Psalms 50:8-9

50:8 I am not condemning ¹  you because of your sacrifices,

or because of your burnt sacrifices that you continually offer me. ² 

50:9 I do not need to take ³  a bull from your household

or goats from your sheepfolds.

Psalms 51:16-17

51:16 Certainly ⁴  you do not want a sacrifice, or else I would offer it; ⁵ 

you do not desire a burnt sacrifice. ⁶ 

51:17 The sacrifices God desires are a humble spirit ⁷  –

O God, a humble and repentant heart ⁸  you will not reject. ⁹ 

Proverbs 21:3

21:3 To do righteousness and justice

is more acceptable ¹⁰  to the Lord than sacrifice. ¹¹ 

Isaiah 1:11-17

1:11 “Of what importance to me are your many sacrifices?” ¹² 

says the Lord.

“I am stuffed with ¹³  burnt sacrifices

of rams and the fat from steers.

The blood of bulls, lambs, and goats

I do not want. ¹⁴ 

1:12 When you enter my presence,

do you actually think I want this –

animals trampling on my courtyards? ¹⁵ 

1:13 Do not bring any more meaningless ¹⁶  offerings;

I consider your incense detestable! ¹⁷ 

You observe new moon festivals, Sabbaths, and convocations,

but I cannot tolerate sin-stained celebrations! ¹⁸ 

1:14 I hate your new moon festivals and assemblies;

they are a burden

that I am tired of carrying.

1:15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,

I look the other way; ¹⁹ 

when you offer your many prayers,

I do not listen,

because your hands are covered with blood. ²⁰ 

1:16 ²¹ Wash! Cleanse yourselves!

Remove your sinful deeds ²² 

from my sight.

Stop sinning!

1:17 Learn to do what is right!

Promote justice!

Give the oppressed reason to celebrate! ²³ 

Take up the cause of the orphan!

Defend the rights of the widow! ²⁴ 

Jeremiah 7:22-23

7:22 Consider this: ²⁵  When I spoke to your ancestors after I brought them out of Egypt, I did not merely give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices. 7:23 I also explicitly commanded them: ²⁶  “Obey me. If you do, I ²⁷  will be your God and you will be my people. Live exactly the way I tell you ²⁸  and things will go well with you.”

Hosea 6:6

6:6 For I delight in faithfulness, not simply in sacrifice;

I delight ²⁹  in acknowledging God, not simply in whole burnt offerings. ³⁰ 

Amos 5:21-24

5:21 “I absolutely despise ³¹  your festivals!

I get no pleasure ³²  from your religious assemblies!

5:22 Even if you offer me burnt and grain offerings, ³³  I will not be satisfied;

I will not look with favor on your peace offerings of fattened calves. ³⁴ 

5:23 Take away from me your ³⁵  noisy songs;

I don’t want to hear the music of your stringed instruments. ³⁶ 

5:24 Justice must flow like torrents of water,

righteous actions ³⁷  like a stream that never dries up.

Micah 6:6-8

6:6 With what should I ³⁸  enter the Lord’s presence?

With what ³⁹  should I bow before the sovereign God? ⁴⁰ 

Should I enter his presence with burnt offerings,

with year-old calves?

6:7 Will the Lord accept a thousand rams,

or ten thousand streams of olive oil?

Should I give him my firstborn child as payment for my rebellion,

my offspring – my own flesh and blood – for my sin? ⁴¹ 

6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good,

and what the Lord really wants from you: ⁴² 

He wants you to ⁴³  promote ⁴⁴  justice, to be faithful, ⁴⁵ 

and to live obediently before ⁴⁶  your God.

Matthew 9:13

9:13 Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’ ⁴⁷  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 12:7

12:7 If ⁴⁸  you had known what this means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice,’ ⁴⁹  you would not have condemned the innocent.

Matthew 23:23

23:23 “Woe to you, experts in the law ⁵⁰  and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You give a tenth ⁵¹  of mint, dill, and cumin, ⁵²  yet you neglect what is more important in the law – justice, mercy, and faithfulness! You ⁵³  should have done these things without neglecting the others.

Hebrews 10:4-10

10:4 For the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins. ⁵⁴  10:5 So when he came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.

10:6 “Whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you took no delight in.

