Ten Commandments; while finally to claim that he
spoke in hyperbole is a forlorn hope of an argument. In answer to all
these evasions it is enough to point out that the question is not merely
that of the value of sacrifice, but whether during the Exodus the God of
Israel gave any charge concerning sacrifice; as well as the fact that
others than Jeremiah had either explicitly questioned this or implicitly
denied it. When Amos, in God's Name repelled the burnt-offerings of his
generation he asked, _Did ye bring unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the
wilderness forty years, O House of Israel?_ and obviously expected a
negative answer. And the following passages only render more general the
truth that Israel's God has no pleasure at any time in the sacrifices
offered to Him, with the institution of which--the natural inference is--He
can have had nothing to do. _Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of
rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil. Shall I give my first-born
for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath
declared to thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of
thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God._ And these two utterances in the Psalms: _Shall I eat the flesh of
bulls or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving and pay thy
vows to the Most High_; and _Thou desirest not sacrifice else would I give
it, Thou delightest not in burnt-offering, The sacrifices of God are a
broken spirit_.(300)

For the accuracy of these assertions or implications by a succession of
prophets and psalmists there is a remarkable body of historical evidence.
The sacrificial system of Israel is in its origins of far earlier date
than the days of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt. It has so much, both of
form and meaning, in common with the systems of kindred nations as to
prove it to be part of the heritage naturally derived by all of them from
their Semitic forefathers. And the new element brought into the
traditional religion of Israel at Sinai was just that on which Jeremiah
lays stress--the ethical, which in time purified the ritual of sacrifice
and burnt-offering but had nothing to do with the origins of this.

Therefore it is certain _first_ that Amos and Jeremiah meant literally
what they stated or implicitly led their hearers to infer--God gave no
commands at the Exodus concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices--and
_second_ that histo