For I did not speak to your
fathers nor did I charge them. Some interpreters think these words reflect
a view that sacrifices were not enjoined in the wilderness, only in the settled
Land of Israel. But the main point seems to be in what the prophet goes on to
say in the next verse, that any obligation of sacrifice was always secondary to
heeding God’s voice. (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 2:884)
