Isaiah 58

¹“Cry aloud, don’t spare, lift up your voice like a trumpet, and declare to my people their disobedience, and to the house of Jacob their sins. ²Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways: as a nation that did righteousness, and didn’t forsake the ordinance of their God, they ask of me righteous judgments; they delight to draw near to God. ³‘Why have we fasted,’ say they, ‘and you don’t see? Why have we afflicted our soul, and you take no knowledge?’

“Behold, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, and exact all your labors. ⁴Behold, you fast for strife and contention, and to strike with the fist of wickedness: you don’t fast this day so as to make your voice to be heard on high. ⁵Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to Yahweh?

⁶“Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to release the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? ⁷Isn’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? ⁸Then your light shall break forth as the morning, and your healing shall spring forth speedily; and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of Yahweh shall be your rear guard.

⁹Then you shall call, and Yahweh will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

“If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking wickedly; ¹⁰and if you draw out your soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul: then your light shall rise in darkness, and your obscurity be as the noonday; ¹¹and Yahweh will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in dry places, and make strong your bones; and you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters don’t fail. ¹²Those who shall be of you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.

¹³“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 shall honor it, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words: ¹⁴then you shall delight yourself in Yahweh; and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth; and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father:”