Fasting as Yahweh Chooses
“aCall out from your throat, do not hold back;
Raise your voice like a trumpet,
And declare to My people their btransgression
And to the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet they aseek Me day by day and find pleasure in knowing My ways,
As a nation that has done brighteousness
And chas not forsaken the judgment of their God.
They ask Me for righteous judgments;
They find pleasure in dthe nearness of God.
3 ‘Why have we afasted and You do not see?
Why have we afflicted our souls and You do not know?’
Behold, on the bday of your fast you find your desire,
And oppress all your workers.
4 Behold, you fast for contention and aquarreling and to strike with a wicked fist.
You do not fast like you do today to bmake your voice heard on high.
5 Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to afflict himself?
Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed
And for spreading out asackcloth and ashes as a bed?
Will you call this a fast, even an bacceptable day to Yahweh?
6 Is this not the fast which I choose,
To aloosen the bonds of wickedness,
To release the bands of the yoke,
And to blet the oppressed go free
And cbreak every yoke?
7 Is it not to adivide your bread with the hungry
And bbring the afflicted homeless into the house;
When you see the cnaked, you cover him;
And not to dhide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then your alight will break out like the dawn,
And your brecovery will speedily spring forth;
And your crighteousness will go before you;
The glory of dYahweh will be your rear guard.
9 Then you will acall, and Yahweh will answer;
You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’
If you bremove the yoke from your midst,
The cpointing of the finger and dspeaking wickedness,
10 And if you aoffer your soul to the hungry
And satisfy the soul of the afflicted,
Then your blight will rise in darkness
And your thick darkness will become like midday.
11 And aYahweh will continually guide you,
And bsatisfy your soul in scorched places,
And cfortify your bones;
And you will be like a dwatered garden,
And like a espring of water whose waters do not fail.
12 Those from among you will arebuild the ancient waste places;
You will braise up the foundations of past generation upon generation;
And you will be called the repairer of the cbreach,
The restorer of the paths for one to inhabit.
Keeping the Sabbath
13 “If because of the sabbath, you aturn your foot
From doing your own desire on My holy day,
And call the sabbath a bdelight, the holy day of Yahweh honorable,
And honor it, by not doing your cown ways,
By not finding your own desire
And dspeaking your own word,
14 Then you will take adelight in Yahweh,
And I will make you ride bon the heights of the earth;
And I will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father,
For the cmouth of Yahweh has spoken.”