Can God actually hate a worship service?

¹⁰Hear Yahweh’s word, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!

¹¹“What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me?”, says Yahweh. “I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed animals. I don’t delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of male goats.

¹²When you come to appear before me, who has required this at your hand, to trample my courts?

¹³Bring no more vain offerings. Incense is an abomination to me; new moons, Sabbaths, and convocations: I can’t bear with evil assemblies.

¹⁴My soul hates your New Moons and your appointed feasts. They are a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them.

¹⁵When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.

¹⁶Wash yourselves, make yourself clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil.

¹⁷Learn to do well. Seek justice. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless. Plead for the widow.”

¹⁸“Woe to you who desire the day of Yahweh! Why do you long for the day of Yahweh? It is darkness, and not light.

¹⁹As if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him; Or he went into the house and leaned his hand on the wall, and a snake bit him.

²⁰Won’t the day of Yahweh be darkness, and not light? Even very dark, and no brightness in it?

²¹I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t stand your solemn assemblies.

²²Yes, though you offer me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat animals.

²³Take away from me the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

²⁴But let justice roll on like rivers, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

²⁵“Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, house of Israel?

²⁶You also carried the tent of your king and the shrine of your images, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves.

²⁷Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus,” says Yahweh, whose name is the God of Armies.

¹Then the Pharisees, and some of the scribes gathered together to him, having come from Jerusalem.

²Now when they saw some of his disciples eating bread with defiled, that is, unwashed, hands, they found fault.

³(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, don’t eat unless they wash their hands and forearms, holding to the tradition of the elders.

⁴They don’t eat when they come from the marketplace, unless they bathe themselves, and there are many other things, which they have received to hold to: washings of cups, pitchers, bronze vessels, and couches.)

⁵The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unwashed hands?”

⁶He answered them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

⁷But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

⁸“For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men—the washing of pitchers and cups, and you do many other such things.”

⁹He said to them, “Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.

¹⁰For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother;’and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death.’

¹¹But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban, that is to say, given to God”;’

¹²then you no longer allow him to do anything for his father or his mother,

¹³making void the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down. You do many things like this.”