What does Isaias Chapter 58 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

The fast-day complaint is answered with a rebuke of exaction and strife. The chosen fast includes freedom, bread, shelter and clothing. Conditional light and garden promises accompany mercy and sabbath honor.

Chapter breakdown

Isaias 58 commissions an unceasing trumpet-like cry about Jacob's sins. Daily seeking and desire for judgments resemble a just nation, yet a complaint about unnoticed fasting receives a rebuke for self-will, exacting debtors, debate, strife and wicked fists. A bowed head like a circle, sackcloth and ashes do not settle whether the fast is acceptable; the source does not substitute a bulrush or lounging posture.

The chosen fast loosens wicked bands and oppressive bundles, frees the broken and breaks burdens. Bread is shared with the hungry, shelterless needy welcomed, naked clothed and one's own flesh not despised. Morning light, speedy health, preceding justice and gathering glory are promised. Calls receive hearing and Here I am, conditional on removing chains, finger gestures and unprofitable speech. Pouring the soul toward hunger and satisfying affliction turns darkness into noon.

Continual rest, brightness, delivered bones and watered-garden and unfailing-fountain images lead to rebuilding old desolation and generations' foundations, repairing fences and paths of rest. Honoring the delightful sabbath rather than self-will brings delight, height and Jacob's inheritance. Specific secular commerce and instantly healed clinical conditions are not supplied; the conditional prophetic promises are not presented as a medical mechanism triggered by charity.

The story inside

Opening: The fast-day complaint is answered with a rebuke of exaction and strife. Development: The chosen fast includes freedom, bread, shelter and clothing. Conclusion: Conditional light and garden promises accompany mercy and sabbath honor.

Lessons worth keeping

1
The fast-day complaint is answered with a rebuke of exaction and strife.
2
The chosen fast includes freedom, bread, shelter and clothing.
3
Conditional light and garden promises accompany mercy and sabbath honor.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 83260–83266
58:1. Cry, cease not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their wicked doings, and the house of Jacob their sins. 58:2. For they seek me from day to day, and desire to know my ways, as a nation that hath done justice, and hath not forsaken the judgment of their God: they ask of me the judgments of justice: they are willing to approach to God.
Lines 83268–83279
58:3. Why have we fasted, and thou hast not regarded: have we humbled our souls, and thou hast not taken notice? Behold in the day of your fast your own will is found, and you exact of all your debtors. 58:4. Behold you fast for debates and strife, and strike with the fist wickedly. Do not fast as you have done until this day, to make your cry to be heard on high. 58:5. Is this such a fast as I have chosen: for a man to afflict his soul for a day? is this it, to wind his head about like a circle, and to spread sackcloth and ashes? wilt thou call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?
Lines 83281–83287
58:6. Is not this rather the fast that I have chosen? loose the bands of wickedness, undo the bundles that oppress, let them that are broken go free, and break asunder every burden. 58:7. Deal thy bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the harbourless into thy house: when thou shalt see one naked, cover him, and despise not thy own flesh.
Lines 83289–83296
58:8. Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy health shall speedily arise, and thy justice shall go before thy face, and the glory of the Lord shall gather thee up. 58:9. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall hear: thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou wilt take away the chain out of the midst of thee, and cease to stretch out the finger, and to speak that which profiteth not.
Lines 83302–83310
58:11. And the Lord will give thee rest continually, and will fill thy soul with brightness, and deliver thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a fountain of water whose waters shall not fail. 58:12. And the places that have been desolate for ages shall be built in thee: thou shalt raise up the foundations of generation and generation: and thou shalt be called the repairer of the fences, turning the paths into rest.
Lines 83312–83320
58:13. If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy own will in my holy day, and call the sabbath delightful, and the holy of the Lord glorious, and glorify him, while thou dost not thy own ways, and thy own will is not found, to speak a word: 58:14. Then shalt thou be delighted in the Lord, and I will lift thee up above the high places of the earth, and will feed thee with the inheritance of Jacob thy father. For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.