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CHAPTER 58
CRY, cease not, lift up your voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their wicked doings, and the house of Jacob their sins.
2 For they seek me from day to day, sad desire to know my ways, as a nation that has done justice, and has not forsaken the judgment of their God: they ask of me the judgments of justice: they are willing to approach to God.
3 Why have we fasted, and you have not regarded: have we humbled our souls, and you have not taken notice? Behold in the day of your fast your own will is found, and you exact of all your debtors.
4 Behold you fast for debates and strife. and strike with the fist wickedly. Do not fast as you have done until this day, to make your cry to be heard on high.
5 Is this such a fast as I have chosen: for a man to afflict his soul for a day? is this it, to wind his head about like a circle, and to spread sackcloth and ashes? will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord?
6 Is not this rather the fast that I have chosen? loose the bands of wickedness, undo the bundles that oppress, let them that are broken go free, and break asunder every burden.
7 Deal your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy and the harbourless into your house: when you shall see one naked, cover him, and despise not your own flesh.
8 Then shall your light break forth as the morning, and your health shall speedily arise, and your justice shall go before your face, end the glory of the Lord shall gather you up.
9 Then shall you call, and the Lord shall hear: you shall cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If you will take away the chain out of the midst of you, and cease to stretch out the finger, and to speak that which profits not.
10 When you shall pour out your soul to the hungry, and shall satisfy the afflicted soul then shall your light rise up in darkness, and your darkness shall be as the noonday.
11 And the Lord will give you rest continually, and will fill your soul with brightness, and deliver your bones, and you shall be like a watered garden, and like a fountain of water whose waters shall not fail
12 And the places that have been desolate for ages shall be built in you: you shall raise up the foundations of generation and generation: and you shall be called the repairer of the fences, turning the paths into rest.
13 If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, from doing your own will in my holy day, and call the sabbath delightful, and the holy of the Lord glorious, and glorify him, while you do not your own ways, and your own will is not found: to speak a word:
14 Then shall you be delighted in the Lord, and I will lift you up above the high places of the earth, and will feed you with the inheritance of Jacob your father. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.