Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
Parallel translations
- WEB “Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, house of Israel?
- KJV Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?
- NKJV “Didyou offer Me sacrifices and offerings In the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?
- NASB “Did you present Me with sacrifices and grain offerings in the wilderness for forty years, house of Israel?
- NLT “Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, Israel?
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God asks whether Israel truly offered him sacrifices and offerings during the forty wilderness years. The question challenges their assumption that ritual alone has ever been the heart of true worship.
Overview
This rhetorical question is debated: some read it as recalling a wilderness period marked more by relationship than abundant ritual, others as exposing Israel's mixed and faithless worship even then. Faithful interpreters agree the point is that God has always desired heartfelt obedience over mere sacrifice. The verse rebukes any reliance on ritual divorced from genuine devotion, a devotion fully realized only in Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Acts 7:42–43But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
- Ezek 20:8But they rebelled against Me and refused to listen. None of them cast away the abominations before their eyes, and they did not forsake the idols of Egypt. So I resolved to pour out My wrath upon them and vent My anger against them in the land of Egypt.
- Neh 9:18Even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and when they committed terrible blasphemies,
- Lev 17:7They must no longer offer their sacrifices to the goat demons to which they have prostituted themselves. This will be a permanent statute for them for the generations to come.’
- Neh 9:21For forty years You sustained them in the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.
- Josh 24:14Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; cast aside the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.
- Deut 32:17–19They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear.
- Ezek 20:24For they did not practice My ordinances, but they rejected My statutes and profaned My Sabbaths, fixing their eyes on the idols of their fathers.
- Hos 9:9–10They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah; He will remember their guilt; He will punish their sins.
- Ezek 20:16because they kept rejecting My ordinances, refusing to walk in My statutes, and profaning My Sabbaths; for their hearts continually went after their idols.
- Zech 7:5“Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for these seventy years, was it really for Me that you fasted?
- Isa 43:23–24You have not brought Me sheep for burnt offerings, nor honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not burdened you with offerings, nor wearied you with frankincense.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Amid judgment on injustice, Amos promises the raising up of David's fallen tent — read by James in Acts 15 as the ingathering of the nations into the kingdom of the risen Christ.
How Amos 5:25 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.