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birth at Bethlehem. His name was then called Jesus, for He was to save His people from
their sins by the sacrifice of Himself:--
"Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me."
When we turn to the Psalm quoted we read:--
"Sacrifice and offering Thou didst not desire: mine ears hast Thou opened."
It is a fact unquestioned that Psalm 40: gives a translation of the Hebrew, yet the
LXX which purports to translate the Hebrew reads as the Greek N.T. It is too wide a
subject to discuss here as to how the LXX came by its present rendering; what we may
do is to realize that the twofold statement of Psa. 40: and Heb. 10: present two versions
of one truth. Just as Matthew and Luke, both recording one utterance of the Lord, use
slightly different words to express their phase of the utterance, yet without fully
exhausting it, so we must take both O.T. and N.T. records as supplying a full quotation of
the utterance of the Word, immediately before He became flesh and tabernacled among
us. The Hebrew word "opened" is karah and is usually translated "dig", as a grave, a pit,
or a well. The feminine form of the noun, however, mekurah, is translated "birth" in
Ezek. 16: 3, and "nativity" in Exek. 21: 30. Compare the two references following:--
"Thy birth (margin cutting out or habitation) and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan;
Thy Father was an Amorite, and Thy Mother an Hittite" (Ezek. 16: 3).
"The place where thou wast created in the land of thy nativity" (Ezek. 21: 30).
This use of the word to dig for birth or nativity is parallel with the words of
Isa. 51: 1, 2:--
"Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are
digged. Look unto Abraham your Father, and to Sarah that bare you."
This strange (to us) use of the word makes the meaning of Psa. 40: clearer. "The ear"
being "digged" is by an easy transition "the body" that was "prepared". The ear standing
as it does for obedience, as in Isa. 50: 5, 6:--
"The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away
my back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair;
I hid not my face from shame and spitting."
Some expositors see in this expression "mine ears hast thou opened" a reference to
Exod. 21: 6, where the willing servant is taken and his ear bored with an awl as a sign of
obedience "for ever", an act largely the result of love for wife and children who would
otherwise be left behind had the man gone free. The word "bore" is entirely different
from the word "dig" or "open", nevertheless the type is too beautiful to ignore, and aptly
sets forth that One Who voluntarily laid aside His glory, "and took upon Him the form of
a slave . . . . . and became obedient unto death" (Phil. 2: 7, 8). This body prepared for the
Lord set aside all sacrifice and offering, gathering into one their varied phases and
aspects of sacrifice and obedience as it is written in the volume of the book:--