Biblion Bible Commentary
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If You Call the Sabbath a Delight
Isaiah 58:8-14
8 Then your light will break out as the morning, and your healing will appear quickly; then your righteousness shall go before you, and Yahweh’s glory will be your rear guard. · WEB
Seven promises attached to one condition, and the Sabbath described as something to enjoy rather than survive.
Then your light will break out as the morning, and your healing will appear quickly; then your righteousness shall go before you, and Yahweh's glory will be your rear guard Isaiah 58:8.
The word then governs the rest of the chapter, and everything after it is conditional on the eight clauses before it. The escort front and back is the arrangement of the second exodus Isaiah 52:12, now attached to a household's conduct toward the poor.
Then you will call, and Yahweh will answer. You will cry for help, and he will say, "Here I am" Isaiah 58:9.
The complaint that opened the chapter — that God does not notice — is answered, and the answer is two words. Here I am is what the prophet said when he was called Isaiah 6:8; here God says it back.
If you take away from among you the yoke, finger pointing, and speaking wickedly Isaiah 58:9.
Three things to remove, and the middle one is a gesture. Pointing at people is listed beside oppression.
And if you pour out your soul to the hungry... then your light will rise in darkness, and your obscurity will be as the noonday Isaiah 58:10.
The verb is the one for emptying a vessel. What is asked is not a donation but the person.
You will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters don't fail Isaiah 58:11.
Two images and the second is the better one. A watered garden receives; a spring supplies, and the promise is that the supply does not run out — which is the specific fear of anyone told to pour themselves out.
You will be called Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of Paths with Dwellings Isaiah 58:12.
Two titles, both from building work. A breach is the gap in a wall an enemy came through, and repairing it is the least glamorous job on the site.
If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, and the holy of Yahweh honorable, and honor it, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words Isaiah 58:13.
The chapter's second half turns to the day, and it is treated exactly as the fast was. The negatives are all about substituting one's own program — your own ways, your own pleasure, your own words — for what the day is.
And the positive requirement is the surprising one. The Sabbath is to be called a delight. Not endured, not merely kept; enjoyed, and the word is the same one used two verses later of delighting in Yahweh.
Then you will delight yourself in Yahweh, and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth Isaiah 58:14.
The promise for the day and the promise for the fast are the same shape: a condition about what is given up, and a then.
settled What this mark means