Psalms 40:6-8

40:6 Receiving sacrifices and offerings are not your primary concern. ¹ 

You make that quite clear to me! ² 

You do not ask for burnt sacrifices and sin offerings.

40:7 Then I say,

“Look! I come!

What is written in the scroll pertains to me. ³ 

40:8 I want to do what pleases you, ⁴  my God.

Your law dominates my thoughts.” ⁵ 

Isaiah 50:5-6

50:5 The sovereign Lord has spoken to me clearly; ⁶ 

I have not rebelled,

I have not turned back.

50:6 I offered my back to those who attacked, ⁷ 

my jaws to those who tore out my beard;

I did not hide my face

from insults and spitting.

Matthew 26:39

26:39 Going a little farther, he threw himself down with his face to the ground and prayed, ⁸  “My Father, if possible, ⁹  let this cup ¹⁰  pass from me! Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Matthew 26:42

26:42 He went away a second time and prayed, ¹¹  “My Father, if this cup ¹²  cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will must be done.”

John 4:34

4:34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me ¹³  and to complete ¹⁴  his work. ¹⁵ 

John 15:10

15:10 If you obey ¹⁶  my commandments, you will remain ¹⁷  in my love, just as I have obeyed ¹⁸  my Father’s commandments and remain ¹⁹  in his love.

Hebrews 5:8-9

5:8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things he suffered. ²⁰  5:9 And by being perfected in this way, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him,

Hebrews 10:7-9

10:7 “Then I said, ‘Here I am: ²¹  I have come – it is written of me in the scroll of the book – to do your will, O God.’” ²² 

10:8 When he says above, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you did not desire nor did you take delight in them” ²³  (which are offered according to the law), 10:9 then he says, “Here I am: I have come to do your will.” ²⁴  He does away with ²⁵  the first to establish the second.

[40:6]  ¹ tn Heb “sacrifice and offering you do not desire.” The statement is exaggerated for the sake of emphasis (see Ps 51:16 as well). God is pleased with sacrifices, but his first priority is obedience and loyalty (see 1 Sam 15:22). Sacrifices and offerings apart from genuine allegiance are meaningless (see Isa 1:11-20).

[40:6]  ² tn Heb “ears you hollowed out for me.” The meaning of this odd expression is debated (this is the only collocation of “hollowed out” and “ears” in the OT). It may have been an idiomatic expression referring to making a point clear to a listener. The LXX has “but a body you have prepared for me,” a reading which is followed in Heb 10:5.

[40:7]  ³ tn Heb “in the roll of the scroll it is written concerning me.” Apparently the psalmist refers to the law of God (see v. 8), which contains the commandments God desires him to obey. If this is a distinctly royal psalm, then the psalmist/king may be referring specifically to the regulations of kingship prescribed in Deut 17:14-20. See P. C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50 (WBC), 315.

[40:8]  ⁴ tn Or “your will.”

[40:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “your law [is] in the midst of my inner parts.” The “inner parts” are viewed here as the seat of the psalmist’s thought life and moral decision making.

[50:5]  ⁶ tn Or perhaps, “makes me obedient.” The text reads literally, “has opened for me an ear.”

[50:6]  ⁷ tn Or perhaps, “who beat [me].”

[26:39]  ⁸ tn Grk “ground, praying and saying.” Here the participle λέγων (legwn) is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.

[26:39]  ⁹ tn Grk “if it is possible.”

[26:39]  ¹⁰ sn This cup alludes to the wrath of God that Jesus would experience (in the form of suffering and death) for us. See Ps 11:6; 75:8-9; Isa 51:17, 19, 22 for this figure.

[26:42]  ¹¹ tn Grk “saying.” The participle λέγων (legwn) is redundant here in contemporary English and has not been translated.

[26:42]  ¹² tn Grk “this”; the referent (the cup) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:34]  ¹³ sn The one who sent me refers to the Father.

[4:34]  ¹⁴ tn Or “to accomplish.”

[4:34]  ¹⁵ tn The substantival ἵνα (Jina) clause has been translated as an English infinitive clause.

[15:10]  ¹⁶ tn Or “keep.”

[15:10]  ¹⁷ tn Or “reside.”

[15:10]  ¹⁸ tn Or “kept.”

[15:10]  ¹⁹ tn Or “reside.”

[5:8]  ²⁰ sn There is a wordplay in the Greek text between the verbs “learned” (ἔμαθεν, emaqen) and “suffered” (ἔπαθεν, epaqen).

[10:7]  ²¹ tn Grk “behold,” but this construction often means “here is/there is” (cf. BDAG 468 s.v. ἰδού 2).

[10:7]  ²² sn A quotation from Ps 40:6-8 (LXX). The phrase a body you prepared for me (in v. 5) is apparently an interpretive expansion of the HT reading “ears you have dug out for me.”

[10:8]  ²³ sn Various phrases from the quotation of Ps 40:6 in Heb 10:5-6 are repeated in Heb 10:8.

[10:9]  ²⁴ tc The majority of mss, especially the later ones (א² 0278^vid 1739 Ï lat), have ὁ θεός (Jo qeo", “God”) at this point, while most of the earliest and best witnesses lack such an explicit addressee (so Ì⁴⁶ א* A C D K P Ψ 33 1175 1881 2464 al). The longer reading is a palpable corruption, apparently motivated in part by the wording of Ps 40:8 (39:9 LXX) and by the word order of this same verse as quoted in Heb 10:7.

[10:9]  ²⁵ tn Or “abolishes.”