Isaiah 58: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD tells the prophet to announce, loudly, the sins of his people, who seek him every day and are pleased to come near to God. They complain that their fasting goes unnoticed, and God answers that on their fast days they please themselves, drive their workers, and quarrel and fight. He describes the fast he does choose: breaking chains, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked. Promises of light, healing, guidance, and rebuilt ruins follow, and the chapter ends with a further condition about keeping the Sabbath.

Claim by Claim

1. 58:1
   • The speaker is commanded to cry aloud with full voice.
   • The speaker is commanded not to hold back.
   • The speaker is commanded to lift up his voice like a ram's horn trumpet.
   • The speaker is commanded to declare to God's people their transgression.
   • The speaker is commanded to declare to the house of Jacob their sins.
2. 58:2
   • They seek God day after day.
   • They delight to know God's ways.
   • They act like a nation that has done righteousness.
   • They act like a nation that has not forsaken the judgment of its God.
   • They ask God for righteous judgments.
   • They delight in drawing near to God.
   • This seeking stands in contrast to the transgression just named.
3. 58:3
   • The people say: Why have we fasted and you have not seen?
   • The people say: Why have we afflicted our soul and you take no knowledge?
   • God answers that on the day of their fast they find their own pleasure.
   • God says they drive hard all those who toil for them; the word can mean either their laborers or their labors.
4. 58:4
   • They fast for quarreling and strife.
   • They fast so as to strike with a wicked fist.
   • They do not fast in such a way as to make their voice heard on high.
5. 58:5
   • God asks whether such is the fast he chooses.
   • God asks whether it is a day for a man to afflict his soul.
   • God asks whether it is to bow one's head like a reed.
   • God asks whether it is to spread sackcloth and ashes as a bed.
   • God asks whether they will call this a fast.
   • God asks whether they will call this a day acceptable to the LORD.
6. 58:6
   • God asks whether this is not the fast he chooses.
   • The chosen fast is to loose the bonds of wickedness.
   • The chosen fast is to untie the cords of the yoke.
   • The chosen fast is to send the oppressed away free.
   • The chosen fast is that they break every yoke.
7. 58:7
   • God asks whether it is not to share one's bread with the hungry.
   • God asks whether it is not to bring the homeless poor into one's house.
   • God asks whether it is not to cover the naked when one sees him.
   • God asks whether it is not to refrain from hiding oneself from one's own flesh.
8. 58:8
   • Then the hearer's light will break forth like the dawn.
   • The hearer's healing will spring up quickly.
   • The hearer's righteousness will go before him.
   • The glory of the LORD will gather up the hearer from behind; the word means both to gather and to act as rear guard.
9. 58:9
   • Then the hearer will call and the LORD will answer.
   • The hearer will cry out and God will say, Here I am.
   • This is conditional on the hearer removing the yoke from his midst.
   • This is conditional on the hearer removing the pointing of the finger.
   • This is conditional on the hearer removing the speaking of wickedness.
10. 58:10
    • The condition includes the hearer giving out his own self to the hungry.
    • The condition includes the hearer satisfying the afflicted soul.
    • Then the hearer's light will rise in the darkness.
    • The hearer's gloom will be like noonday.
11. 58:11
    • The LORD will guide the hearer continually.
    • The LORD will satisfy the hearer's soul in parched places.
    • The LORD will strengthen the hearer's bones.
    • The hearer will be like a watered garden.
    • The hearer will be like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.
12. 58:12
    • Those who come from the hearer will rebuild the ancient ruins.
    • The hearer will raise up the foundations of many generations.
    • The hearer will be called repairer of the breach.
    • The hearer will be called restorer of paths to dwell in.
13. 58:13
    • The condition is that the hearer turn his foot back from the sabbath.
    • The condition is that the hearer refrain from doing his own pleasure on God's holy day.
    • The condition is that the hearer call the sabbath a delight.
    • The condition is that the hearer call the holy day of the LORD honorable.
    • The condition is that the hearer honor it, the object being either the sabbath or the LORD.
    • Honoring it means not going one's own ways.
    • Honoring it means not seeking one's own pleasure.
    • Honoring it means not speaking one's own words.
14. 58:14
    • Then the hearer will delight himself in the LORD.
    • God will make the hearer ride upon the high places of the earth.
    • God will feed the hearer with the heritage of Jacob his father.
    • The mouth of the LORD has spoken this.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

58:1

A ram's horn (Hebrew *shofar*) was not a musical instrument but a signaling one: a hollowed horn blown to sound an alarm, summon troops, or call a crowd to attention. The image is of a loud, urgent, unmistakable warning. "The house of Jacob" means the nation descended from Jacob, Israel, called by the name of its ancestor, much as one might say "the house of Windsor."

