They sacrifice flesh [for] the sacrifices of mine offerings,
and eat [it]
Or, "as to the sacrifices mine offerings" or "gifts, they sacrifice flesh, and eat it" F15; these sacrifices, which, according to the law, should given to God when they offered them, they did not give them to him, they took them to themselves, and ate them; they were carnal offerings, and offered with a carnal mind, without faith and piety, without any regard to the glory of God, but merely for the sake of caring: the Targum interprets it of sacrifices got by rapine, which God hates, ( Isaiah 61:8 ) ; [but] the Lord accepteth them not;
neither the sacrifices, nor the sacrificers, but despised and abhorred them; no sacrifice was acceptable to God but what was offered according to law, and where he directed, and in the faith of Christ, and through him: now will he remember their iniquities, and visit their sins;
he will not pardon them, but punish for them; so far were their sacrifices making atonement for them, as they expected, they added to the measure of their iniquities: they shall return into Egypt;
either flee thither for refuge, many of them it seems did, when the king of Assyria entered their land, and besieged Samaria; where they lived miserably, as in exile, and were there buried, and never returned to their own land any more; see ( Hosea 9:3 Hosea 9:6 ) ( Deuteronomy 28:68 ) ; or they should be carried captive into Assyria, where they should be in a like state of bondage as their fathers were in Egypt. Some render it, "they return into Egypt" F16; and consider it not as their punishment, but as their sin; that when the Lord was about to visit them for their transgressions, they being made tributary to the Assyrians, instead of returning to the Lord, and humbling themselves before him, they sent to the king of Egypt for help, ( 2 Kings 17:4 ) .