke 5:34-35). The presence of Jesus suspends the fast; his being taken reopens it. The discipline is not abolished, it is timed.

Apostolic Fasting

Paul's catalogues of the marks of his ministry put fasts in among the other costs: "in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in fasts" (2 Cor 6:5); "[in] labor and travail, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fasts often, in cold and nakedness" (2 Cor 11:27). The pairing is suggestive — Paul places hunger and fasts side by side, and lets sleeplessness sit next to them; the apostolic body is repeatedly carried through self-denial, sometimes chosen and sometimes imposed, but in either case offered up.