BOOK 23 OF 66 · MAJOR PROPHETS · KING JAMES BIBLE

Isaiah 58

Isaiah book home•Chapter 58 of 66•14 verses

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Isaiah 58 Overview

The people complain that God ignores their fasting, but Isaiah exposes exploitation and strife beneath religious performance; true fasting loosens oppression, feeds the hungry, shelters the poor, and restores communal life.

IsaiahBook

58Chapter

14Verses

Major ProphetsDivision

Before you read Isaiah 58

Coming from

The righteous may die unnoticed while idolatrous Judah pursues spiritual adultery, but the high and holy God dwells with the contrite, revives the humble, heals the penitent, and withholds peace from the persistently wicked.

In this chapter

Leads into

Isaiah explains that the LORD’s hand is not too short to save; sin has separated the people from God, society is saturated with violence and injustice, no human intercessor appears, so the LORD Himself arms as a divine warrior and promises a Redeemer and enduring Spirit-word covenant.

Key understandingExplore deeper

This chapter directly confronts ritual devotion disconnected from justice. The people seek God daily and appear eager for ordinances, yet their social conduct contradicts the worship they perform.

The interpretive center of Isaiah 58 is the chapter’s own movement: religious intensity can coexist with hypocrisy. Read its poetry, signs, historical references, and later biblical connections from that center rather than treating isolated phrases as detached slogans.

Major truths in this chapterExplore deeper

Religious intensity can coexist with hypocrisy

Fasting does not impress God when it serves self-interest and leaves oppression untouched.

True devotion affects how vulnerable people are treated

Food, shelter, clothing, and release from exploitation are central examples.

Obedient compassion brings communal restoration

Light, healing, guidance, and rebuilding imagery follow transformed conduct.

Connections to the rest of ScriptureExplore deeper

Matthew 6:16-18

Jesus also warns against fasting performed for human notice rather than God.

James 2:14-17

James insists that claims of faith that ignore a brother or sister’s material need are empty.

Matthew 25:35-40

Jesus highlights feeding, clothing, and receiving the needy, closely matching Isaiah’s ethical concerns.

What is clear, and where care is neededExplore deeper

Do not conclude that charitable works earn eternal life.

Isaiah is condemning covenant hypocrisy; good works are the proper fruit of true devotion, not the price of justification.

Do not reduce the chapter to private fasting technique.

The focus is systemic and relational—oppression, labor, hunger, homelessness, and restoration.

Read Isaiah 58 watching for…

the people’s complaint about unanswered fasting

exploitation continuing on fast days

the fast God chooses

feeding and sheltering the needy

light and rebuilding after reform

Chapter outline4 sections

1-2The prophet is told to expose a people who outwardly seek God 3-7False fasting is contrasted with freeing the oppressed and helping the needy 8-12Right fasting brings light, guidance, rebuilding, and restoration 13-14Honoring the sabbath brings delight in the LORD

Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.

Yet 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.

Wherefore 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.

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.

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? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD?

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?

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?

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.

Then 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;

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:

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.

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.

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; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:

Then 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.