Isaiah 58:6 [Is] not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Ver. 6. Is not this the fast that I have chosen?] There is a threefold fast, from meat, mirth, sin; this last crowns both the former, and yet we say not (as the Papists falsely say we hold) that fasting is no more but a moral temperance, a fasting from sin, a matter of policy.
To loose the bands of wickedness,] i.e., Iuramentum, literariam cautionem, vincula, carceres, servitutem; the unjust bonds and obligations of usurers and oppressors, whereby poor non-solvents were imprisoned or embondaged. These are also here further called "heavy burdens" and "yokes," as elsewhere "nets"; Psa 10:9 that is, saith Chrysostom, bonds, debts, mortgages.
And to let the oppressed go free.] Heb., The bruised or broken, scil., in their estates.
And that ye break every yoke.] Cancel every unjust writing, say the Septuagint. They took twelve in the hundred in Nehemiah's time; this was a yoke intolerable. "I pray you let us leave off this usury," saith he. Isa 5:10 At this day the Jews are in all places permitted to strain up their usury to eighteen in the hundred upon the Christians; a but then they are used, as the friars, to suck from the meanest, and to be sucked by the greatest.
a Specul. Europ.