Psalms 40:6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Sacrifice, &c. These and the four following verses may, in an improper sense, belong to the person and time of David; when God might be said, not to desire, or require, legal sacrifices, comparatively. So the sense is, Thou didst desire obedience more, or rather, than sacrifices, as was said 1 Samuel 15:22. But in a proper and full sense, they belong only to the person and time of the Messiah, in whose name David utters these words. And so the sense is, God did not desire or require them for the satisfaction of his own justice and the expiation of men's sins, which could not possibly be done by the blood of bulls or goats, as is said Hebrews 10:4-6; but only by the blood of Christ, which was typified by them, and which Christ came into the world to shed, in pursuance of his Father's will, as it here follows, Psalms 40:7-8. So here is a prediction concerning the cessation of the legal sacrifices, and the substitution of a better instead of them. Mine ears hast thou opened Hebrew, bored. I have devoted myself to thy perpetual service, and thou hast accepted of me as thy servant, and signified so much by the boring of mine ears, according to the law and custom in that case, Exodus 21:5-6. The seventy Jewish interpreters, whom the apostle follows, Hebrews 10:5, translate these words, a body hast thou prepared me. In which translation, though the words differ, the sense is the same; for the ears suppose a body to which they belong, and the preparing of a body implies the preparing of the ears, and the obligation of the person for whom a body was prepared, to serve him who prepared it; which the boring of the ear signified.