10:7 “Then I said, ‘Here I am: ⁵⁵  I have come – it is written of me in the scroll of the book – to do your will, O God.’” ⁵⁶ 

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” ⁵⁷  (which are offered according to the law), 10:9 then he says, “Here I am: I have come to do your will.” ⁵⁸  He does away with ⁵⁹  the first to establish the second. 10:10 By his will ⁶⁰  we have been made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

[50:8]  ¹ tn Or “rebuking.”

[50:8]  ² tn Heb “and your burnt sacrifices before me continually.”

[50:9]  ³ tn Or “I will not take.”

[51:16]  ⁴ tn Or “For.” The translation assumes the particle is asseverative (i.e., emphasizing: “certainly”). (Some translations that consider the particle asseverative leave it untranslated.) If taken as causal or explanatory (“for”, cf. NRSV), the verse would explain why the psalmist is pleading for forgiveness, rather than merely offering a sacrifice.

[51:16]  ⁵ tn The translation assumes that the cohortative is used in a hypothetical manner in a formally unmarked conditional sentence, “You do not want a sacrifice, should I offer [it]” (cf. NEB). For other examples of cohortatives in the protasis (“if” clause) of a conditional sentence, see GKC 320 §108.e. (It should be noted, however, that GKC understands this particular verse in a different manner. See GKC 320 §108.f, where it is suggested that the cohortative is part of an apodosis with the protasis being suppressed.)

[51:16]  ⁶ sn You do not desire a burnt sacrifice. The terminology used in v. 16 does not refer to expiatory sacrifices, but to dedication and communion offerings. This is not a categorical denial of the sacrificial system in general or of the importance of such offerings. The psalmist is talking about his specific situation. Dedication and communion offerings have their proper place in worship (see v. 19), but God requires something more fundamental, a repentant and humble attitude (see v. 17), before these offerings can have real meaning.

[51:17]  ⁷ tn Heb “a broken spirit.”

[51:17]  ⁸ tn Heb “a broken and crushed heart.”

[51:17]  ⁹ tn Or “despise.”

[21:3]  ¹⁰ tn The Niphal participle בָּחַר (bakhar, “to choose”) means “choice to the Lord” or “chosen of the Lord,” meaning “acceptable to the Lord”; cf. TEV “pleases the Lord more.”

[21:3]  ¹¹ sn The Lord prefers righteousness above religious service (e.g., Prov 15:8; 21:29; 1 Sam 15:22; Ps 40:6-8; Isa 1:11-17). This is not a rejection of ritual worship; rather, religious acts are without value apart from righteous living.

[1:11]  ¹² tn Heb “Why to me the multitude of your sacrifices?” The sarcastic rhetorical question suggests that their many sacrifices are of no importance to the Lord. This phrase answers the possible objection that an Israelite could raise in response to God’s indictment: “But we are offering the sacrifices you commanded!”

[1:11]  ¹³ tn The verb שָׂבַע (sava’, “be satisfied, full”) is often used of eating and/or drinking one’s fill. See BDB 959 s.v. שָׂבַע. Here sacrifices are viewed, in typical ancient Near Eastern fashion, as food for the deity. God here declares that he has eaten and drunk, as it were, his fill.

[1:11]  ¹⁴ sn In the chiastic structure of the verse, the verbs at the beginning and end highlight God’s displeasure, while the heaping up of references to animals, fat, and blood in the middle lines hints at why God wants no more of their sacrifices. They have, as it were, piled the food on his table and he needs no more.

[1:12]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “When you come to appear before me, who requires this from your hand, trampling of my courtyards?” The rhetorical question sarcastically makes the point that God does not require this parade of livestock. The verb “trample” probably refers to the eager worshipers and their sacrificial animals walking around in the temple area.

[1:13]  ¹⁶ tn Or “worthless” (NASB, NCV, CEV); KJV, ASV “vain.”

[1:13]  ¹⁷ sn Notice some of the other practices that Yahweh regards as “detestable”: homosexuality (Lev 18:22-30; 20:13), idolatry (Deut 7:25; 13:15), human sacrifice (Deut 12:31), eating ritually unclean animals (Deut 14:3-8), sacrificing defective animals (Deut 17:1), engaging in occult activities (Deut 18:9-14), and practicing ritual prostitution (1 Kgs 14:23).

