God explains why animal sacrifices are relatively unimportant to him; he really does not need them, since all animals already belong to him. This idea is radically different from the mythology of the ancient near east, in which the gods go hungry if there are no sacrifices.

Accept: the Hebrew verb ordinarily means to take or to receive (see its use in 49.15b). Here the meaning seems to be something like “need” (Good News Translation, New International Version, Weiser), or “ask for” (Biblia Dios Habla Hoy, Dahood), or “desire” (Oesterley). But some (Bible en français courant, Bible de Jérusalem, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible) translate “I will not take,” like Revised Standard Version and New Jerusalem Bible I will accept no …; New Jerusalem Bible has “I claim no bull … no he-goats”; New English Bible has “I need take no….” This makes for a rather strange statement, as though God were abolishing the sacrificial system as such. One must recognize that often in the Scriptures absolute denials or promises are forceful ways of expressing important truths; but such statements are not to be understood in an absolute fashion. The translator, however, must faithfully represent the meaning of the biblical text without trying to tone down or soften what seems to be an exaggeration. So Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch translates, “I do not accept your offering–I do not need the bull from your barn.” In some languages it will be clearer to make explicit that the bulls and goats are not needed as sacrifices; for example, “I do not need sacrificed bulls from your farms or sacrificed goats from your flocks.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .