1 Cry with the throat and spare not. Lift up thy voice as a trumpet, and tell my people their offences and the house of Jacob their sins.
2 For me they seek day by day; and will know my ways, as a people that doth righteousness, and hath not forsaken the equity of their God.
3 They seek of me righteous judgments, and will draw nigh unto God. Why have we fasted and thou hast not looked upon it? Have humbled our souls, and thou wouldest not wit it?
4 Behold when ye fast, ye can find your own lusts, and can call cruelly on all your debtors. Ye fast to law and strive and to smite with fist wickedly. Fast not as ye now do, to make your voice to be heard upon high.
5 Should it be such a manner of fast that I should chose? A day that a man should hurt his soul in? Or to bow down his head like a bulrush? Or to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Shouldest thou call this a fast, and a day acceptable unto the LORD?
6 Or is not this rather the fast that I have chosen? To loose wicked bonds, and to unbind bundles of oppression? And to let the bruised go free? And that ye should break all manner yokes?
7 Yea, and to break the bread to the hungry; and to bring the poor that are harborless unto house; and when thou seest a naked, that thou clothe him and that thou shouldest withdraw thyself from helping thine own flesh?
8 Then should the light break out as doth the dayspring, and then health should shortly bud out. And thy righteousness shall go before thee, and the glory of the LORD would come upon thee.
9 Then shouldest thou call, and the LORD answer; then shouldest thou cry, and he shall say, "Lo, here am I. For I the LORD thy God am merciful."
10 Yea If thou layest away thy burdens, and holdest thy fingers, and ceasest from blasphemous talking; if thou hast compassion upon the hungry, and refreshest the troubled soul: Then shall thy light spring out in the darkness, and thy darkness shall be as the noon day.
11 The LORD shall ever be thy guide, and satisfy the desire of thine heart, and fill thy bones with marrow. Thou shalt be like a fresh watered garden, and like the fountain of water, that never leaveth running.
12 Then the places that have ever been waste, shall be builded of thee: there shalt thou lay a foundation for many kindreds. Thou shalt be called the maker-up of hedges, and the builder-again of the way of the Sabbath.
13 Yea, if thou turn thy feet from the Sabbath, so that thou do not the thing which pleaseth thyself in my holy day: then shalt thou be called unto the pleasant, holy, and glorious Sabbath of the LORD, where thou shalt be in honor - so that thou do not after thine own imagination, neither seek thine own will, nor speak thine own words.
14 Then shalt thou have thy pleasure in the LORD, which shall carry thee high above the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the LORD's own mouth hath so promised.