Thomas Aquinas

Here he excludes confidence in sacrifices: and first he excludes concern for sacrifices, setting down the statement: "Add your burnt offerings to your victims"; as if to say: just as the greater part of the victims goes to your own use, so eat the burnt offerings for yourselves entirely, since I am not delighted by the consumption of flesh. Psalm 49: "Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" And he gives the cause: "for I did not speak." For the Lord did not want this for his own sake, but so that through it he might call them back from idolatry. Hence before the worship of the calf, of which Exod. 33 speaks, no precepts about sacrifices were given. Psalm 39: "Sacrifice and oblation you did not desire; but ears you have perfected for me. Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. Then I said: behold, I come."

Second, he argues the disobedience in moral matters; and first he shows the fault; second, he threatens the punishment, at the place, "cut off your hair." Concerning the first, two things. First he proves the disobedience as it were by induction, showing them disobedient to the law, by setting down the law's precepts: "but this word I commanded" — from the beginning, as it were chiefly intended. "Hear my voice" — concerning the moral precepts. Ezech. 36: "You shall be to me a people, and I will be to you a God." And the contempt of the precept: "and they did not hear (...) and they turned backward," always adding sins afterward. Isa. 56: "All have turned aside to their own way, each one to his own avarice, from the greatest even to the last." He also shows them disobedient to the preceding prophets: "and I sent to you all the servants the prophets." 4 Kings 17: "The Lord testified in Israel and in Judah, by the hand of all the prophets and seers, saying: Turn back from your most evil ways, and keep my precepts and ceremonies, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and as I sent to you by the hand of my servants the prophets. Who did not hear, but hardened their neck, according to the neck of their fathers, who were unwilling to obey the Lord their God." He also foretells that they would not obey him. "And you shall speak (...) and they will not hear." Ezech. 3: "The house of Israel is unwilling to hear you, because they are unwilling to hear me: for indeed the whole house of Israel is of a hardened forehead and a hard heart." Isa. 65: "I called, and you did not answer; I spoke, and you did not hear, and you did evil in my eyes, and what I did not want, you chose."

Second, he draws the conclusion: "and you shall say to them." Above, ch. 2: "In vain I struck your sons; they did not receive discipline." Faith, of the Lord. Romans 10: "With the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Or fidelity toward one's neighbor. Prov. 20: "Who shall find a faithful man?"