Isaiah 58:5

God asks whether mere outward humbling, bowing the head and lying in sackcloth, is the fast He chose. He rejects ritual that lacks genuine repentance and righteousness.

Cross-references · 19

• Dan 9:3–19I set my face to the Lord God, to seek by prayer and petitions, with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.
• Zech 7:5“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?
• Isa 49:8Yahweh says, “In an acceptable time I have answered you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you. I will preserve you, and give you for a covenant of the people, to raise up the land, to make them inherit the desolate heritage:
• Rom 12:2Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.
• Esth 4:16“Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day. I and my maidens will also fast the same way. Then I will go in to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.”
• Isa 61:2to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;
• Lev 16:29“It shall be a statute to you forever: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and shall do no kind of work, the native-born, or the stranger who lives as a foreigner among you:
• Ps 69:13But as for me, my prayer is to you, Yahweh, in an acceptable time. God, in the abundance of your loving kindness, answer me in the truth of your salvation.
• Luke 4:19and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”
• 2 Chr 20:3Jehoshaphat was alarmed, and set himself to seek to Yahweh. He proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
• Neh 9:1–2Now in the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, with sackcloth, and dirt on them.
• Ezra 10:6Then Ezra rose up from before God’s house, and went into the room of Jehohanan the son of Eliashib. When he came there, he ate no bread, nor drank water; for he mourned because of their trespass of the captivity.
• Esth 4:3In every province, wherever the king’s commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.
• 1 Pet 2:5You also, as living stones, are built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
• 1 Kgs 21:27–29When Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.
• Job 2:8He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes.
• Isa 58:3‘Why have we fasted,’ say they, ‘and you don’t see? Why have we afflicted our soul, and you don’t notice?’ “Behold, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, and oppress all your laborers.
• Jonah 3:5–8The people of Nineveh believed God; and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from their greatest even to their least.
• 2 Kgs 6:30When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes. Now he was passing by on the wall, and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth underneath on his body.

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