[1:13]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “sin and assembly” (these two nouns probably represent a hendiadys). The point is that their attempts at worship are unacceptable to God because the people’s everyday actions in the socio-economic realm prove they have no genuine devotion to God (see vv. 16-17).

[1:15]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”

[1:15]  ²⁰ sn This does not just refer to the blood of sacrificial animals, but also the blood, as it were, of their innocent victims. By depriving the poor and destitute of proper legal recourse and adequate access to the economic system, the oppressors have, for all intents and purposes, “killed” their victims.

[1:16]  ²¹ sn Having demonstrated the people’s guilt, the Lord calls them to repentance, which will involve concrete action in the socio-economic realm, not mere emotion.

[1:16]  ²² sn This phrase refers to Israel’s covenant treachery (cf. Deut 28:10; Jer 4:4; 21:12; 23:2, 22; 25:5; 26:3; 44:22; Hos 9:15; Ps 28:4). In general, the noun ַמעַלְלֵיכֶם (ma’alleykhem) can simply be a reference to deeds, whether good or bad. However, Isaiah always uses it with a negative connotation (cf. 3:8, 10).

[1:17]  ²³ tn The precise meaning of this line is uncertain. The translation assumes an emendation of חָמוֹץ (khamots, “oppressor [?]”) to חָמוּץ (khamuts, “oppressed”), a passive participle from II חָמַץ (khamats, “oppress”; HALOT 329 s.v. II חמץ) and takes the verb II אָשַׁר (’ashar) in the sense of “make happy” (the delocutive Piel, meaning “call/pronounce happy,” is metonymic here, referring to actually effecting happiness). The parallelism favors this interpretation, for the next two lines speak of positive actions on behalf of the destitute. The other option is to retain the MT pointing and translate, “set right the oppressor,” but the nuance “set right” is not clearly attested elsewhere for the verb I אשׁר. This verb does appear as a participle in Isa 3:12 and 9:16 with the meaning “to lead or guide.” If it can mean to “lead” or “rebuke/redirect” in this verse, the prophet could be contrasting this appeal for societal reformation (v. 17c) with a command to reorder their personal lives (v. 17a-b). J. A. Motyer (The Prophecy of Isaiah, 47) suggests that these three statements (v. 17a-c) provide “the contrast between the two ends of imperfect society, the oppressor and the needy, the one inflicting and the other suffering the hurt. Isaiah looks for a transformed society wherever it needs transforming.”

[1:17]  ²⁴ tn This word refers to a woman who has lost her husband, by death or divorce. The orphan and widow are often mentioned in the OT as epitomizing the helpless and impoverished who have been left without the necessities of life due to the loss of a family provider.

[7:22]  ²⁵ tn Heb “For” but this introduces a long explanation about the relative importance of sacrifice and obedience.

[7:23]  ²⁶ tn Verses 22-23a read in Hebrew, “I did not speak with your ancestors and I did not command them when I brought them out of Egypt about words/matters concerning burnt offering and sacrifice, but I commanded them this word:” Some modern commentators have explained this passage as an evidence for the lateness of the Pentateuchal instruction regarding sacrifice or a denial that sacrifice was practiced during the period of the wilderness wandering. However, it is better explained as an example of what R. de Vaux calls a dialectical negative, i.e., “not so much this as that” or “not this without that” (Ancient Israel, 454-56). For other examples of this same argument see Isa 1:10-17; Hos 6:4-6; Amos 5:21-25.

[7:23]  ²⁷ tn Heb “Obey me and I will be.” The translation is equivalent syntactically but brings out the emphasis in the command.

[7:23]  ²⁸ tn Heb “Walk in all the way that I command you.”

[6:6]  ²⁹ tn The phrase “I delight” does not appear in the Hebrew text a second time in this verse, but is implied from the parallelism in the preceding line.

