What is the meaning of Hebrews 10:6?

In burnt offerings

• From the opening pages of Leviticus (Leviticus 1:3–9), burnt offerings rose continually from Israel’s altars, symbolizing total surrender to God. Yet Hebrews 10 points out that “the Law can never, by the same sacrifices... make perfect those who draw near” (Hebrews 10:1).

• Psalm 40:6, the source of Hebrews 10:6, already hinted that the smoke itself did not satisfy the Lord. 1 Samuel 15:22 echoes the same truth: “To obey is better than sacrifice.”

• These offerings were divine object lessons—real, commanded, and necessary under the covenant—but ultimately provisional, designed to prepare hearts for the once-for-all offering of Christ (Hebrews 10:10).

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and sin offerings

• Sin offerings (Leviticus 4; 16) dealt with specific transgressions. They reminded the people that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22).

• Even so, Hebrews 10:3 admits that every Day of Atonement was “an annual reminder of sins,” not their removal.

• The deficiency was not in God’s instructions but in the limitations of animal blood; it could never cleanse the conscience (Hebrews 9:9). These sacrifices pointed forward to “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

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You took no delight

• God’s lack of delight is moral, not ceremonial. Isaiah 1:11-17 and Micah 6:6-8 reveal a holy God wearied by empty ritual divorced from repentance and justice.

• He delights instead in a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51:16-17) and, supremely, in the obedience of His Son: “Here I am… I have come to do Your will” (Hebrews 10:7).

• When Christ “offered for all time one sacrifice for sins” (Hebrews 10:12), the Father found perfect satisfaction. Now He rests in the finished work that every earlier sacrifice merely previewed.

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summary

Hebrews 10:6 declares that God never found ultimate pleasure in the endless stream of burnt and sin offerings themselves. They were authentic commandments, but their role was preparatory—signposts leading to the greater reality. The Father’s true delight is in the perfect, obedient, once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which finally accomplishes what repetitive animal offerings could only foreshadow: complete forgiveness and a restored relationship with Him.