This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says: “Take your burnt offerings and your other sacrifices and eat them yourselves!
Parallel translations
- WEB Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat meat.
- KJV Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh.
- BSB This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: Add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves!
- NKJV Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat meat.
- NASB This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel says: “Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat flesh.
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 sarcastically tells them to add burnt offerings to their sacrifices and just eat the meat themselves. Their sacrifices are so empty that God treats them as worthless ritual.
Overview
With biting irony, God invites them to pile up offerings, since He finds no pleasure in them anyway. The point is that sacrifice divorced from obedience is meaningless. This sets up the following verses' teaching that God always valued obedience above ceremony.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 4
- Hos 8:13As for the sacrifices of my offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it; But Yahweh doesn’t accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity, and punish their sins. They will return to Egypt.
- Jer 6:20To what purpose comes there to me frankincense from Sheba, and the sweet cane from a far country? your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.”
- Isa 1:11–15“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.
- Amos 5:21–23I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Against the failure of false shepherds Jeremiah promises the Righteous Branch, 'The LORD our righteousness,' and the new covenant written on the heart and sealed in the blood of Christ.
How Jeremiah 7:21 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.