Psalms 51:16

16. Thou desirest not sacrifice The word זבח , ( zebahh,) sacrifice, is the generic term for bloody offerings, but more especially for sin and trespass offerings. The law of Moses made no provision for the forgiveness or expiation of such sins as David had committed. See Numbers 15:30-31. He felt that he had passed the ordinary limits of expiable sins. Forms and types now availed nothing. But if the letter and the form were impotent, he would still appeal to the spirit of the sacrificial system. If the blood of a bullock or of a lamb could avail nothing now, and the death penalty still hung darkly over him, yet God would not overlook the true spirit of contrition, and a heart bleeding and broken by penitential sorrow. This is another instance of his profoundly evangelical views of the expiatory system of Moses, as pointing to an expiation and a pardoning power beyond the letter of the law. Afterwards he referred back to this crisis of his agony, where he felt the conscious insufficiency of the bloody sacrifices under the law, and it became the occasion of a glorious Messianic prophecy. See on Psalms 40:6-8, and compare Hebrews 10:5-10, and the notes there.