Category: Malachi

Malachi starts off with an argument. God says he loves Israel, they aren’t buying it. God responds by reminding them that they are His chosen people, descendants of Jacob, as compared to Esau and his descendants. One thing to clear up, this Jacob I loved and Esau I hated business shouldn’t be read as God’s affection toward either one, it’s an indication of choice. God chose Jacob and his children to be the light to the world and the lineage through which the Messiah would come. They would be the people who would persist and bear the example of God’s dealings with humanity. He makes no such promises to Esau and his descendants, the Edomites.

In fact, God’s response to Israel is to show them that nations rise and fall on his sovereignty. The heritage of God will continue through Israel and as a people they will persist. However, where God does not build them up or sustain them, any other nation will fall. Edom will eventually be destroyed never to return. The Lord is angry with them forever. I got stuck on that for a bit but then, if you remember how God has Amos referring to His own people, it’s less of a thing. God’s anger exists for all who spurn and reject him, it’s just that because God has chosen Israel in the way he has, they will persist through times of rejection and repentance. Edom, however, wasn’t chosen to be used in that way so as a people they will ultimately be destroyed (bearing the mark of God’s anger forever.)

Now that God has rebutted the assertion that He doesn’t love Israel, he will now call into question whether Israel actually loves God. These themes aren’t completely foreign, the notion of false or shallow worship was littered through our study of Amos. They call him father and master but give him no honor. And the priests, those who are dedicated to God service, are called onto the carpet.

The accusations and rebuttal show up again. (There’s a chiasm in here, if you have an ESV study bible they outline it for you. Any time you see repeated or parallel phrases there might be a chiasm happening). Anyway, God says the priests despise His name, they protest, and God lets them have it. The people are being shallow and ridiculous, bringing in lame, blind or otherwise worthless animals in to sacrifice and the priests are permitting it. Is that not evil? he asks (that’s a rhetorical question). Either they think God is fooled (which is dumb) or they don’t honor God and don’t mind bringing these low-rent sacrifices to him. And they entreat the favor of God? Come on. Now we start to get a glimpse of the discprency between these promises coming out of exile and what is actually going on in Judah. These people are going through the motions, phoning it in. And God is not having it.

I love the protest, here. Would not one priest, just one, shut the doors and stop this nonsense? You can’t be a man of God, especially a priest, and have no stones (that’s convicting, crapola.) God is rejecting these offerings. He re-brings in the point of view of the nations around them, almost shaming His people in that He will be acknowledged and praised beyond Judah’s borders because His name is great and feared while amongst the Jews they treat him so flippantly. Sick animals, complaints, lying (promising to bring in the prime male from the flock and instead hobbling in some elderly miscreant sheep.)

This will continue into chapter 2.

In chapter 2, the discussion with the priests continues and moves into both the consequences of all of this as well as the underlying issue – the breaking of a covenant and the lack of faithfulness.

God has always made covenants with his people, they do this, he’ll do that. He will be their God, they will be His people. The Levites were the priests, the faithful ones from Deuteronomy 33:8-10 whose job it was to teach the people, make sure they know what is right and to administer the sacrifices. Even when Israel wandered, the priests were there to remind them, bring them back. And what are we finding? Even they are bailing. When the people needed them the most, they stopped caring, became derelict in their duties. Basically, if these priests will not honor God and do the work they are supposed to do, God will not bless their work. In fact, God will curse those the blessings they declare.

God’s ultimate reaction to them breaking the covenant, not keeping up their end of the deal, is to reject their sacrifices and rebuke the Levite lineage (offspring) and then…well…spread dung on their faces and send them and their dung faces out of the temple. Now, in this case, dung refers to the innards of the sacrifices that were taken outside the temple and burned. That part is rejected, and so now are the priests who wear these rejected sacrifices on their face. I mean, dang, that’s fierce.

God continues to remind them of what this covenant was that they have disregarded. It was a promise of life and peace (and God was faithful). The Levites rightly feared God, stood in awe of His name, spoke truth, walked in peace and uprightness and turned away from the wrong thing. The priests pursued knowledge and shared it with the people that they should desire the same knowledge; they spoke for God. (What a harrowing yet cool responsibility they had!) Yet, they led people astray, corrupted them, and so God gives them the just consequences of being brought low in front of those they failed to serve.

