Dual Panel1Shout aloud without restraint; lift up your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their transgression, to the house of Jacob their sins,
2although they ask guidance of me day after day and say they delight in knowing my ways. As if they were a nation which had acted rightly and had not abandoned the just laws of their God, they ask me for righteous laws and delight in approaching God.
3“Why should we fast, if you ignore it? Why mortify ourselves, if you pay no heed?” In fact you serve your own interests on your fast-day and keep all your men hard at work.
4Your fasting leads only to wrangling and strife and to lashing out with vicious blows. On such a day the fast you are keeping is not one that will carry your voice to heaven.
5Is this the kind of fast that I require, a day of mortification such as this: that a person should bow his head like a bulrush and use sackcloth and ashes for a bed? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?
6Rather, is not this the fast I require: to loose the fetters of injustice, to untie the knots of the yoke, and set free those who are oppressed, tearing off every yoke?
7Is it not sharing your food with the hungry, taking the homeless poor into your house, clothing the naked when you meet them, and never evading a duty to your kinsfolk?
8Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and new skin will speedily grow over your wound; your righteousness will be your vanguard and the glory of the LORD your rearguard.
9Then, when you call, the LORD will answer; when you cry to him, he will say, “Here I am.” If you cease to pervert justice, to point the accusing finger and lay false charges,
10if you give of your own food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the wretched, then light will rise for you out of darkness and dusk will be for you like noonday;
11the LORD will be your guide continually and will satisfy your needs in the bare desert; he will give you strength of limb; you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
12Buildings long in ruins will be restored by your own kindred and you will build on ancient foundations; you will be called the rebuilder of broken walls, the restorer of houses in ruins.
13If you refrain from sabbath journeys and from doing business on my holy day, if you call the sabbath a day of joy and the LORD's holy day worthy of honour, if you honour it by desisting from work and not pursuing your own interests or attending to your own affairs,
14then you will find your joy in the LORD, and I shall make you ride on the heights of the earth, and the holding of your father Jacob will be yours to enjoy. The LORD himself has spoken.