any prayers, I will not hear; your hands
are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings From
before Mine eyes, cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek
justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for
the widow."(836)

Most striking of all are the words of Jeremiah, spoken in the name of the
Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: "Add your burnt-offerings unto your
sacrifices, and eat ye flesh. For I spoke not unto your fathers, nor
commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt,
concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices, but this thing I commanded
them, saying; 'Hearken unto My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall
be My people; and walk ye in all the way that I command you, that it may
be well with you.' "(837)

6. However, the mere rejection of the sacrificial cult was quite negative,
and did not satisfy the normal need for communion with God. Therefore the
various codes established a sort of compromise between the prophetic ideal
and the priestly practice, in which the ideal was by no means supreme.
Sometimes the prophetic spirit stirred the soul of inspired psalmists, and
their lips echoed forth again the divine revelation:

"Hear, O My people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify against
thee: God, thy God, am I. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; and
thy burnt-offerings are continually before Me. I will take no bullock out
of thy house, nor he-goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest
is Mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.... Do I eat the flesh of
bulls, or drink the blood of goats?"(838) Another psalmist says:
"Sacrifice and meal-offering thou hast no delight in; Mine ears hast Thou
opened; burnt-offering and sin-offering hast Thou not required."(839)

Still, the sacrificial cult was too deeply rooted in the life of the
people to be disturbed by the voice of the prophets or the words of a few
psalmists. It was connected with the Temple, and the Temple was the center
of the social life of the nation. The few faint voices of protest went
practically unheeded. The priestly pomp of sacrifice could only be
displaced by the more elevating and more spiritual devotion of the entire
congregation in prayer, and this process demanded a new environment, and a
group of men with entirely new ideas.

7. The need of a deeper devotion through prayer was not felt until the
Exile. There altar a