They won't pour out wine offerings to Yahweh, Neither will they be pleasing to him. Their sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourners; All who eat of it will be polluted; For their bread will be for their appetite. It will not come into the house of Yahweh.
Their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners - He had said that they should not sacrifice to God, when no longer in the Lord’s land. He adds that, if they should attempt it, their sacrifices, so far from being a means of acceptance, should be defiled, and a source of defilement to them. “All” which was “in” the same “tent” or house with a dead body, was “unclean for seven days” Numbers 19:14. The bread, which they ate then, was defiled. If “one unclean by a dead body touched bread or pottage or any meat, it was unclean” Haggai 2:12-13. In offering the tithes, a man was commanded to declare, “I have not eaten of it in my mourning” Deuteronomy 26:15. So would God impress on the soul the awfulness of death, and man’s sinfulness, of which death is the punishment. He does not say, that they would offer sacrifices, but that their sacrifices, if offered as God did not command, would defile, not atone. It is in truman nature, to neglect to serve God, when He wills it, and then to attempt to serve Him when he forbids it. Thus Israel, affrighted by the report of the spies Numbers 14:0, would not go up to the promised land, when God commanded it. When God had sentenced them, not to go up, but to die in the wilderness, “then” they attempted it. Sacrifice, according to God’s law, could only be offered in the promised land. In their captivity, then, it would be a fresh sin.