Isaiah 58:6

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? or, approve, as before, Isaiah 58:5: or, Ought not such a fast to be accompanied with such things as these? where he is now about to show the concomitants of a true fast, with reference to the thing in hand, namely, to exercise works of charity, consisting partly in acts of self-denial, in this verse, and partly in doing good to those in distress, in the next. In this verse he instanceth in some particulars, and closeth with a general. The bands of wickedness, viz. the cruel obligations of usury and oppression. The heavy burdens, Heb. bundles; a metaphor possibly pointing at those many bundles of writings, as bills, bonds, mortgages, and acknowledgments, which the usurers had lying by them: The former may relate to unjust and unlawful obligations extorted by force or fear, which he would have cancelled; this latter to just debts contracted through poverty and necessity, the rigour whereof he would have abated, whether.by reason of loans upon too hard conditions, called a drawing them into a net, Psalms 10:9, and so much is implied, Proverbs 6:5; or under too hard circumstances, whether they were loans of food or money, of which the people so bitterly complained, Nehemiah 5:1, and is expressly forbid, Exodus 22:25. For debts may be called burdens,

1. Because they lie as a great load upon the debtor's spirits, under which whoever can walk up and down easily doth not so much excel in fortitude as in folly.

2. Because they usually introduce poverty, slavery, imprisonment, &c. The oppressed; either in a large sense, viz. any ways grieved or vexed, whether by the gripings of usury, or the bondage of slavery accompanied with cruel usage; or more peculiarly (according to some) relating to their being confined and shut up in prisons, which latter sense the word free may possibly seem to favour, the former being comprised in that general expression that follows of breaking every yoke. Heb. broken, i.e. like a bruised reed, so crushed and weakened, that they have no consistency or ability, either to satisfy their creditors, or support themselves; and we usually call such insolvent persons broken that cannot look upon themselves to be sui juris, but wholly at another's mercy: you have the same kind of oppression, and the same words used, Amos 4:1. That ye break every yoke, namely, that is grievous, a metaphor; i.e. free them from all sorts of vexation, whatever it is that held them under any bondage. The LXX. refer it to bonds and writings; but it seems more general: the word properly signifies that stick or cord that holds both ends of the yoke, that it spring not out, or fall off from the neck on which it is laid, Exodus 25:14, where the same word is used for staves; and called the bands of the yoke, Leviticus 26:13, I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you go upright; the same thing that God would have them do here.