At all events, Saul himself, when engaged in battle, manifestly enjoined this
duty: "Cursed (be) the man who shall have eaten bread until evening, until I
avenge me on mine enemy; "and his whole people tasted not (food), and
(yet) the whole earth was breakfasting! So solemn a sanction, moreover, did
God confer on the edict which enjoined that Station, that Jonathan the son
of Saul, although it had been in ignorance of the fast having been appointed
till a late hour that he had allowed himself a taste of honey, was both
presently convicted, by lot, of sin, and with difficulty exempted from
punishment through the prayer of the People: for he had been convicted of
gluttony, although of a simple kind. But withal Daniel, in the first year of
King Darius, when, fasting in sackcloth and ashes, he was doing
exomologesis to God, said: "And while I was still speaking in prayer, behold,
the man whom I had seen in dreams at the beginning, swiftly flying,
approached me, as it were, at the hour of the evening sacrifice." This will
be a "late" Station which, fasting until the evening, sacrifices a fatter (victim
of) prayer to God!
