Isaiah 58

¹ Shout for all you are worth, raise your voice like a trumpet. Proclaim their faults to my people, their sins to the House of Jacob.

² They seek me day after day, they long to know my ways, like a nation that wants to act with integrity and not ignore the law of its God. They ask me for laws that are just, they long for God to draw near:

³ ‘Why should we fast if you never see it, why do penance if you never notice?’ Look, you do business on your fastdays, you oppress all your workmen;

⁴ look, you quarrel and squabble when you fast and strike the poor man with your fist. Fasting like yours today will never make your voice heard on high.

⁵ Is that the sort of fast that pleases me, a truly penitential day for men? Hanging your head like a reed, lying down on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call fasting, a day acceptable to Yahweh?

⁶ Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me – it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks – to break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke,

⁷ to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin?

⁸ Then will your light shine like the dawn and your wound be quickly healed over. Your integrity will go before you and the glory of Yahweh behind you.

⁹ Cry, and Yahweh will answer; call, and he will say, ‘I am here’. If you do away with the yoke, the clenched fist, the wicked word,

¹⁰ if you give your bread to the hungry, and relief to the oppressed, your light will rise in the darkness, and your shadows become like noon.

¹¹ Yahweh will always guide you, giving you relief in desert places. He will give strength to your bones and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never run dry.

¹² You will rebuild the ancient ruins, build up on the old foundations. You will be called ‘Breach-mender’, ‘Restorer of ruined houses’.

¹³ If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, and doing business on the holy day, if you call the sabbath ‘Delightful’, and the day sacred to Yahweh ‘Honourable’, if you honour it by abstaining from travel, from doing business and from gossip,

¹⁴ then shall you find your happiness in Yahweh and I will lead you triumphant over the heights of the land. I will feed you on the heritage of Jacob your father. For the mouth of Yahweh has spoken.