Samuel said, “Has Yahweh as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of Yahweh? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.
⛓ Read 1 Samuel 15 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion1
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
The scribe declares that loving God and neighbor is 'more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices,' echoing Samuel's rebuke that 'to obey is better than sacrifice.' The prioritizing of covenant love and obedience over cultic offering is a prophetic commonplace the scribe deliberately invokes.
Medium confidenceEcho3
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
Samuel's ‘to obey is better than sacrifice’ is the classic locus of the obedience-over-offering theme that Ps 40:6–8 versifies and Hebrews exploits (‘I have come to do your will’ replacing ‘sacrifice… you didn't desire’). Conceptual coherence rather than verbal volume; scholars (Beale & Carson) note it as the OT backdrop of the contrast.
Medium confidence'To obey is better than sacrifice.' Samuel's rebuke of Saul belongs to the same prophetic tradition prioritizing obedience/mercy over cult that Hosea 6:6 distills; it reinforces the scriptural logic Jesus wields against the Pharisees.
Medium confidence'To obey is better than sacrifice' belongs to the prophetic stream that internalizes and ethicizes cult; Paul's 'reasonable/spiritual service' redirects sacrifice toward obedient self-presentation in the same key.
Medium confidence