58:2

"Ordinance" in the King James means a rule or law that God gave. The "ordinances of justice" are fair rulings, the kind a good judge hands down.

58:3

Fasting meant going without food, and often without washing, comfortable clothes, or ordinary business, for a set period. It was done publicly as a sign of grief or repentance, or to press a request on God, and the assumption behind the people's complaint here is that a fast obliges God to take notice. "Afflict the soul" (verses 3 and 5) is the standard Hebrew phrase for this self-denial; "soul" in Hebrew usually means the whole living person, not a separable spirit. The last clause is uncertain in Hebrew: it may mean the fasters drove their hired laborers to work as usual on the very day they themselves abstained, or that they pressed their debtors for what was owed.

58:4

In 1611, "debate" meant a quarrel or a fight. It did not mean a polite argument about ideas, the way we use the word now.

58:5

A bulrush is a tall marsh reed with a heavy head that droops over on its stalk. Bowing the head "like a bulrush" pictures a posture of mourning adopted and held for show. Sackcloth was coarse, scratchy cloth woven from goat hair; wearing it, and sitting or lying in ashes, were the recognized outward signs of grief and repentance across the ancient Near East.

58:6

A yoke was a wooden beam fastened across the necks of two draft animals so they could pull a plow or cart together. Applied to people it was the standard image for forced labor, debt-slavery, or subjection to a harsh ruler, hence the chains, cords and breaking. "Loose the bands" and "undo the heavy burdens" describe untying the straps that held a yoke in place: releasing someone from compelled service.

58:7

"Thine own flesh" means your own relatives. In the Bible, calling someone naked usually means they have no decent clothes, not that they wear nothing at all.

58:8

The rear guard was the detachment at the back of a marching column, protecting it from attack from behind, the most vulnerable position for a body of people on the move. The picture is of a traveler with right conduct going ahead as a vanguard and God's own presence closing up the rear. The King James "rereward" is simply an old spelling of "rearguard," not a different word.

58:9

Pointing the finger was a gesture of public accusation, mockery, or contempt, singling someone out for scorn. "Speaking vanity" translates a Hebrew word for what is empty or worthless, used here of talk that harms: slander, false accusation, malicious gossip.

58:10

"Draw out thy soul to the hungry" is literally "offer your appetite to the hungry." The Hebrew is open between two senses that both fit: give the hungry the food you yourself wanted, and give yourself, your effort and attention, to them.

58:11

"Make fat thy bones" sounds odd today. In Hebrew, well-fed bones pictured a healthy, strong body. Dried-up bones pictured weakness and misery.

58:12

A "breach" is a gap smashed through a city's defensive wall, the point where attackers got in and the first thing rebuilders had to close. "Paths to dwell in" are the streets of a ruined town, restored to the point where people can live along them again. Both are titles of honor here, names a community would be known by, in a land whose towns had been left in ruins by invasion.

58:13

The Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, on which all ordinary work stopped (for the household, its servants, and its animals alike. "Turning your foot" from it is a Hebrew idiom for staying off a path: not walking into the day as if it were any other. The three things forbidden here) going your own way, seeking your own pleasure, speaking your own words, cover ordinary business, ordinary errands, and ordinary business talk.

58:14

"To ride upon the high places of the earth" is an old Hebrew image for secure and unchallenged possession of a country: the ridges and hilltops were where invaders came from and where a land was held or lost, so riding over them means the land is yours. "The heritage of Jacob" is the territory handed down from the ancestor Jacob as family inheritance. "The mouth of the LORD hath spoken it" is a set closing formula that marks the end of a prophetic speech and stakes its truth on the speaker.