and a burden to Him (1:14)? Why does He turn away from their prayers (1:15)? Why do such observances avail them nothing before God—indeed fill Yahweh with anger? Because despite their external religiosity, their hands are filled with blood (1:15b). Clements writes that this phrase ‘refers to the perpetration of crimes of violence, but the prophet no doubt also had in mind that the worshippers would be marked with the bloodstains of the sacrificial animals they had slaughtered for use in worship.’35