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For this reason, when he came into the world, he said:[a]

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,(A)
    but a body you prepared for me;
holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in.
Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll,
    Behold, I come to do your will, O God.’”

First he says, “Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings,[b] you neither desired nor delighted in.” These are offered according to the law.(B) Then he says, “Behold, I come to do your will.” He takes away the first to establish the second.(C)

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Footnotes

  1. 10:5–7 A passage from Ps 40:7–9 is placed in the mouth of the Son at his incarnation. As usual, the author follows the Septuagint text. There is a notable difference in Hb 10:5 (Ps 40:6), where the Masoretic text reads “ears you have dug for me” (“ears open to obedience you gave me,” NAB), but most Septuagint manuscripts have “a body you prepared for me,” a reading obviously more suited to the interpretation of Hebrews.
  2. 10:8 Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings: these four terms taken from the preceding passage of Ps 40 (with the first two changed to plural forms) are probably intended as equivalents to the four principal types of Old Testament sacrifices: peace offerings (Lv 3, here called sacrifices); cereal offerings (Lv 2, here called offerings); holocausts (Lv 1); and sin offerings (Lv 4–5). This last category includes the guilt offerings of Lv 5:14–19.