Jeremiah 7:21-23 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Put your burnt-offerings, &c.— Houbigant renders this, Put together your burnt-offerings with your peace-offerings; and eat their flesh. The meaning is, "Eat your sacrifices yourselves, your burnt-offerings and your peace-offerings. I am equally regardless of one and the other. I have nothing to do with them; nor can ever accept offerings from people of so superstitious and so rebellious a disposition. To be acceptable to me, they must be presented with an humble and obedient heart." This leads plainly to the interpretation of the next verses, which are by no means to be taken separately, as if God had not required burnt-offerings at all; but, that he did not insist so much upon sacrifice, as upon obedience to the commands of the moral law; or at least that the former derived all their efficacy from the latter. Others however, and among these Grotius, lay the emphasis upon the words, in the day; that is to say, "At the time when I first brought you out of Egypt; when the laws respecting sacrifices were not delivered, though such as respected obedience were then and ever in full force." Sacrifices, which were but parts of duty, are here opposed to intire and universal obedience. Now, the thing which God required, and chiefly insisted upon, was, universal righteousness, and not partial obedience, which is next to no obedience, because not performed upon a true principle of obedience. God does not deny that he had required sacrifices: but he had primarily and principally required obedience, which included sacrifices, and all other instances of duty as well as that: and he would not accept of such lame service as those sacrifices amounted to; for that was paying him part only, in lieu of the whole. Or we may say, that sacrifices, the out-work, are here opposed to obeying God's voice: that is to say, the shadow is opposed to the substance, apparent duty to real, hypocrisy and empty shew to sincerity and truth. Now the thing which God required and insisted upon, was obedience to his voice in every thing; and he laid no stress upon sacrifices, any further than as considered as parts of true obedience. Sacrifices, separate from true holiness; or from a sincere love of God, were not the service which God required; for hypocritical services are no services, but abominations in his sight: he expected, he demanded religious devout sacrifices; while his people brought him only outside compliments to flatter him, empty formalities to affront and dishonour him. These were not the things which God spake of, or commanded: the sacrifices that he spake of, were pure sacrifices, to be offered up with a clean and upright heart. Those he required, and those only he would accept of, as real duty and service. The mere opus operatum, or outward work of offering up sacrifices, from a corrupt heart, was no sacrificing to God, any more than the fasting for strife and debate, Zechariah 7:5. Isaiah 58:4-7 was a fasting to God. Such sacrifices God detested, as being a semblance only of duty, and not the duty required; a corruption and profanation of a holy rite, rather than a just and proper conformity to it. Sacrifices so profaned, carried more of human corruption than of divine institution in them, being a kind of mock worship which man had contrived, and not the true worship which God had enjoined. See Waterland's Script. Vind. part 3: p. 68 and Amos 5:25.