Here’s the thing, there are consequences to not keeping covenants. If there weren’t, no one would bother making them. God always told his people that he would be faithful to them and bless them but they must keep up their end of the covenant. And time and time again they did not do it and they received the consequences. What’s cool, though, is those consequences were always intended to call them back to the covenant, to have them join back with God that they may be blessed.

I think we need to be careful with v.10 onward. Although I think there are tangible, people-level things to take away from this section about marriage, I think the broad point is to use faithless marriage as a comparison to Israel’s relationship with God. What those who bring offerings to the temple have done to their wives and what the priests have done to their wives is like what Israel has done to God. Coming off of what Malachi has described so far, a few verse diversion solely to hit up the sanctity of marriage, only to dive back out of that and back into shallow, lazy worship and covenant keeping for the rest of the book doesn’t really make any sense. Again, I think the people level lessons we can learn here are still right and good, but I think it serves two purposes.

We see this theme of “faithlessness” start to show up over and over again in this section. Malachi asks why the people of God have been faithless to one another, profaning the temple with their junk sacrifices and marrying those who do not serve God. (We’ve seen similar downfalls with Solomon, yes?) By why is this described as them being faithless to one another? Because failure to keep their covenant with God has consequences that fall on everyone. It’s communal. (Interesting, saw very similar concepts in the letters of John. We love others by keeping God’s commandments.) Again, the blindness of Israel shows up here – they do this marrying outside of God’s people and still come to the altar and offer to God as if it’s not a thing. Everyone knows it’s a thing.

Then back to the priests, who seem to weeping like children do when they have been rightly accused of doing the wrong thing but they are trying to pass it off as if they are not guilty by crying to bring the point home. Pathetic. These jokers, in addition to betraying every duty they are responsible for, are discarding their wives and chasing other ladies around. That marriage is a covenant, they are joined together as one (a union that the Spirit is part of) and yet they have been faithless. They are dishonoring their covenant and not producing Godly offspring (physically, children, but on the broader sense of Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, the product or offspring is probably a growing, blessed nation that serves as a light to the world.)

God is not fooled, he hates what they’re doing, and their selfishness and unfaithfulness will have consequences. No one is quite sure what “…covers his garment with violence” means but everyone agrees that it can’t possibly be good. The way to prevent this, Malachi says, is easy – do not be faithless.

I’m going to cheat on these chapters a bit because I think 2:17 is really the start of the next protest. These fellas are wearing the Lord out with their words (their arguments, their bad logic, their blind gas-bagging around, etc.). And, in the same format as the previous disputes, they rebut and ask in what ways they have wearied him (I don’t think these are good-natured, humble pleas of “oh no, we’ve mistakenly wearied the Lord, someone show us what we’ve done!” and more like snarky, incredulous protests that imply the Lord is overreacting.)

God points out that they say ridiculous things like “God thinks evil doers doing evil things is alright, in fact they make him happy” and “where is the God of justice?” In response, God pretty much ignores the first one, it needs no further argument because it’s dumb. However, he elaborates on the protest that there is justice to be done and God is not doing it. He basically acknowledges that they have a right to expect God to distribute justice so he lays out what that will look like.

First, there is a messenger who will prepare the way before Him. Some interesting things to this. First, kings do that kind of thing, send a herald out to tell everyone the king is coming so that they can do road maintenance, trim the beard, wash the kids, tear down any propaganda they may have put up against the king, etc. Also, the implication is that they need to be prepared for the justice/king to arrive (meaning that they are not prepared in the current state). The next verse will show why. Even cooler, the messenger is preparing the way for the Lord to come to His temple (it seems like God hasn’t really come back to this new temple that they built when they came back from exile.) God says it will happen and he’ll send a dude out ahead of him so that you know it when you see it.

v.2 – But who can endure the day of his coming? Ah, that’s why they need preparation. We should remember a similar thing from Amos – the people of God are tucked and ready for the justice of the Lord to come, they call for it. Yet they seem to be under the mistaken impression that it will not also come for them. Like a dude running a refinery who has to crank up the heat to get the slag and other junk off the metals, and like a soap man who manhandles the clothes while he applies the cleaning agent, they better be ready for what they’re asking for. But after the refiner and soap man are down, what comes out the other side is pure, just like the priesthood will be when the Lord returns to his temple. Then the offerings will be good and acceptable like they once were. The God of Justice will come and there will be judgment against a whole host of folks.

