Malachi 2:9

9 And so I am showing you up for who you are. Everyone will be disgusted with you and avoid you because you don't live the way I told you to live, and you don't teach my revelation truly and impartially."

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's the job of priests to teach the truth. People are supposed to look to them for guidance. The priest is the messenger of God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
8 But you priests have abandoned the way of priests. Your teaching has messed up many lives. You have corrupted the covenant of priest Levi. God-of-the-Angel-Armies says so.
9 And so I am showing you up for who you are. Everyone will be disgusted with you and avoid you because you don't live the way I told you to live, and you don't teach my revelation truly and impartially."
10 Don't we all come from one Father? Aren't we all created by the same God? So why can't we get along? Why do we desecrate the covenant of our ancestors that binds us together?
11 Judah has cheated on God - a sickening violation of trust in Israel and Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the holiness of God by falling in love and running off with foreign women, women who worship alien gods.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.