‘For what reason did we fast and you did not see, and did we afflict our soul and you would take no note?’ Indeed you people were finding delight in the very day of your fasting, when there were all your toilers that you kept driving to work.

If their fasting was of a real kind, an abstention from ordinarily rightful things, why were they at the same time heartlessly driving their “toilers,” their own brothers, to work, thus heaping oppressive affliction upon them? Formal abstinence on fast days on the part of employers who acted as slave drivers to those toiling for them was truly hypocritical. It gained no favor or approval from God, nor did it give him any pleasure. The case is the same with Christendom, the observer of fasts, today, for she claims to worship the very God who inspired Isaiah to make public the revolt and sins of God’s chosen people.