They refer, according to the very probable explanation of C. B. Michaelis, to the historical days of calamity which preceded the exile.  On the ninth day of the fourth month Jerusalem was taken (Jeremiah xxxix. 2); on the seventh of the fifth the city and the temple were burnt (2Kings xxv. 8); in the seventh month Gedaliah was murdered, and all that remained of the Jewish state annihilated (Jeremiah xli.); in the tenth the siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar was begun (2Kings xxv. 1).  Zechariah also still knows nothing of the great day of atonement in Leviticus xvi., but only mentions among others the fast of the seventh month as having subsisted for seventy years.  Even in 444 B.C., the year of the publication of the Pentateuch by Ezra, the great day of atonement has not yet come into force.  Ezra begins the reading of the law in the beginning of the seventh month, and afterwards the feast of tabernacles is observed on the fifteenth; of an atoning solemnity on the tenth of the month not a word is said in the circumstantial narrative, which, moreover, is one specially interested in the liturgical element, but it is made up for on the twenty-fourth (Nehemiah viii., ix.).  This testimonium e silentio is enough; down to that date the great day of the Priestly Code (now introduced for the first time) had not existed. 1 The term is

************************************************ 1.  “If Leviticus xvi. belongs to the original of the Priestly Code, and the entire Pentateuch was published by Ezra in the year 444, and yet the day was not then celebrated, then it has ipso facto been conceded that it is possible that there can be laws which yet are not carried into effect.”  So writes Dillmann in his introduction to Leviticus xvi. (1880, p. 525); every one will grant him that the law, before it could attain public currency, must have been previously written and promulgated. ***********************************************

partly fixed, following Ezekiel, by reference to the old new year’s day (Leviticus xxv. 9); partly, following Zechariah, by reference to the fast of Gedaliah, which indeed was still observed later as a separate solemnity.

Even before the exile general fast days doubtless occurred, but they were specially appointed, and always arose out of extraordinary occasions, when some sin was brought home to the public conscience, or when the divine anger threatened, especially in connection with calamities affecting the produce of the soil (1Kings xxi. 9, 12; Jeremiah xiv. 12, xxxvi. 6, 9; Joel i. 14, ii. 12, 15).  In the exile they began to be a regular custom (Isaiah lviii.), doubtless in the first instance in remembrance of the dies atri that had been experienced, but also in a certain measure as a surrogate, suited to the circumstances, for the joyous popular gatherings of Easter, Pentecost, and Tabernacles which were possible only in the Holy Land. l

************************************** 1.  After the second destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the system of fasts received such an impulse that it was necessary to draw up a list of the days on which fasting was forbidden. *************************************