Isaiah58chapter 58

Isaiah 58:1-2

Cry aloud, spare not opens the fast chapter as an indictment delivered at full volume, the trumpet figure signaling a charge rather than a warning of invasion, the house of Jacob's own sins named as the target. Verse 2 describes a people whose outward religion is faultless by every visible measure, seeking God daily, delighting to know his ways, asking the ordinances of justice, taking delight in approaching to God, language that on its face reads as devotion rather than failure. Henry reads the irony as deliberate, a nation that could pass every external test of piety while verse 3 shows what the same nation was doing on its fast days. Barnes notes the phrase as a nation that did righteousness, a comparison rather than a claim, the people acting the part without the substance the rest of the chapter will demand.

Isaiah 58:3-5

Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not voices the complaint the rest of the chapter answers, a people keeping the ritual and expecting the ritual alone to move God. The Lord's answer exposes the fast's actual character: in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours, a fast for strife and debate, to smite with the fist of wickedness, business and violence continuing under a religious cover. Verse 5 asks whether bowing the head as a bulrush and spreading sackcloth and ashes is the fast God has chosen, and leaves the question hanging until the answer arrives in verse 6. Gill reads the whole unit as a diagnosis of ritual divorced from ethics, the outward posture of humiliation performed while the inward and social wrongs it should address went untouched.

Isaiah 58:6-7

Is not this the fast that I have chosen answers verse 5's question directly, replacing bodily posture with active justice: to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke. The definition is deliberately concrete rather than abstract, to deal thy bread to the hungry, to bring the poor that are cast out to thy house, to cover the naked when thou seest him, and not to hide thyself from thine own flesh, obligations named in the household and the street rather than the temple. Henry reads the four commands of verse 6 and the four of verse 7 as a matched set, wickedness undone paired with bread given, the yoke broken paired with the naked covered, mercy to the oppressed and mercy to the kin both required. Barnes places the passage as the Old Testament's own clearest statement that fasting divorced from justice and mercy is not the fast the Lord has chosen, a standard the chapter never treats as replacing the sabbath named later in the same passage.

Isaiah 58:8-9

Then shall thy light break forth as the morning ties the justice of verses 6 and 7 to a promise of healing, thine health shall spring forth speedily, the same verb elsewhere used of a wound closing. Thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward pictures the nation marching with righteousness as its vanguard and the Lord's own glory as its rear guard, the same military figure the wilderness column once carried. Verse 9 promises an answered prayer, thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am, conditioned on removing the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity, the same social wrongs named again rather than left behind. Delitzsch reads the light and health imagery as deliberately drawn from the fast's own vocabulary, the darkened, weakened faster of verse 5 answered by a nation that shines and is healed once the fast is rightly kept.

Isaiah 58:10-12

If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul repeats the chapter's concrete standard once more before extending its promise, thy light shall rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday. The Lord shall guide thee continually names an unbroken care, satisfy thy soul in drought, make fat thy bones, a watered garden and a spring of water whose waters fail not, imagery drawn from the desert wandering the nation knew firsthand. Verse 12 widens the promise from the individual to the generations, they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places, and gives the doer of these things two names, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. Henry reads the titles as earned rather than given, a people who keep the fast God has chosen becoming, in their own community, exactly what verse 6's justice and verse 7's mercy required of them.

Isaiah 58:13-14

If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day names the same discipline asked of the fast now asked of the sabbath, self-interest set aside, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words. Call the sabbath a delight names the standard positively rather than only as restriction, the holy of the Lord, honourable, a day to be prized rather than merely endured. Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord answers the sabbath kept as delight with a delight in God himself, riding upon the high places of the earth and feeding on the heritage of Jacob thy father, language recalling Deuteronomy 32:13's blessing on Jacob renewed here as a live promise. Barnes reads the closing formula, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it, as sealing both the fast and the sabbath instruction under one certainty, the chapter's two disciplines of justice and worship bound together rather than left as separate demands.