Psalms 39:8

4. I feel myself growing dizzy with all this, and wonder whether, in obeying you, I have not been obeying God, nor walking in the footsteps of the saints, unless it be that my too great love to you, and my unwillingness to cause you any pain, has led me astray and caused me to think of all these excuses. We started from the words of the preacher, where he says: “My son, beware of making many books.” With this I compare a saying from the Proverbs of the same Solomon, “In the multitude of words thou shalt not escape sin; but in sparing thy lips thou shalt be wise.” Here I ask whether speaking many words of whatever kind is a multitude of words (in the sense of the preacher), even if the many words a man speaks are sacred and connected with salvation. …

13. “Burnt-offerings also for sin hast Thou not required.” “Then said I, Lo, I come!” ( ver. 7 ). It is time that what “was promised should come;” because the signs, by means of which they were promised, have been put away. And indeed, Brethren, observe these put away; those fulfilled. Let the Jewish nation at this time show me their priest, if they can! Where are their sacrifices? They are brought to an end; they are put away now. Should we at that time have rejected them? We do reject them now; because, if you chose to celebrate them now, it were unseasonable; unfitting at the time; incongruous. You are still making promises; I have already received! There has remained to them a certain thing for them to celebrate; that they might not remain altogether without a sign.…In such a case then are they; like Cain with his mark. …

3. “O God, we have heard with our ears; our fathers have told us the work that Thou didst in their days, and in the days of old” ( ver. 1 ). Wondering wherefore, in these days, He has seemingly forsaken those whom it was His will to exercise in sufferings, they recall the past events which they have heard of from their fathers; as if they said, It is not of these things that we suffer, that our fathers told us! For in that other Psalm also, He said this, “Our fathers trusted in Thee; they trusted, and Thou didst deliver them. But I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men, and the outcast of the people.” They trusted, and Thou didst deliver them; have I then hoped, and hast Thou forsaken me? And have I believed upon Thee in vain? And is it in vain that my name has been written in Thy Book, and Thy name has been inscribed on me? What our fathers told us was this:

These sacrifices one may see in the Old [Testament] also, shadowed out beforehand. “Offer to God,” it is said, “a sacrifice of righteousness” ( Ps. iv. 5 ); “Offer a sacrifice of praise” ( Ps. l. 14 ); and, “a sacrifice of praise shall glorify Me” ( Ps. l. 23 ), and, “the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit” ( Ps. li. 17 ); and “what doth the Lord require of thee but” to hearken to Him? ( Mic. vi. 8 .) “Burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure in: then I said, Lo I come to do Thy will, O God!” ( Ps. xl. 6, 7 ), and again, “To what purpose do ye bring the incense from Sheba?” ( Jer. vi. 20 .) “Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy viols.” ( Amos v. 23 .) But instead of these “I will have mercy and not sacrifice.” ( Hosea vi. 6 .) Thou seest with what kind of “sacrifices God is well pleased.” ( c. xiii. …

13. For next there follows: I will sacrifice unto Thee freely . The sacrifices of the Law, which consisted of whole burnt-offerings and oblations of goats and of bulls, did not involve an expression of free will, because the sentence of a curse was pronounced on all who broke the Law. Whoever failed to sacrifice laid himself open to the curse. And it was always necessary to go through the whole sacrificial action because the addition of a curse to the commandment forbad any trifling with the obligation of offering. It was from this curse that our Lord Jesus Christ redeemed us, when, as the Apostle says: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made curse for us, for it is written: cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree . …