1 Samuel 15:22

Samuel declares that obedience to God is better than sacrifice. This is the chapter's central truth: God desires a heart that obeys over ritual offerings.

Cross-references · 20

• Hos 6:6For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
• Ps 51:16–17For you don’t delight in sacrifice, or else I would give it. You have no pleasure in burnt offering.
• Prov 21:3To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to Yahweh than sacrifice.
• Amos 5:21–24I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies.
• Mark 12:33and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
• Matt 9:13But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
• Mic 6:6–8How shall I come before Yahweh, and bow myself before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
• Jer 7:22–23For I didn’t speak to your fathers, nor command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices:
• Ps 40:6–8Sacrifice and offering you didn’t desire. You have opened my ears. You have not required burnt offering and sin offering.
• Eccl 5:1Guard your steps when you go to God’s house; for to draw near to listen is better than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they don’t know that they do evil.
• Isa 1:11–17“What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me?”, says Yahweh. “I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed animals. I don’t delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of male goats.
• Matt 12:7But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.
• Heb 10:4–10For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.
• Matt 23:23“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. But you ought to have done these, and not to have left the other undone.
• Ps 50:8–9I don’t rebuke you for your sacrifices. Your burnt offerings are continually before me.
• Matt 5:24leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
• Jer 26:13Now therefore amend your ways and your doings, and obey Yahweh your God’s voice; and Yahweh will relent from the evil that he has pronounced against you.
• Exod 19:5Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice, and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession from among all peoples; for all the earth is mine;
• Jer 11:7For I earnestly protested to your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, even to this day, rising early and protesting, saying, “Obey my voice.”
• Jer 11:4which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace,’ saying, ‘Obey my voice, and do them, according to all which I command you: so you shall be my people, and I will be your God;

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