Isaiah 58

The charge is public: trumpet, not whisper. Transgression belongs to “my people,” sins to “the house of Jacob.” Privilege does not mute the cry.

The word is meant to be heard and answered. A people can still turn when their sins are named. Holding back would be false kindness; the trumpet is mercy with volume.

Calvin: these words belong with what precedes. Cry with the throat—at full stretch. Spare not: hypocrites cannot be aroused but by spurs. Thunderbolts of words are needed where conscience is lulled. Paul imitates this against those who boast in the Law (Rom 2:17–21).

The hope of peace aims at a little flock; the threat of war terrifies the multitude. “House of Jacob” is bitter mockery of those who degenerated from the fathers. No privilege hinders them from hearing what they deserve.

Wesley: they cover wickedness with a profession of religion. Many take some pleasure in knowing God’s will and yet do not conform their lives to it—as if they were righteous and not guilty of apostasy. They ask as if resolved to observe, and approach the temple to hear and sacrifice.

Classical Arminians: delight in nearness can be true or painted. The daily seeking is not nothing; it is unfinished. God still wants the life to match the inquiry. Hypocrisy is a chosen cover, not an assigned doom.

Calvin: hypocrites have answers ready—We fear, serve, love God. He affirms they do nothing purely; everything is pretended and of no value before God, who demands the whole heart (Gen 17:1). Drag them out of lurking-places or doctrine produces no good effect.

They appear to labor to serve God, yet hearts are estranged. The chief point of religion is to inquire into God’s will; the wicked copy believers and sometimes seem to exceed the best of men.

Wesley: afflicted—defrauded appetites with fasting (Lev 16:29). Ye find—you pursue your own desires; though you abstain from food, you do not mortify sinful inclinations. Exact—money lent, required with usury or rigor when charity or God’s law commanded release or forbearance.

The complaint assumes God owes a hearing to the fast. Pleasure and oppressed workers on the same day unmask it. They could have loosed the laborers; they used the holy day to squeeze them.

Calvin: feigned worshippers not only are blinded but swell with pride and murmur when God presses hard. They think fastings satisfy him and, on that pretense, carry themselves high against the prophets. He interprets the complaint as a rebuke of the prophets’ sharpness, not of captivity’s harshness.

They do not lay aside fleshly dispositions. Devoted to desires, they remain unmoved by any anxiety to repent. Light matters are washed by exercises; the camel is swallowed (Matt 23:24).

Wesley: fasting days meant for imploring mercy and showing compassion are employed in injuring brethren, servants, or debtors. Heard—in strife, by way of ostentation.

A fist on a fast day is a chosen contradiction. Voices want heaven’s ear while they strike earth’s neighbor. The Lord will not hear that volume. The fast could still become mercy if the hitting stopped.

Calvin connects this with the heart’s fruits. Duties of the second table show what we are. Where cheating, plunder, and extortion prevail, there is no fear of God. Fasting gives encouragement to sin and a looser rein to lusts—Lent used to calculate usury, Masses to contrive cheating.

He forbids such men to offer solemn prayer with fasting; they will only be punished more severely. God pays no regard to external works not preceded by sincere fear. Jewish fasting was appointed; the false confidence was censurable.

Wesley: chosen—approve of, accept. Wilt thou call this a fast—nothing in it but dumb signs, no deep humiliation or reformation. An acceptable day is one God will approve.

God still chooses a fast. Reed-heads and ashes can be true or theater. The issue is whether the day produces a turned life. Calling it acceptable does not make it so; choosing what he chooses does.

Calvin: fasting is neither desired nor approved in itself, but as directed to its true end. He did not wish it abolished, but the opinion that worship consists in it while true godliness is despised. Men must not define worship; he refers us to his will. To choose a thing is to take pleasure in it.

The bulrush is straight yet easily bent—hypocrites bow the head as if under leanness. Sackcloth and ashes were holy when joined to repentance; here they are separated from reality. Fasting is an appendage to prayer, not a meritorious work.

Wesley: the bands—cruel obligations of usury and oppression. The chosen fast is justice toward the bound.

Classical Arminians: loosing and breaking are verbs a people can do under grace. Yokes in Isaiah’s Judah are historic—debt, forced labor, the squeezed worker of v. 3—not a modern slogan. The same God who gathers outcasts (56:8) wants his house to stop making new ones.

Calvin: duties of piety are to relieve the wretched. He does not abolish fasting but shows what God chiefly recommends. Fasting is approved when accompanied by the love we owe our fellow-men. Purity of heart is described by its fruits. Second-table duties include the whole Law, for we cannot love neighbors sincerely unless we love them in God.

Hypocrites are cruel in distressing the poor. Bindings, heavy burdens, oppressed set free, every yoke broken—variety of words for one demand. The Spirit must reign or neighbor-love does not thrive (Gal 5:22).

Wesley: cast out—wanderers with no abiding place. To thy house—be hospitable. Hide not—seek no excuse. Thy own flesh—we can look on no man but there we contemplate our own flesh; it is barbarous not to love and succor him. Feed, shelter, clothe him as thou wouldest thyself in his circumstances.

Bread, house, covering are concrete. Hiding is a decision. Grace that opened a house of prayer for all peoples (56:7) now opens a house for the poor of one’s own streets.

Calvin: after forbidding injustice, he shows we ought to exercise kindness toward the needy. Do not injure, and do not refuse assistance. Do not relieve neighbors by plunder. “Break bread” takes away the excuse of greedy men who say, This is mine. It is thine on condition that thou share it.

All men universally—one of whom we cannot behold without seeing our own flesh. Greatest inhumanity is to despise those in whom we recognize our likeness.

