God questions to expose the hollowness of religious ritual divorced from heart devotion, forcing the people to examine whether their seventy years of commemorative fasting served God’s purposes or merely their own grief and self-interest.

The people did not verbally respond to this question. Instead, God immediately answered His own rhetorical rebuke in verse 6, pointing out that when they ate and drank, they did so for themselves, implying their fasting was equally self-serving.

God’s question pierces through seventy years of religious observance to expose its bankruptcy. The interrogative form, did you fast unto me, even to me?, with its emphatic repetition stresses the divine recipient who was ignored. The Hebrew construction intensifies personal ownership: was this for Me? The question format forces self-examination that a mere accusation could not achieve. By asking rather than declaring, God invites the people into honest confrontation with their motives, revealing that religious activity untethered from relational devotion becomes spiritual narcissism. The theological weight is devastating: rituals performed in God’s name can entirely miss God Himself, leaving worshipers guilty of using divine occasions for human self-expression rather than covenant faithfulness.