To what purpose [is] the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
Ver. 11. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices.] All which, without faith and devotion, are no better than mere hypocrisy and illusion. It is, saith Oecolampadius, as if one should present his prince with many carts laden with dirt, or as if good meat well cooked should be brought to table by a nasty sloven, who hath been tumbling in a jakes. They are your sacrifices and not mine, and though many and costly, yet I abhor such sacrificing Sodomites as you are, neither shall you be a button the better for your pompous hecatomb a and holocausts. b Your devotions are placed more in the massy materiality than inward purity, and therefore rejected. Go ye and learn what that is, "I will have mercy, - so faith, repentance, new obedience, - and not sacrifice." Mat 9:13 You stick in the bark, rest in the work done; your piety is potius in labris quam in fibris nata - a mere outside, shells, nut kernels, shows, and pageants, not heart workings, &c. Una Dei est, purum, gratissima victima, pectus.
Into full of the burnt offerings.] I am even cloyed and loathed with the sight of them.
And of the fat of fed beasts.] Though ye bring the very best of the best, yet you do worse than lose your labour, cast away your cost, for therein ye commit sin. Pro 15:8 Displeasing service is double dishonour, Deus homines istis, ut vocant, meritis praefidentes aversatur.
I delight not in the blood of bullocks, &c.] He "that killeth an ox," unless withal he kill his corruptions, "is as if he slew a man. He that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck," &c. Isa 66:3 Those miscreants in Micah who offered largely for a licence to live as they list, are rejected with scorn. Mic 6:7
a A great public sacrifice (properly of a hundred oxen) among the ancient Greeks and Romans, and hence extended to the religious sacrifices of other nations; a large number of animals offered or set apart for a sacrifice.
b A sacrifice wholly consumed by fire; a whole burnt offering.