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Chapter Summary
You seek pleasure on your fast days. Is this not the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice? Then your ruins will be rebuilt.
1Cry out! Cease not! Exalt your voice like a trumpet, and announce to my people their wicked acts, and to the house of Jacob their sins. 2For they also seek me, from day to day, and they are willing to know my ways, like a nation which has done justice and has not abandoned the judgment of their God. They petition me for judgments of justice. They are willing to draw near to God. 3“Why have we fasted, and you have not taken notice? Why have we humbled our souls, and you have not acknowledged it?” Behold, in the day of your fasting, your own will is found, and you petition for payment from all your debtors. 4Behold, you fast with strife and contention, and you strike with the fist impiously. Do not choose to fast as you have done even to this day. Then your outcry will be heard on high. 5Is this a fast such as I have chosen: for a man to afflict his soul for a day, to contort his head in a circle, and to spread sackcloth and ashes? Should you call this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord? 6Is not this, instead, the kind of fast that I have chosen? Release the constraints of impiety; relieve the burdens that oppress; freely forgive those who are broken; and break apart every burden. 7Break your bread with the hungry, and lead the destitute and the homeless into your house. When you see someone naked, cover him, and do not despise your own flesh. 8Then your light will break forth like the morning, and your health will improve quickly, and your justice will go before your face, and the glory of the Lord will gather you up. 9Then you will call, and the Lord will heed; you will cry out, and he will say, “Here I am,” if you take away the chains from your midst, and cease to point your finger and to speak what is not beneficial. 10When you pour out your life for the hungry, and you satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light will rise up in darkness, and your darkness will be like the midday. 11And the Lord will give you rest continually, and he will fill your soul with splendor, and he will free your bones, and you will be like a watered garden and like a fountain of water whose waters will not fail. 12And places that have been desolate for ages will be built up by you. You will raise a foundation for generation after generation. And you will be called the repairer of hedges, who turns the roadways into quiet places. 13If you restrain your foot on the Sabbath, from doing your own will on my holy day, and if you call the Sabbath delightful, and the Holy of the Lord glorious, and if you glorify him, while you do not act according to your own ways, and your own will is not found, not even to speak a word, 14then you will find delight in the Lord, and I will take you up, above the heights of the earth, and I will nourish you with the inheritance of Jacob, your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.