Malachi 2:9

9 So I, in turn, will make the people of Israel despise you because you do not obey my will, and when you teach my people, you do not treat everyone alike."

Malachi 2:9 Meaning and Commentary

Malachi 2:9

Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base
When their city and temple were destroyed by the Romans, and they were carried captive by them, and became a taunt and a proverb in all places where they came: before all the people;
the nations of the world, among whom they were scattered: according as ye have not kept my ways;
neither those which the law directed to, either moral or ceremonial; nor what the Gospel directed to, the ordinances and institutions of Christ, particularly baptism, which the Jews rejected against themselves, ( Luke 7:30 ) : but have been partial in the law;
in the observance of it, attending to the lesser, and taking no notice of the weightier matters of it, as the Jews are charged by Christ, ( Matthew 23:23 ) and in the interpretation of it, restraining its sense only to outward actions, for which they are reproved, ( Matthew 5:1-48 ) or "received faces", or "accepted persons in the law" F24; in matters of the law they were concerned in, they had respect to the persons of men, by giving the sense of it, and pronouncing judgment, in favour of some, to the prejudice of others, wrongly.


FOOTNOTES:

F24 (hrwtb Mynp Myavwnw) "et accepistis faciem in lege", Pagninus; "assumentes facies", Montanus; "suscipitis faciem", Piscator; "accipitis faciem", Cocceius; "et ferentes faciem in lege", Burkius.

Malachi 2:9 In-Context

7 It is the duty of priests to teach the true knowledge of God. People should go to them to learn my will, because they are the messengers of the Lord Almighty.
8 "But now you priests have turned away from the right path. Your teaching has led many to do wrong. You have broken the covenant I made with you.
9 So I, in turn, will make the people of Israel despise you because you do not obey my will, and when you teach my people, you do not treat everyone alike."
10 Don't we all have the same father? Didn't the same God create us all? Then why do we break our promises to one another, and why do we despise the covenant that God made with our ancestors?
11 The people of Judah have broken their promise to God and done a horrible thing in Jerusalem and all over the country. They have defiled the Temple which the Lord loves. Men have married women who worship foreign gods.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.