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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Isaiah 58:5 - 58:5
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Whilst the people on the fast-day are carrying on their worldly, selfish, everyday business, the fasting is perverted from a means of divine worship and absorption in the spiritual character of the day to the most thoroughly selfish purposes: it is supposed to be of some worth and to merit some reward. This work-holy delusion, behind which self-righteousness and unrighteousness were concealed, is met thus by Jehovah through His prophet: “Can such things as these pass for a fast that I have pleasure in, as a day for a man to afflict his soul? To bow down his head like a bulrush, and spread sackcloth and ashes under him - dost thou call this a fast and an acceptable day for Jehovah? Is not this a fast that I have pleasure in: To loose coils of wickedness, to untie the bands of the yoke, and for sending away the oppressed as free, and that ye break every kind of yoke? Is it not this, to break thy bread to the hungry, and to take the poor and houseless to thy home; when thou seest a naked man that thou clothest him, and dost not deny thyself before thine own flesh?” The true worship, which consists in works of merciful love to one's brethren, and its great promises are here placed in contrast with the false worship just described. הַכָזֶה points backwards: is such a fast as this a fast after Jehovah's mind, a day on which it can be said in truth that a man afflicts his soul (Lev 16:29)? The הֲ of הֲלָכֹף is resumed in הֲלָזֶה; the second לָ is the object to תִּקְרָא expressed as a dative. The first לָ answers to our preposition “to” with the infinitive, which stands here at the beginning like a casus absol. (to hang down; for which the inf. abs. הֲכָפוֹף might also be used), and as in most other cases passes over into the finite (et quod saccum et cinerem substernit, viz., sibi: Ges. §132, Anm. 2). To hang down the head and sit in sackcloth and ashes - this does not in itself deserve the name of fasting and of a day of gracious reception (Isa 56:7; Isa 61:2) on the part of Jehovah (ליהוה for a subjective genitive).
Isa 58:6 and Isa 58:7 affirm that the fasting which is pleasant to Jehovah consists in something very different from this, namely, in releasing the oppressed, and in kindness to the helpless; not in abstinence form eating as such, but in sympathetic acts of that self-denying love, which gives up bread or any other possession for the sake of doing good to the needy.
(Note: The ancient church connected fasting with almsgiving by law. Dressel, Patr. Ap. p. 493.)
There is a bitter irony in these words, just as when the ancients said, “not eating is a natural fast, but abstaining form sin is a spiritual fast.” During the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans a general emancipation of the slaves of Israelitish descent (who were to be set free, according to the law, every three years) was resolved upon and carried out; but as soon as the Chaldeans were gone, the masters fetched their liberated slaves back into servitude again (Jer 34:8-22). And as Isa 58:6 shows, they carried the same selfish and despotic disposition with them into captivity. The זֶה which points forwards is expanded into infin. absolutes, which are carried on quite regularly in the finite tense. Mōtâh, which is repeated palindromically, signifies in both cases a yoke, lit., vectis, the cross wood which formed the most important part of the yoke, and which was fastened to the animal's head, and so connected with the plough by means of a cord or strap (Sir. 30:13; 33:27).
(Note: I have already observed at Isa 47:6, in vindication of what was stated at Isa 10:27, that the yoke was not in the form of a collar. I brought the subject under the notice of Prof. Schegg, who wrote to me immediately after his return from his journey to Palestine to the following effect: “I saw many oxen ploughing in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and the neighbourhood of Ephesus; and in every case the yoke was a cross piece of wood laid upon the neck of the animal, and fastened to the pole of the plough by a cord which passed under the neck of the animal.”)
It is to this that אֲגֻדּוֹת, knots, refers. We cannot connect it with mutteh, a state of perverted right (Eze 9:9), as Hitzig does. רְצוּציִם are persons unjustly and forcibly oppressed even with cruelty; רָצַץ is a stronger synonym to עָשַׂק (e.g., Amo 4:1). In Isa 58:7 we have the same spirit of general humanity as in Job 31:13-23; Eze 18:7-8 (compare what James describes in Jam 1:27 as “pure religion and undefiled”). לֶחֶם (פָרַשׂ) פָרַץ is the usual phrase for κλᾶν (κλάζειν) ἄρτον. מְרוּדִים is the adjective to עֲנִיִּים, and apparently therefore must be derived from מָרַד: miserable men who have shown themselves refractory towards despotic rulers. But the participle mârūd cannot be found elsewhere; and the recommendation to receive political fugitives has a modern look. The parallels in Lam 1:7 and Lam 3:19 are conclusive evidence, that the word is intended as a derivative of רוּד, to wander about, and it is so rendered in the lxx, Targ., and Jerome (vagos). But מָרוֹד, pl. מְרוּדִים, is no adjective; and there is nothing to recommend the opinion, that by “wanderers” we are to understand Israelitish men. Ewald supposes that מרוּדִים may be taken as a part. hoph. for מוּרָדיִם, hunted away, like הממותים in 2Ki 11:2 (Keri הַמֻּמָתִים); but it cannot be shown that the language allowed of this shifting of a vowel-sound. We prefer to assume that מְרוּדִים (persecuted) is regarded as part. pass., even if only per metaplasmum, from מָרַד, a secondary form of רוּד (cf., מָכַס, מָלַץ, מָצַח, makuna). Isa 58:7 is still the virtual subject to אֶבְחָרֵהוּ צוֹם. The apodosis to the hypothetical כִּי commences with a perf. consec., which then passes into the pausal future תִתְעַלָּם. In hsilgnE:egaugnaL\מִבְשָׂרְךָ} (from thine own flesh) it is presupposed that all men form one united whole as being of the same flesh and blood, and that they form one family, owing to one another mutual love.