You have bought me no sweet cane with money, neither have you filled me with the fat of your sacrifices: but you have made me to serve with your sins, you have wearied me with your iniquities.
All Commentaries on Isaiah 43:24 Go To Isaiah 43
Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
In the previous passage, prophecies were made of the covenant of Christ and the graces bestowed by him, because he had promised that he would make a way in the wilderness and streams in the arid land, on account of which the beasts of the field would bless him. This may be understood as the praise of spiritual sacrifice and the fruit of the new covenant in Christ. Here in the present passage, he tries to assure Israel that they have been ransomed out of Egypt and delivered from the grievous burden of slavery there—but not so that they would offer cattle to him and find access to God through blood and smoke! For such things are refuse in God’s sight and are shadows rather than the truth itself.
He therefore says, “I have not now called you, O Jacob.” The word now should be taken to mean “not when you were offering me sacrifice,” that is, “I have not called you while you were sacrificing oxen and slaughtering sheep, so that you should not conclude that you had received deliverance as some kind of reward for the offering. On the contrary, it was while you were in sin and guilty of defilement, for you had worshiped the gods of the Egyptians, that I deemed you worthy of mercy and love.” Therefore the gift is one of gentleness, and the fruit of loving kindness is grace, and the liberation is as if out of love. The sheep of your burnt offerings are nothing to me, he says, nor indeed have you glorified me with your sacrifices. For how can that which is entirely unacceptable and offered in vain contribute to my glory? You have performed no service with your sacrifices. A person who pursues the good, he says, who achieves the moral character that leads to virtue, who submits to my will, who puts the teaching of the prophets into practice—that is the person who may be said to serve the God who rules over all. But a person who fills the holy tabernacle with the smoke of frankincense, who offers oxen or sheep or who has put on a fine show, will not render any genuine glory. Such a person has done absolutely nothing that pleases me. Therefore service does not consist in offering sacrifice. It consists in the readiness to submit a tender neck, a neck that needs, as it were, not so much as a touch to do the will of God. … Everywhere he represents worship in shadows as rejected and the things in types as taken away, drawing us to the righteousness that is in Christ and teaching us to be refashioned according to the evangelical way of life, which is the only way that what is pleasing to God can be brought about, and in which we can arrive at the worship that is truly irreproachable and sincere, that is, the worship that is spiritual. “For God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
