Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Isaiah · About this commentary
Is Not This the Fast That I Have Chosen?
Isaiah 58:1-7
1 “Cry aloud! Don’t spare! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Declare to my people their disobedience, and to the house of Jacob their sins. · WEB
People complain that their fasting is going unnoticed, and are told what a fast God picked out.
Cry aloud! Don't spare! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Declare to my people their disobedience Isaiah 58:1.
The commission is to shout, and the audience is my people — the chapter is addressed to the devout.
Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways. As a nation that did righteousness... They delight to draw near to God Isaiah 58:2.
The description is generous and it is not sarcastic. Daily seeking, delight in his ways, a request for righteous judgments. Whatever is wrong here, the religious practice is real and enjoyed.
"Why have we fasted," they say, "and you don't see? Why have we afflicted our soul, and you don't notice?" Isaiah 58:3.
The complaint is quoted and it is a complaint about value for money. They have done the observance and want to know why nothing came back.
Behold, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, and oppress all your laborers.
The answer arrives in the same verse. The fast day is a day off for the employer and a working day for the staff — and the two halves are placed together because they happened together, in the same household, on the same morning.
Behold, you fast for strife and contention, and to strike with the fist of wickedness Isaiah 58:4.
Hunger makes people irritable, and the observance was producing quarrels. The chapter notices what a fast actually does to a household's temper.
Is this the fast that I have chosen? A day for a man to humble his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under himself? Isaiah 58:5.
The posture is described exactly — the bowed head, the sackcloth, the ash — and the image chosen for it is a reed, which bends in any wind and springs back when it drops.
Isn't this the fast that I have chosen: to release the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Isaiah 58:6.
Four clauses and every one is about somebody else's restraint. A fast is a thing done to oneself; this redefinition keeps the self-denial and moves the object.
Isn't it to distribute 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 not hide yourself from your own flesh? Isaiah 58:7.
Four more, and they are domestic and expensive. Not give food — give your bread, the loaf you were going to eat. Not support a shelter — bring the homeless into the house. And the last clause forbids the reflex the chapter has been describing throughout: looking away from a relative in trouble.
settled What this mark means