Isaiah 58
Isaiah 58 begins with a command that sounds like an alarm: Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression (v. 1). What is startling is who the trumpet is aimed at. Not pagans, not the openly wicked - but a people who seek me daily, and delight to know my ways… they take delight in approaching to God (v. 2). They look devout. They fast, they pray, they ask after the ordinances of justice. And they are genuinely puzzled that God seems unmoved: Wherefore have we fasted… and thou seest not? (v. 3). The chapter is God's answer to that question - and it is one of Scripture's most searching exposures of worship that has come unhooked from the way we treat each other.3
God's reply is blunt: on their fast days they pursue their own pleasure, drive their labourers, quarrel, and smite with the fist of wickedness (vv. 3-4). Then He names the fast He actually chooses, and it has nothing to do with an empty stomach: to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free… to deal thy bread to the hungry… when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh (vv. 6-7). True devotion, He says, bends down toward the hungry, the homeless, the crushed. It is the same standard Jesus would later press on the religious of His own day - I will have mercy, and not sacrifice (Matt. 9:13).
To this kind of fasting God fastens a cascade of promises as warm as the rebuke was sharp. Then shall thy light break forth as the morning (v. 8); then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am (v. 9). The merciful become like a watered garden (v. 11), they are called The repairer of the breach (v. 12), and at the last the chapter turns to the Sabbath - not as a heavy rule but as something to be loved: call it a delight, and then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD (vv. 13-14). The fast God chooses, it turns out, is simply the shape of a life poured out for others - and it ends not in exhaustion but in joy.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Isaiah 58:1-5The Fast God Will Not Hear
1Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. 2Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God. 3Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. 4Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. 5Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?
The chapter opens at full volume: Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression (v. 1). A trumpet in Israel was an alarm - it warned a city of danger and summoned it to attention. God tells the prophet to hold nothing back, to spare not, because something is badly wrong and the people cannot hear it over their own religious noise. And here is the surprise: the sin to be exposed is not found among open rebels but among the devout. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness… they take delight in approaching to God (v. 2). On the surface this is an exemplary people. They worship, they study the law, they ask after the ordinances of justice, they enjoy drawing near to God. The trumpet is aimed precisely at people who would never imagine it was meant for them - which is part of why it must be blown so loud. The most dangerous sin is the kind that hides comfortably underneath a life that looks faithful.3
Now the people speak, and their complaint is the hinge of the whole chapter: Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? (v. 3). They are genuinely aggrieved. They have done the hard, hungry work of fasting - they have afflicted themselves - and heaven appears indifferent. They expected their devotion to obligate God, as if fasting were a transaction that must yield a return. God's reply pulls the curtain back on what their fast days actually look like: in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Even while abstaining from food, they pursue their own appetites and drive their workers hard. The very day they bow their heads to God, they press down on the people beneath them. This is the disconnect Isaiah will hammer: a religion turned inward, measuring itself by its own discomfort, while remaining blind to the people it tramples. Fasting was never meant to be a lever to move God; it was meant to soften a heart. Theirs had only hardened.
God is even more pointed: Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high (v. 4). Their fasting does not produce humility; it produces quarrels. They argue, they contend, they strike with the fist of wickedness - an image of violence done to others on the very day meant for drawing near to God. And so He tells them plainly that this kind of fast will never make your voice to be heard on high. The prayer rising from such a day does not reach God, because it is contradicted by the hands that offer it. Then comes the searching question: Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? (v. 5). The bulrush is a reed that bends low in the wind - an apt picture of a head dropped in performed sorrow that lasts only as long as the ritual. Sackcloth and ashes were genuine signs of grief, but God will not be fooled by the costume of repentance worn over an unchanged life. Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? The form was all present. The substance was missing entirely.
Isaiah 58:6-9Is Not This the Fast That I Have Chosen?
6Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? 7Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? 8Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. 9Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;
Now comes the heart of the chapter, and it lands as a question that answers itself: Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? (v. 6). Every verb points outward, away from the self and toward someone in bondage. Loose the bands; undo the burdens; let the oppressed go free; break every yoke. The fast God wants is not a withholding from oneself but a releasing of others - the deliberate work of lifting weights off people who are crushed. The imagery is of ropes cut, loads set down, yokes shattered. And then verse 7 brings it even closer to home and even more concrete: Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Notice the plain, physical verbs - deal bread, bring the homeless in, cover the naked. This is not abstract benevolence; it is your loaf, your house, your coat. The closing phrase is piercing: hide not thyself from thine own flesh. The poor and the suffering are not strangers to be managed at arm's length; they are kin. To turn away from them is to turn away from your own family.
To this fast God fastens a sudden flood of promises, and the first is the most beautiful: Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward (v. 8). The little word then carries enormous weight; it ties the whole cascade of blessing to the obedience just described. To people who felt themselves shut up in darkness - their prayers unanswered, their fasts unseen - God promises light that breaks forth as the morning, the way dawn floods a valley after a long night. Their health - their healing, their wholeness - will spring up quickly, like a wound closing. And then a striking image of being surrounded by God: thy righteousness shall go before thee as a vanguard leading the way, and the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. A rereward is the rear guard, the protection at one's back - the same picture as the exodus, where God went before His people in the pillar of cloud and behind them as a shield. The merciful, God says, will be hemmed in front and back by His own presence. The light that comes is not earned wages so much as the natural dawn that breaks over a life finally turned the right direction.
The promise reaches its summit in a single tender phrase: Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am (v. 9). Remember the complaint that opened the chapter - we have fasted, and thou seest not. They felt God absent, deaf, indifferent. Now He answers the deepest ache underneath their grievance. To the one who has loosed others' burdens, God pledges an open ear: call, and He answers; cry, and He says Here I am. It is worth pausing over how astonishing those words are on God's lips. Here I am is the answer a servant gives when summoned, the ready word Abraham and Moses and Samuel each spoke to God. Here it is God who says it to His people - the Maker of heaven turning toward a merciful heart and saying, in effect, I am right here. But the verse also keeps its conditions honestly in view: if thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity. The putting forth of the finger is the gesture of scorn and accusation; speaking vanity is empty, harmful talk. The open ear of God and the pointing finger of contempt cannot occupy the same life. Lay down the one, and you find the other.
Isaiah 58:10-14Thou Shalt Be Called, The Repairer of the Breach
10And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: 11And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. 12And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. 13If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: 14Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.
The promise of light returns, and this time it is even more daring: And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday (v. 10). Notice the phrase draw out thy soul. This is mercy that costs something - not bread tossed from a distance but the self extended, the heart drawn out toward another's hunger. To satisfy the afflicted soul is to keep giving until the need is actually met, not merely gestured at. And to that self-spending love God makes a promise that turns the chapter's opening darkness inside out. The people had felt themselves in obscurity, unseen and unanswered. Now God says their light will rise in obscurity - the very darkness becomes the place where light dawns - and their darkness will become as the noonday, the brightest hour of the day. There is a quiet spiritual law here that runs all through Scripture and was lived out perfectly in Christ: the way up is down, the way to fullness is self-giving, and the light that floods a life comes not from hoarding but from pouring out. Spend yourself on the afflicted, and your own midnight turns to noon.
The blessings keep multiplying, and they grow tender: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not (v. 11). Each image answers a fear. To the anxious, God promises to guide thee continually - not once, but always. To the empty, He promises to satisfy thy soul in drought, sustenance precisely when everything around is parched. To the worn-down, He promises to make fat thy bones - strength restored to the very frame. And then two of the loveliest pictures in Isaiah. The merciful person becomes like a watered garden - lush, fruitful, well-tended, green in a dry land - and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. The one who poured himself out for the thirsty does not run dry; he becomes a spring that never fails. This is the great reversal the chapter keeps pressing: the fear behind all hoarding is that giving will leave us depleted, but God promises the opposite. The life given away to satisfy others is the life He keeps continually full. The spring that pours out is the spring that never empties.
The promise now widens from the person to the place: And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in (v. 12). The merciful do not only flourish themselves; they become menders of what is broken around them. They rebuild the old waste places - the ruins, the long-abandoned - and lay foundations that will outlast them by generations. Then come two titles, and they are among the noblest names Scripture gives a person. The repairer of the breach: a breach is a gap torn in a city's wall, the point where it lies open and defenceless; to repair it is to make a community safe and whole again. The restorer of paths to dwell in: one who reopens the roads and resettles the ruined streets so that life can return. These are not titles earned by grand religious display; they are earned by the unglamorous, faithful work of feeding the hungry and loosing burdens. God's vision of the merciful is not of people who merely survive but of people who heal whole communities - who leave behind them a world more habitable than they found it. To do justice is, in the end, to rebuild.
The chapter closes on a note that might seem a turn but is really the same melody: the Sabbath. If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable (v. 13). All through the chapter the people had been chasing their own pleasure - in the day of your fast ye find pleasure (v. 3) - bending even sacred days to their own appetites. The Sabbath, God says, is to be released from that grip. To turn away thy foot from it is to stop trampling it with ordinary self-seeking. But notice that the command is not finally about restriction; it is about love. Call the sabbath a delight. God does not want the day endured as a heavy rule but treasured as a gift - honourable, set apart, loved. The same self-denial that fed the hungry now consecrates one day, not as deprivation but as joy. And so the long chapter that began with hollow ritual ends by recovering the inner life of true devotion: worship and rest are not burdens to be performed for credit but gifts to be delighted in. Even the holy day, rightly kept, is meant to make the heart glad.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Isaiah 58 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for tsom (vv. 5-6, the “fast” God examines), for the verbs of mercy in verses 6-7 (loose, undo, deal thy bread), and for oneg (v. 13, the Sabbath called a “delight”).
- Isaiah 58 ↔ Matthew 25 · Matthew 9 · James 1Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Isaiah 58 to the rest of Scripture - the fast of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked (vv. 6-7) read alongside the King who says I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat… naked, and ye clothed me (Matt. 25:35-36), and the worship God receives read beside I will have mercy, and not sacrifice (Matt. 9:13) and pure religion and undefiled (Jas. 1:27).
- Isaiah 58 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Isaiah 58 - the trumpet-call against a devout-looking people (vv. 1-2), the self-serving fast that God refuses (vv. 3-5), the verbs describing the fast He chooses (vv. 6-7), and the rare word rendered “rereward” in verse 8.
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Fast God Will Not Hear
- Hosea 6:6For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.The same verdict as verses 3-5 - God prizes mercy above the most careful ritual.
- Zechariah 7:5-6When ye fasted... did ye at all fast unto me, even to me?The very question of verse 5 - a fast kept for self rather than for God.
- Matthew 9:13I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.Jesus presses Isaiah’s charge - worship that bypasses mercy is worship God refuses.
- Amos 5:21-24I hate, I despise your feast days... But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.The same exposure as verses 3-5 - rejected ritual answered by a call to justice.
- Joel 2:13And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God.The contrast of verse 5 - the inward turning God wants over the outward show of the bulrush bowing low.
Is Not This the Fast That I Have Chosen?
- Matthew 25:35-40I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat... Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.Christ’s judgment scene draws on the very list of verses 6-7 - the hungry fed, the naked clothed.
- James 1:27Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.The chosen fast of verses 6-7 named the test of true religion.
- Job 31:19-22If I have seen any perish for want of clothing... If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless...The same standard as verse 7 - covering the naked and never striking the helpless.
- Proverbs 19:17He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.The promise tied to verses 6-8 - mercy to the poor met by the LORD’s own reward.
- Psalm 112:4Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.The light of verse 8 - dawn breaking over the life of the merciful.
Thou Shalt Be Called, The Repairer of the Breach
- Jeremiah 31:12and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all.The same image as verse 11 - the restored soul like a garden God keeps green.
- John 7:38He that believeth on me... out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.The spring that never fails (v. 11) - in Christ, the merciful become a source of living water.
- Matthew 5:14-16Ye are the light of the world... let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.The light of verses 8 and 10 turned outward - the good works of the merciful shining before all.
- Matthew 11:28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.The rest the Sabbath delight of verses 13-14 points toward - found at last in Christ.
- Nehemiah 6:15-16So the wall was finished... and all the heathen... perceived that this work was wrought of our God.The breach repaired and the city made whole (v. 12) - the title lived out in restored walls.