This section smells like Jesus because it is Jesus. God does ultimately send a messenger (John the Baptizer) to warn the people on what is coming. And it is indeed a double-edged sword, especially for the teachers and the priests of the day (who have been in view for their foolishness in much of Malachi.) And sure enough, Jesus does return to the temple (brought in by his parents to see Simeon, teaching, throwing tables around, and ultimately tearing it down – that’s some refining). Yes, it’s the same temple they built coming out of exile that Jesus interacts with during his time. Yes, King Herod did some work on it, but same place still. Also note that the NT teaches on each of those things that the Lord will be swift witness to (Jesus touches on most of them himself).

I think the “I the Lord do not change” is in reference to the fact that, even though Israel stinks at keeping the covenant, God is still honoring his end of the bargain by not bailing from the agreement. In fact, he is putting a lot of effort into calling them back into it (again, consistent calls to repentance). His people should have been consumed by now (like the un-chosen Edom will be) but still he calls them back – “Return to me and I will return to you”. But then they argue with him again about whether they are stealing from God. They are, of course, because they aren’t trusting the God with the tithe. They are keeping it or giving God junky stuff and their lack of faithfulness to bringing in the 10% for God’s purposes and promises is resulting in a curse. God says “Try me, aren’t I faithful where you are not?” Most of God’s responses in Malachi have been demonstrations that he is still faithful to them even when they aren’t faithful to him. The tithe is no different. God keeps his promises.

Again a dispute – God says they are using hard words against him, they act like nothing of the sort is happening. It’s getting worse, they are saying it’s worthless to serve God and go through all of these motions we have been going through (trying to do what he says, acting like we care he’s upset, etc.) And then they call for justice upon evildoers who they think are actually alright from a God they are placating with passive, disinterested worship.

But then the tide turns a bit – we’re introduced to a new group, those who actually fear the Lord have gotten together. And a book is kept to log those who fear him, who respond to him and serve him. And what does God do with them? He keeps his promises and takes them to be his treasured position, and he spares them (that’s part of the covenant, the blotting of transgressions). And thus we get clarity between those who serve God and those who don’t.

Where the last chapter ended on a positive note, with the identification that there are indeed groups of people who do fear the Lord, the end of Malachi carries that out with a final reminder to be faithful to what God had commanded and to anticipate the justice that they are asking for (although without a timeline given as to when).

The imagery at the beginning of this chapter is one of anticipation, an oven heating up that will eventually consume the evil. Conversely, a “heat” image of the sun is also used to deal with the righteous, as this sun will risk and bring healing and God’s people will be like excited baby cows leaping out of their stall (who, whilst leaping and making merry, also trample the wicked). All this for the day when the Lord will act.

Now, the New Testament seems to imply that Malachi’s prophecies are fulfilled in Jesus, and in general that seems right. However, only if we are to accept a very figurative interpretation of the beginning of chapter 4, for example, can that be the whole story. Because although it is certain that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus created finality to the judgment situation and, by his example, all those who are not like him are not part of His kingdom, we don’t literally see evildoers turned into stubble and people in an oven. We also don’t see God’s people turned into calves, so it’s probably best to think of this as figuratively dealt with by Jesus yet likely something more physical and tangible at Christ’s final return.

Israel is reminded to remember the laws of Moses, they are good and result in good for his people. Their faithlessness to God by failing to honor these commandments is the root of their issues anyway. He also tells that Elijah the prophet will be sent prior to the great day of the Lord. In their minds, this might actually have been Elijah given that he didn’t die and was just taken up into heaven. However, Jesus says this is John the Baptizer. The next time Moses and Elijah will be paired like this is on the Mount of Transfiguration.

All seems like it will be well and good to end Malachi until the final sentence. The first half is good, father and sons will return to each other (this image likely should be extrapolated to the relationship between God and his people). But if they don’t, God will come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. And there you have it.

One of the interesting things about reading Malachi and some of the other minor prophets while being on our side of history where Jesus has already done what He does, is that our understanding of covenant is very similar. Where previous God’s people (or his kingdom if you want to think of it that way) was governed by his commandments and his relationship with the people that serve him. We actually do the same thing, it’s just that our “law” if you will is the living example of the life of Jesus himself. And it’s our relationship with him, which is kept healthy by what Jesus has done as our High Priest, sacrificial lamb, etc. instead of what we do.