Psalms 69:31

It is intimated that all Christians ought to glorify God with their praises, in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs. And this shall please the Lord, through Christ the Mediator of our praises as well as of our prayers, better than the most valuable of the legal sacrifices (

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This also shall please the Lord,.... That is, this song of praise and thanksgiving.

This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs. No sacrifice is so acceptable to God, who is a Spirit, as that which is spiritual. He accepted bullocks under a dim and symbolical dispensation; but in such offerings, in themselves considered, he had no pleasure. "Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" Here he puts dishonour upon mere outward offerings by speaking of the horns and hoofs, the offal of the victim. The opus operatum, which our ritualists think so much of, the Lord puffs at. The horning and hoofing are nothing to him, though to Jewish ritualists these were great points, and matters for critical examination; our modern rabbis are just as precise as to the mingling of water with their wine, the baking of their wafers, the cut of their vestments, and the performance of genuflections towards the right quarter of the compass. O fools, and slow of heart to perceive all that the Lord has declared. "Offer unto God thanksgiving" is the everlasting rubric of the true directory of worship. The depths of grief into which the suppliant had been plunged gave him all the richer an experience of divine power and grace in his salvation, and so qualified him to sing more sweetly "the song of loves." Such music is ever most acceptable to the infinite Jehovah.

This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs. No sacrifice is so acceptable to God, who is a Spirit, as that which is spiritual. He accepted bullocks under a dim and symbolical dispensation; but in such offerings, in themselves considered, he had no pleasure. "Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" Here he puts dishonour upon mere outward offerings by speaking of the horns and hoofs, the offal of the victim. The opus operatum, which our ritualists think so much of, the Lord puffs at.

An ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs - Oxen offered in sacrifice had their horns and hoofs gilded; and the psalmist might mention these parts of the victim more particularly, because they were more conspicuous. Others think that full-grown animals are intended, those that had perfect horns, in opposition to calves or steers. I think the first the preferable sense; for the horns, etc., of consecrated animals are thus ornamented in the east to the present day.

This also shall please the Lord - This will be more acceptable to the Lord. Better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs - Better than a burnt sacrifice - horns, and hoofs, and all. The original here is, “horning and hoofing;” that is, an ox whose horns were fully grown, and whose hoofs were compact and solid; a perfect animal in its kind, offered whole on the altar. The psalmist does not say that such an offering would “not” be acceptable to the Lord, but that the offering of the heart - the sacrifice of praise - would be “more” acceptable than any such offering in itself considered. This sentiment accords with the common language of the Old Testament. See the notes at Psa 40:6-8. Compare Psa 51:16-17; 1Sa 15:22.