Psalms 40:6

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.

Psalms 50:8

50:8 I am not condemning ³  you because of your sacrifices,

or because of your burnt sacrifices that you continually offer me. ⁴ 

Proverbs 15:8

15:8 The Lord abhors ⁵  the sacrifices ⁶  of the wicked, ⁷ 

but the prayer ⁸  of the upright pleases him. ⁹ 

Proverbs 21:27

21:27 The wicked person’s sacrifice ¹⁰  is an abomination;

how much more ¹¹  when he brings it with evil intent! ¹² 

Isaiah 1:11-15

1:11 “Of what importance to me are your many sacrifices?” ¹³ 

says the Lord.

“I am stuffed with ¹⁴  burnt sacrifices

of rams and the fat from steers.

The blood of bulls, lambs, and goats

I do not want. ¹⁵ 

1:12 When you enter my presence,

do you actually think I want this –

animals trampling on my courtyards? ¹⁶ 

1:13 Do not bring any more meaningless ¹⁷  offerings;

I consider your incense detestable! ¹⁸ 

You observe new moon festivals, Sabbaths, and convocations,

but I cannot tolerate sin-stained celebrations! ¹⁹ 

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; ²⁰ 

when you offer your many prayers,

I do not listen,

because your hands are covered with blood. ²¹ 

Jeremiah 7:22-23

7:22 Consider this: ²²  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: ²³  “Obey me. If you do, I ²⁴  will be your God and you will be my people. Live exactly the way I tell you ²⁵  and things will go well with you.”

Jeremiah 7:27

7:27 Then the Lord said to me, ²⁶  “When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you. When you call out to them, they will not respond to you.

Amos 5:21-23

5:21 “I absolutely despise ²⁷  your festivals!

I get no pleasure ²⁸  from your religious assemblies!

5:22 Even if you offer me burnt and grain offerings, ²⁹  I will not be satisfied;

I will not look with favor on your peace offerings of fattened calves. ³⁰ 

5:23 Take away from me your ³¹  noisy songs;

I don’t want to hear the music of your stringed instruments. ³² 

Hebrews 10:5-6

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.

[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.

[50:8]  ³ tn Or “rebuking.”

[50:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “and your burnt sacrifices before me continually.”

[15:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “an abomination of the Lord.” The term יְהוָה (yÿhvah, “the Lord”) functions as a subjective genitive: “the Lord abhors.” Cf. NIV “the Lord detests”; NCV, NLT “the Lord hates”; CEV “the Lord is disgusted.”

[15:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “sacrifice” (so many English versions).

[15:8]  ⁷ sn The sacrifices of the wicked are hated by the Lord because the worshipers are insincere and blasphemous (e.g., Prov 15:29; 21:3; 28:9; Ps 40:6-8; Isa 1:10-17). In other words, the spiritual condition of the worshiper determines whether or not the worship is acceptable to God.

[15:8]  ⁸ sn J. H. Greenstone notes that if God will accept the prayers of the upright, he will accept their sacrifices; for sacrifice is an outer ritual and easily performed even by the wicked, but prayer is a private and inward act and not usually fabricated by unbelievers (Proverbs, 162).

[15:8]  ⁹ tn Heb “[is] his pleasure.” The 3rd person masculine singular suffix functions as a subjective genitive: “he is pleased.” God is pleased with the prayers of the upright.

[21:27]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the sacrifice of the wicked” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV). This is a subjective genitive. The foundational clause states that ritual acts of worship brought by the wicked (thus a subjective genitive) are detestable to God. The “wicked” refers here to people who are not members of the covenant (no faith) and are not following after righteousness (no acceptable works). But often they participate in sanctuary ritual, which amounts to hypocrisy.

[21:27]  ¹¹ sn This rhetorical device shows that if the act is abomination, the wicked heart is an even greater sin. It argues from the lesser to the greater.

[21:27]  ¹² tn The noun זִמָּה (zimmah) means “plan; device; wickedness”; here it indicates that the person is coming to the ritual with “sinful purpose.” Some commentators suggest that this would mean he comes with the sacrifice as a bribe to pacify his conscience for a crime committed, over which he has little remorse or intent to cease (cf. NLT “with ulterior motives”). In this view, people in ancient Israel came to think that sacrifices could be given for any reason without genuine submission to God.

[1:11]  ¹³ 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]  ¹⁴ 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]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ 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]  ¹⁷ tn Or “worthless” (NASB, NCV, CEV); KJV, ASV “vain.”

[1:13]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ 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]  ²⁰ tn Heb “I close my eyes from you.”

[1:15]  ²¹ 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.

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

[7:23]  ²³ 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]  ²⁴ tn Heb “Obey me and I will be.” The translation is equivalent syntactically but brings out the emphasis in the command.

[7:23]  ²⁵ tn Heb “Walk in all the way that I command you.”

[7:27]  ²⁶ tn The words, “Then the Lord said to me” are not in the text but are implicit in the shift from the second and third person plural pronouns in vv. 21-26 and the second singular in this verse. The words are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[5:21]  ²⁷ tn Heb “I hate”; “I despise.”

[5:21]  ²⁸ 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]  ²⁹ tn Heb “burnt offerings and your grain offerings.”

[5:22]  ³⁰ tn Heb “Peace offering[s], your fattened calves, I will not look at.”

[5:23]  ³¹ 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]  ³² tn The Hebrew word probably refers to “harps” (NASB, NIV, NRSV) or “lutes” (NEB).