NT Text: Hebrews 10:5-7
OT Source(s):
Source: Beale & Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (2007); Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Direct Quotation
Connection Method(s): Typology + Contrast
Significance: David's psalm confesses that God did not ultimately desire "sacrifice and offering" but had "opened" his ears for obedient hearing, so that he comes saying, "I delight to do Your will" (Ps 40:6-8). Hebrews places these words on the lips of Christ "when [He] came into the world" (Heb 10:5), reading them prosopologically as the Son's incarnational speech. The argument hinges on the LXX rendering "a body You prepared for Me" (in place of the MT's "ears You have dug for me"): the obedient ear becomes the prepared body in which the Son will render the whole-life obedience that bulls and goats could only gesture toward. This is typology shading into pointed contrast — the sacrificial cultus is genuinely the divinely given pattern of approach, yet God "took no delight" in it as an end (10:6), and Christ's coming "takes away the first to establish the second" (10:9). What the law's offerings could never accomplish, the incarnate Son accomplishes by offering not an animal but Himself, His delighted obedience the very content of the new and acceptable sacrifice. The deepest note is not duty but joy: the Son delights to do the Father's will, and the believer is sanctified through that loving obedience embodied — drawing us to treasure a Savior whose self-gift was His gladness.
Prosopological Shift: Speaker (David offering himself in worship → Christ entering the world at the incarnation). David's first-person prayer about open ears and ready obedience becomes the Son's own speech at the moment of his incarnation, with the LXX rendering "a body you have prepared for me" carrying the prosopological weight.
NT Use Pattern: Alternate Textual — Hebrews's incarnation argument depends on the LXX rendering "a body you have prepared for me" — the MT "ears you have dug for me" would not yield the same Christological point. The LXX provides the prosopological identification of Christ as the speaker offering his body.
Anchor Text: Ps 40:6-8 — A Body You Have Prepared