Interpretation: A Journal of

Between Text and Sermon Bible and Theology

2015, Vol. 69(4) 460­–462
© The Author(s) 2015
Isaiah 58:1–12 Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/0020964315592138
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Michael Barram
St. Mary’s College of California, Moraga, CA
Email: mbarram@stmarys-ca.edu

Isaiah 58:1–12 indicts the people of God for feigning devotion to God, as their religious conduct is
belied by the presence of economic and social injustice in their midst. Today, we face what seem
to be intractable forms of economic and social injustice, globally and locally, coupled with an
increasingly marginalized church, in terms of its often indifferent, timid, or intermittent responses
and its waning influence within the wider cultural landscape. Responsible exegetical and homiletic
engagement with Isa 58:1–12 must challenge the church to reflect and ultimately act upon the
prophet’s challenging implications for individual and communal discipleship today.

“As if” Piety

God instructs the prophet to “announce to my people their rebellion,” a message that catches the
house of Jacob (v. 1) by surprise. Although the people purport to be eager to serve God, their
actions betray other motives. Divine exasperation is palpable, albeit poetic: “day after day they
seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did
not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw
near to God” (v. 2, emphasis added).

The people pursue God as if they were committed to God, but the evidence of their behavior
exposes their falsehood. The message here is that without righteousness and justice in the social
sphere, their piety is worthless. In verse 2, the Hebrew wordplay involving forms of mišpāt (often
rendered “justice,” but translated in the nrsv first as “ordinance” and a second time as “judgments”
[in the plural]) and sĕdāqâ/ sedeq (“righteousness” / “righteous”) is noteworthy: The people seek
“righteous judgments” (mišpĕtê sedeq) from God, though they themselves have not acted with
“righteousness” (sĕdāqâ), as they have failed to obey the “ordinance” (mišpāt) of God. In short,
they have not acted toward others as they hope God will act toward them.

Therefore, while the people act as if they are devoted to God, this passage indicates that they
live their lives as if they actually have no interest in God. The text suggests that the people are not
merely naïve; rather, they are obtuse and obstinate. Their perception of the situation in which they
find themselves is completely flawed.

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Between Text and Sermon 461

Theodicy is Not the Fundamental Problem

In verse 3, we hear the people cry out to God in in reaction to what they perceive to be a grave
problem of theodicy: “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not
notice?” From their perspective, actively engaging in fasting so as to mourn their difficult circum-
stances and to demonstrate their pious humility indicates their desire to find and serve God. Why
does God seem so uncaring, disinterested, and silent? Where is God? Is their prayer and fasting a
waste of time? The people cannot comprehend why God is so absent and aloof, particularly when
they are so attentive to seeking after God.

The prophet’s initial response articulates an assessment, from a divine perspective, of the
real reasons for the people’s pious conduct: their fasting serves themselves rather than God. The
Hebrew of verse 3 begins, “Look, on your fast day you seek your [own] delight.” In other words,
whereas God’s people claim to take great pleasure in seeking God, what they really seek is their
own pleasure; the entire process is self-serving. Moreover, they “oppress all their workers” (v. 3),
effectively inflicting upon others a form of the dehumanizing treatment from which their ancestors
had been rescued by God during the exodus. Indeed, the prophet asserts, the fasting that God’s
people do leads to nothing but fighting and violence (v. 4a). There should be no surprise, then, that
such religious observances “will not make your voice heard on high” (v. 4b). The people have only
themselves to blame for their problems and for God’s apparent absence. Verse 5 concludes the first
part of the indictment with a biting rhetorical question that drives home the notion that feigned
humility and mourning do not represent “the fast that I choose.”

It is clear, then, from the outset of the passage that the prophet has not been sent to reflect on
a “theodicy” problem so much as to diagnose and expose what we might call an “anthropodicy”
problem. God appears to be absent—and things are not going well for God’s people—not because
there is a lack of divine justice but because there is a lack of human justice in society. The critical
questions are not “Where is God when we experience difficulties?” or “Why do bad things happen
to God’s people?” but rather “Why do God’s people not show up when the needy are suffering?”
According to this text, the problem of injustice concerns not the absence and silence of God, but
the absence and silence of God’s people.

“The Fast That I Choose”

Following immediately on the heels of such a spirited rebuke, Isa 58:6–12 then proceeds to identify
exactly the kind of “fast that I [God] choose” (v. 6). Strikingly, the “fast” that God truly desires
does not have to do so much with foregoing food—an activity rooted in privation and negation
(see v. 5)—as it does with activities rooted in abundance and positive efforts to foster well-being
and justice. God’s chosen fast is one in which “the bonds of injustice” are “loosened,” in which
“the oppressed go free” (see Luke 4:18), and in which every “yoke” is “broken” (v. 6). Further, the
fast that God seeks involves concrete behaviors that embody compassion and justice (v. 7). When
God’s people act—then God will respond, whatever their needs (vv. 8–9a).

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462 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 69(4)

Verses 9b–12 echo much of verses 6–9a. If the people change their ways by attending to daily
issues of justice and the needs of others (as opposed to focusing, intermittently, on fasting, which
can end up being fairly or even exclusively self-referential), then things will be the way they should
be. The examples of authentic fasting are concrete and tangible, such as “remov[ing] the yoke”
of oppression (v. 9b) and “offer[ing] your food to the hungry and satisfy[ing] the needs of the
afflicted” (v. 10). When such behaviors characterize the people of God, the Lord will guide them,
and they will endure (v. 11). Their “ancient ruins shall be rebuilt.” Having concretely embodied
their vocation to righteousness and justice, they will be known for generations to come as the com-
munity that made their unjust streets livable again (v. 12).

God’s Chosen Fast and the Missional Vocation of God’s People

Isaiah 58:1–12 testifies to a purposeful God who does not remain neutral in the face of injustice, a
God who chooses a particular kind of fast rooted in justice and righteousness. This purposiveness
of God—this missio Dei—defines the mission into which God’s people have been called. What
would it look like in our contemporary contexts to participate faithfully in the fast that God has
chosen?

Isaiah 58:1–12 suggests that our enthusiasm for the plans and activities we devise may not be
as pleasing to God as we assume. Perhaps we choose to fast (in one form or another, literally or
figuratively) in ways that seem legitimate to us, when the fast that God chooses is something else
entirely. Do we seek God with an “as if” kind of piety today? How do our economic and social
behaviors contribute to an “anthropodicy” problem?

This text indicates that God is choosing—indeed, has chosen—economic justice as the preferred
form of fasting. Is this the fast in which Christian communities are willing to participate? What
would it look like, concretely, to make such a fast? These are the kinds of critical questions the
church must face if it is to live out its missional vocation faithfully in today’s world.

It is striking that Jesus quotes a line from Isa 58:6 (LXX; “to let the oppressed go free”) in his
Nazareth synagogue speech as he announces the good news (Luke 4:18–21; the rest of the quo-
tation comes from Isaiah 61). The message of Isa 58:1–12 reflects, from the perspective of the
prophet, God’s most fundamental, missional concerns. Indeed, the passage comes very close to
articulating the heart of the good news that Jesus announced. The post-exilic community was to
be a people whose true worship would free the oppressed. The church today, swimming upstream
against currents of powerful, imperialistic, and self-oriented market forces must wrestle in serious
and sustained ways with embodying faithfully the fast that God chooses. Only then can we begin
to assume that what we do as a community of faith in mission is, in fact, what God wants us to do.

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