Isaiah 58 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
Set after the return from exile, roughly 538 to 500 BC, during the struggling rebuilding of Jerusalem
Location
Jerusalem, a small and partly ruined city whose returned population was poor and internally divided
Audience
The restored Judean community, who kept fast days faithfully and could not understand why nothing improved
Situation
The people complain that they fast and God takes no notice, and are told their fast days end in quarrelling, blows and pressure on their workers. The fasting God wants is untying unjust burdens, sharing bread, housing the homeless poor and clothing the naked, followed by a call to keep the sabbath as a delight.
Key Background
Fasting in this period involved going without food, wearing rough sackcloth and sitting in ashes, and extra fast days had been added after Jerusalem fell to mourn the disaster. The complaints about withholding wages and pressing labourers reflect real economic strain in the small Persian province, where returning families and those who had stayed behind competed over land and debt. Repairing the breach and restoring streets is building site language in a city whose walls were still broken, turning social repair into the same job as physical reconstruction.
Cry out — full throat, nothing held back! Lift your voice like a horn. Declare to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their
Day after day they seek me, eager to know my ways — as if they were a nation that actually does what is right and has not abandoned the of their God. They ask me for just decisions, they are eager to draw close to God.
"Why have we they say, "and you didn't see it? Why have we ourselves, and you didn't notice?" Look — on the day of your fasting you pursue your own interests and you oppress all your workers.
Look — you fast only to quarrel and fight, to strike with a vicious fist. You cannot fast the way you do today and expect your voice to be heard on
Is this the kind of fast I choose — a day for someone to deny themselves? To a reed and spread out and underneath you? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to Yahweh?
Is this not the fast I choose: to loose the of injustice, to untie the straps of the yoke, to set the free and to snap every in two?
Is it not to share bread with the hungry, to bring the into house, to cover the naked when you see them, and not to hide from own and
Then your will break through like the dawn, and your will spring up quickly. Your will walk before you, and the of Yahweh will guard you from behind.
Then you will call, and Yahweh will answer. You will cry out, and he will say, "Here I am." If you remove the yoke from among you, the finger-pointing, the of —
if you out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in the darkness and your deepest night will become like noon.
Yahweh will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in places and make your bones strong. You will be like a garden, like a
Your will rebuild the ruins; you will raise up foundations laid long ago. You will be called of Walls, Restorer of Where
If you hold your foot back on the Sabbath from chasing your own interests on the that to me, if you call the a delight and Yahweh's own honorable, if you honor it by not going your own way, not chasing your own interests, not filling it with empty talk,
then you will find your in Yahweh, and I will make you on the of the earth and feed you with the of Jacob your father — for the of has