[6:6]  ³⁰ sn Contrary to popular misunderstanding, Hosea does not reject animal sacrifice nor cultic ritual, and advocate instead obedience only. Rather, God does not delight in ritual sacrifice without the accompanying prerequisite moral obedience (1 Sam 15:22; Pss 40:6-8; 51:16-17; Prov 21:3; Isa 1:11-17; Jer 7:21-23; Hos 6:6; Mic 6:6-8). However, if prerequisite moral obedience is present, he delights in sacrificial worship as an outward expression (Ps 51:19). Presented by a repentant obedient worshiper, whole burnt offerings were “an aroma pleasing” to the Lord (Lev 1:9, 13).

[5:21]  ³¹ tn Heb “I hate”; “I despise.”

[5:21]  ³² tn Heb “I will not smell.” These verses are full of vivid descriptions of the Lord’s total rejection of Israelite worship. In the first half of this verse two verbs are used together for emphasis. Here the verb alludes to the sense of smell, a fitting observation since offerings would have been burned on the altar ideally to provide a sweet aroma to God (see, e.g., Lev 1:9, 13, 17; Num 29:36). Other senses that are mentioned include sight and hearing in vv. 22-23.

[5:22]  ³³ tn Heb “burnt offerings and your grain offerings.”

[5:22]  ³⁴ tn Heb “Peace offering[s], your fattened calves, I will not look at.”

[5:23]  ³⁵ tn In this verse the second person suffixes are singular and not plural like they are in vv. 21-22 and vv. 25-27. Some have suggested that perhaps a specific individual or group within the nation is in view.

[5:23]  ³⁶ tn The Hebrew word probably refers to “harps” (NASB, NIV, NRSV) or “lutes” (NEB).

[5:24]  ³⁷ tn Traditionally, “righteousness.”

[6:6]  ³⁸ sn With what should I enter the Lord’s presence? The prophet speaks again, playing the role of an inquisitive worshiper who wants to know what God really desires from his followers.

[6:6]  ³⁹ tn The words “with what” do double duty in the parallelism and are supplied in the second line of the translation for clarification.

[6:6]  ⁴⁰ tn Or “the exalted God.”

[6:7]  ⁴¹ tn Heb “the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul.” The Hebrew term נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh) is often translated “soul,” but the word usually refers to the whole person; here “the sin of my soul” = “my sin.”

[6:8]  ⁴² sn What the Lord really wants from you. Now the prophet switches roles and answers the hypothetical worshiper’s question. He makes it clear that the Lord desires proper attitudes more than ritual and sacrifice.

[6:8]  ⁴³ tn Heb “except.” This statement is actually linked with what precedes, “What does he want from you except….”

[6:8]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “to do,” in the sense of “promote.”

[6:8]  ⁴⁵ tn Heb “to love faithfulness.”

[6:8]  ⁴⁶ tn Heb “to walk humbly [or perhaps, “carefully”] with.”

[9:13]  ⁴⁷ sn A quotation from Hos 6:6 (see also Matt 12:7).

[12:7]  ⁴⁸ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[12:7]  ⁴⁹ sn A quotation from Hos 6:6 (see also Matt 9:13).

[23:23]  ⁵⁰ tn Or “scribes.” See the note on the phrase “experts in the law” in 2:4.

[23:23]  ⁵¹ tn Or “you tithe mint.”

[23:23]  ⁵² sn Cumin (alternately spelled cummin) was an aromatic herb native to the Mediterranean region. Its seeds were used for seasoning.

[23:23]  ⁵³ tc ‡ Many witnesses (B C K L W Δ 0102 33 565 892 pm) have δέ (de, “but”) after ταῦτα (tauta, “these things”), while many others lack it (א D Γ Θ Ë^1,13 579 700 1241 1424 pm). Since asyndeton was relatively rare in Koine Greek, the conjunction may be an intentional alteration, and is thus omitted from the present translation. NA²⁷ includes the word in brackets, indicating doubts as to its authenticity.

[10:4]  ⁵⁴ tn Grk “for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”

[10:7]  ⁵⁵ tn Grk “behold,” but this construction often means “here is/there is” (cf. BDAG 468 s.v. ἰδού 2).

[10:7]  ⁵⁶ 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]  ⁵⁷ sn Various phrases from the quotation of Ps 40:6 in Heb 10:5-6 are repeated in Heb 10:8.

[10:9]  ⁵⁸ 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]  ⁵⁹ tn Or “abolishes.”

[10:10]  ⁶⁰ tn Grk “by which will.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.