To do justice and judgment [is] more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.
Ver. 3. Is more acceptable to the Lord.] Qui non vult ex rapina holocaustum, as heathens could see and say by the light of nature. The Jews thought to expiate their miscarriages toward men, and to set off with God by their ceremonies and sacrifices. Isa 1:11-15 Jer 7:21-26 Mic 6:6-8 Some heathens also, as that Roman emperor, could say, Non sic deos coluimus ut ille nos vinceret, We have not been at so much charge with the gods that they should give us up into the enemy's hands. But the Scripture gave the Jews to understand that "to obey was better than sacrifice," that God "would have mercy and not sacrifice," and that for a man to "love God above all, and his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burntofferings and sacrifices." Mar 12:33 The heathens also were told as much by their sages, as Plato in his book intituled περι προσευχης, where Socrates, reprehending the gilt horned bulls of the Greeks, and the sumptuous sacrifices of the Trojans at length infers - και γαρ αν δεινον εη, &c. It were a grievous thing if the gods should more respect men's offerings and sacrifices than the holiness of their hearts, and the righteousness of their lives, &c. Aristotle in his Rhetorics, ‘ Oυκ εικος Yεον χαιρεινταις δαπαναις, &c., saith he. It is not likely that God takes pleasure in the costliness of sacrifices, but rather in the good conversation of the sacrificers.