THE BOOK OF ISAIAH

 

Isaiah Chapter 58

1 ¶ Cry aloud, do not hold back, raise your voice like a trumpet, and show my people their sin, and the house of Jacob their transgression.

2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, like a nation that follows righteousness, and has not forsaken the law of their God: they ask me for righteous judgements; they delight in approaching God.

3 ¶ Why have we fasted, they ask, when you do not see? why have we afflicted our soul, when you do not notice? Look, when you fast you do what you want, and mistreat all your workers.

4 Behold, when you fast you quarrel and fight, and hit with a wicked fist: fasting as you now do, will not cause your voice to be heard on high.

5 Is this the kind of fasting that I want? when a man denies himself for a day? is it to bow your head like a bulrush, and make your bed of sackcloth and ashes? do you call this fasting, and a day that pleases the LORD?

6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to break the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to remove every yoke, and let the oppressed go free?

7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry, and bring the homeless and poor into your house? To clothe the naked when you see him; and that you do not avoid your needy relatives?

8 ¶ Then your light will break through like the dawn, and you will quickly be healed: your righteousness will go before you; and the glory of the LORD will follow as your rear guard.

9 Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry out, and he will say, Here I am. Only banish all oppression from your midst, the finger of scorn, and slanderous speech;

10 For if you pour yourself out for the hungry, and satisfy the needy; then your light will rise in darkness, and your darkness be like midday:

11 And the LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy you even in times of drought, and make your bones strong: and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring whose waters do not dry up.

12 And some of you will rebuild the old ruins: you will raise up the foundations of past generations; and you will be called, The repairer of broken walls, The restorer of streets where people live.

13 ¶ If you stop trampling on the sabbath, and doing as you please on my holy day; and call the sabbath day a delight, and the holy day of the LORD, honorable; and honor him, by stopping your own work, and not doing as you please, or talking idly:

14 Then you will be delighted in the LORD; and I will make you ride on the high places of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father: for the mouth of the LORD has spoken it.