1. Call out with full throat. This injunction is directed to the prophet, and what follows is the content of his clarion call.

2. let them seek. Verb tenses and verbal modes in biblical poetry are notoriously ambiguous. Many interpreters understand the verbs in this verse as present tense, but since what is stated contradicts the preceding proclamation of Israel’s “crime” and “offense,” translations based on this understanding have to preface the verse with “yet” or “to be sure,” for which there is no warrant in the Hebrew. It makes better sense to construe all the verbs in this verse as cohortatives: would that they would seek God and the knowledge of His ways, in contrast to what they are actually doing.

3. Why did we fast and You did not see? Communal fasts were instituted in times of crisis—for example, during a famine or a plague—as one can see in Psalm 90. Members of the community not only refrained from eating but also adopted mourning practices such as the wearing of sackcloth and sprinkling ashes on the head. The underlying idea was that such practices of mortification would engage the compassion of the deity, and the disaster would end.

afflicted ourselves. This idiom, ʿinuy nefesh, is a synonym for fasting, and in rabbinic Hebrew the first of these two words would generate another noun for “fast,” taʿanit.

In your fast-day you found pleasure / while all your affairs you pursued. The consideration of sincere versus hypocritical fasting led to the apt selection of this chapter to be chanted in the morning service for Yom Kippur, the great fast-day.

4. to strike with a wicked fist. The inveighing here and in the lines that follow against social injustice may reflect, as some scholars contend, the dire state of Judahite society in the early decades of the fifth century B.C.E., but it is difficult to link any of this to specific historical circumstances. Exploitation of the poor, after all, and indifference to suffering are prevalent enough in virtually all societies, including affluent twenty-first-century America. That is precisely what imparts a sense of timeless relevance to this prophecy.

5. afflicts himself. A more idiomatic rendering would be “mortifies himself,” although that, unfortunately, is rhythmically ponderous.

6. the downtrodden. The Hebrew retsutsim is usually translated as “oppressed,” but the term requires a more physical English equivalent because the literal sense of the Hebrew is “smashed,” “shattered.”

7. your own flesh. The sense is “your fellow human being,” who shares your condition as a creature of flesh and blood.

9. Then shall you call. The obvious antithesis is to the fasting supplicant who goes through the motions of prayer and calls to God while ignoring injustice.

the mocking finger. The literal meaning is “extending of the finger.” This idiom is not attested elsewhere, and so the translation is based on the context.

12. they shall rebuild the ancient ruins. This formulation does seem to be directed to the challenges facing the Judahites in the early years of the return from exile.

restorer of paths for dwellers. The Hebrew uses an infinitive, “to dwell,” but since paths are not places of habitation, “for dwellers” may be the intended meaning.

13. If you refrain from journey on the sabbath. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “If you draw back your foot from the sabbath.” This translation follows Blenkinsopp’s proposal that “foot” stands in for “traveling,” even though others think it suggests trampling the sabbath. In this period, the sabbath was becoming increasingly important, and prohibitions were evolving that would eventually issue in the elaborate rabbinic laws of the sabbath.

speaking in vain. The Hebrew says, cryptically, “speaking a word.” Since conversation on the sabbath was obviously not forbidden, the phrase may suggest something like what is indicated in this translation, though others think it has to do with business pronouncements.

14. make you thrive. The literal sense of the Hebrew verb is “feed you.”