Wesley: light—happiness and prosperity, darting forth as the sun through a cloud. Health—the same thing. Righteousness—the reward of thy righteousness, as the morning-star before the sun. Glory—his power and providence as rear guard, like the angel of his presence out of Egypt.

Light follows the loosed yoke, not the reed-bow. Healing is promised as gift after obedience grace enables. Restoration language stays canonical—dawn, health, glory at the back.

Calvin: God is not too rigorous. Then—hypocrites are far from true worship. Light means prosperity; darkness a wretched life. Health: they had wasted under God’s vengeance. Righteousness shall go before—acknowledgment of holiness, or restored order. The glory of Jehovah will gather thee.

When God is pacified, testimony of righteousness becomes visible. They were reproached while they suffered for sins; they shall be adorned with his glory. The particle then convicts the empty fast.

Wesley: he will give an effectual demonstration that he hears. Here I am—ready at hand to help. Take away the yoke, the scornful finger, any kind of evil words.

“Here I am” is the opposite of 57:11, where long silence was abused. Calling is still a free act; answering is God’s. Finger-pointing and wicked speech can be taken away. The fast that reaches heaven starts by shutting the insult.

Calvin: the chief part of happiness is if God listen; nothing more miserable than to have him for an enemy. He attributes to our prayers what he bestows by free grace, lest kindness encourage sloth. “Behold, here I am” is a practical declaration that he is near and reconciled.

“If”—cease to annoy brethren; abstain from violence and deceit. The yoke includes all annoyances offered to the poor. Pointing the finger is threat, cruelty, violence. Speech of vanity injures by deceit. Concealed malice or open violence—every iniquity is one of the two.

Wesley: draw out—open a store for the needy. Thy soul—affection, pity, compassion. In the very darkness of affliction thou shalt have comfort.

Pouring out is more than leftover bread. Desire of the afflicted is to be satisfied, not managed. Light in darkness is restoration mercy, held out to a people who will spend themselves. Gloom can become noon; that is promise, not flattery of the still-yoked.

Calvin: two parts of the duty—feeling of mercy, then the work itself. It would not be enough to perform acts of kindness without a warm disposition. “If I give all my goods… and have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:3). To pour out the soul is to bewail their distresses as our own.

“Light”—the same promise under the same metaphor. Darkness is adversity; light is prosperity. There is no reason to blame God for severe punishment; they would be delivered if they sincerely worshipped. Sudden prosperity shall spring up.

Wesley: guide—like a shepherd, continually, as in the wilderness. Satisfy—plenty when others are in scarcity. Make fat—against famine’s wasted flesh. A garden—if thou relieve the poor, thou shalt never be poor. Fail not—not a land-flood soon dried; a spring of blessing that will never fail.

Scorched places still get a guide. The garden is gift matching the poured-out soul of v. 10. Waters that do not fail preach a faithful Lord, not a technique for never being in drought.

Calvin: God will be their guide so they lack nothing. He “conducts” when we feel he goes before us. Aid shall not be short; he never forsakes in the middle of the journey. Satisfied amidst deepest poverty: his blessing is worth more than abundant rains. They may not be free of famine, yet he will nourish them.

Bones almost bare shall be made fat. The fountain of kindness never dries if we do not stop its course by our own fault. Causes of barrenness are not to be sought anywhere else than in themselves.

Wesley: they shall be of thee—thy posterity. Waste places—cities long waste. The breach—walls demolished by judgment. Paths overgrown, recovered so ancient cities may be re-inhabited.

Rebuilt ruins are Isaiah’s own map—return, walls, streets. Repairer of the breach is a name a people may yet wear if the fast is the one he chooses. Foundations of many generations are a trust, not a trophy.

Calvin: frightful desolation in captivity—country a wilderness, temple razed. Deserts of the age because repair could not be immediate. From a people seemingly half dead shall arise architects to rebuild Jerusalem. Not limited to Zerubbabel and Nehemiah; it includes the later restoration of the Church.

They shall be repairers of the breach. The Lord makes use of their labor; ascribe everything to his power. Assured confidence when we know it is his work, though the world mock.

Wesley: if thou take no unnecessary journeys or servile works. A delight—duties with cheerfulness, delighting in its ordinances. Holy—dedicated to God.

The same day that marked foreigners and eunuchs in 56:2–6 now marks Israel’s own feet. Calling it a delight is a turn—grace-enabled joy in what God set apart, not gloom as a reed.

Calvin: the foot denotes the whole course of life. Turning the foot from the Sabbath is ceasing to wander in sinful desires. True observation is not external idleness but self-denial—abstaining from injustice, lusts, and wicked thoughts. They would not journey or cook, yet harassed neighbors.

The word refers to God—nothing more pleasing to him than the Sabbath and sincere worship. Will, speeches, actions: whoever serves properly must renounce flesh and will. The ceremony is abolished; the truth remains. Christ died and rose; we have a continual sabbath, released that the Spirit may work mightily in us.

Wesley: in the Lord—in his goodness and faithfulness, in the assurance of his love. To ride—above the reach of danger. Feed thee—the good of Canaan promised to Jacob (Gen 35:12).

Delight in the Lord is the end, not riding as a prize for fasting theater. Heritage of Jacob is the old oath, still food for a people who loose yokes and honor the day. The LORD’s mouth has spoken: the invitation and the warning stand together.

Calvin: the people take no delight in God because they provoke him. If they framed life in obedience, they would be his delight and he theirs. It is owing to themselves that they do not lead a cheerful life. Ride on high places: return and safe habitation in the lofty land. Heritage of the fathers, once enjoyed, then lost, promised again.

They deal not with a mortal man. He who pronounces is God the Judge—rebuking hypocrites, showing the true Sabbath, promising it will be well if they worship rightly. The LORD’s mouth has spoken it.