Isaiah 58 · a question people ask
Is this chapter against fasting?
It doesn't tell them to stop. It asks, "Is this the fast that I have chosen?" (58:5), and then names one: "Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to release the bonds of wickedness" (58:6), and "Isn’t it to distribute your bread to the hungry" (58:7). The complaint it answers is about a fast kept while they "oppress all your laborers" (58:3) and "fast for strife and contention" (58:4). The chapter doesn't say whether the fast it names is kept in place of going without food or along with it, and these notes don't either. Other books call to fasting: "turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning" (Joel 2:12). And another asks a question like this one: "did you at all fast to me, really to me?" (Zechariah 7:5). The chapter on Ezra 8 asks Does fasting make God answer? and sets Isaiah 58:3-6 beside Ezra's fast; it isn't repeated here.
The verses
““Yet even now,” says the LORD, “turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.””
““Speak to all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh month for these seventy years, did you at all fast to me, really to me?”
“Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a straight way for us, for our little ones, and for all our possessions. For I was ashamed to ask of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy on the way, because we had spoken to the king, saying, “The hand of our God is on all those who seek him, for good; but his power and his wrath is against all those who forsake him.” So we fasted and begged our God for this, and he granted our request.”