Isaiah 58:13-14 If you turn away your foot from the sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight… His supposed that Isaiah required the Jews to keep what has been called a Puritanical Sabbath. I believe that this is a complete misconception of the prophet's meaning. Their "own ways," which the people were forbidden to follow on the Sabbath, were the common secular labours of the week. Doing their own pleasure" has no reference to recreation or amusement. Some translators render it doing their "own business;" but it probably means here, as it constantly means elsewhere, doing "what they liked." Luther translates it admirably, doing their "own will." They were to spend the Sabbath, as God had commanded them, in rest; they were not at liberty to follow their own inclination by carrying on their ordinary trade. Their "own words, which they were not to speak on the Sabbath, were the words in which their business was transacted; words which, like the business itself, belonged to the other days of the week. What the prophet forbids on the seventh day is what the Commandment forbids — not pleasure, but work. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: |
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