Malachi 2

CHAPTER 2

Admonition for the Priests (2:1–9)

1–6 The Lord continues to admonish the priests. He tells them that if they do not honor His name He will curse their blessings (verse 2). The priests were supposed to bless the people, but God will turn the blessings they give into curses.

God will disgrace the faithless priests just as they have disgraced Him:He will put the offal of the sacrificed animals on their faces (verse 3), and then have them carried off with it.⁶ They have broken the covenant⁷ God made with Levi, the son of Jacob; God had determined that all priests were to be chosen from the tribe of Levi. But this assumed that the priests would revere God and walk with Him in uprightness and turn many people from SIN (verses 5–6). Instead, these priests in Malachi’s time were turning people toward sin, not away from it!⁸

7–9 Because these priests had not been faithful in teaching the law (Leviticus 10:11), and because they had shown partiality in administering the law (Leviticus 19:5), God would cause them to be despised and humiliated (verses 8–9). By not walking in God’s ways themselves, they had violated the covenant God made with Levi, Phinehas, and their descendants. Therefore, God would reject these faithless priests together with their offerings.

Judah Unfaithful (2:10–17)

10 From here to the end of the chapter, Malachi (inspired by the Lord) speaks directly to the people of Judah. He rebukes the people for “profaning” (violating) the COVENANT God made with their fathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). By breaking faith with one another, they were breaking faith with God, who had chosen them to be one people.⁹ They had reached such a bad state that they could trust neither their leaders nor each other.

11–12 In verses 11–16, Malachi gives two examples of how the people had broken faith with one another:first, they married pagan women (verses 11–12); and second, they divorced their wives (verses 13–16).

Malachi tells the people that they have desecrated God’s sanctuary by marrying the daughter of a foreign god—that is, a pagan woman. MOSES had forbidden the Israelites to intermarry with pagans, because their pagan wives would lead them to worship false gods (see Exodus 34:15–16). Malachi asks the Lord to cut . . . off any Israelite who married a pagan; such a person was no longer to be a part of God’s covenant people.

13–16 The people’s second sin was to divorce their wives without cause (see Matthew 19:4–9; Mark 10:4–12). Malachi calls marriage a covenant, a covenant witnessed by God (verse 14). Therefore, when a man breaks faith with his wife, he also breaks faith with God. This is one reason why God no longer accepts the people’s offerings; they weep and wail, but they have no one but themselves to blame (verse 13).

God has made husband and wife one (verse 15)—one flesh (Genesis 2:24). God seeks godly offspring, but He won’t find such offspring if men marry pagans or divorce the wives of their youth. God hates divorce, because it does violence to the marriage covenant (verse 16); the man who divorces his wife covers himself with “violence” as if it were a garment.¹⁰

17 This verse introduces the last two chapters of Malachi. The people of Judah had wearied the Lord with their doubting words. They had kept on questioning God’s love and God’s justice; they had become so morally corrupt that they called evildoers good! They had given up on God. “Where is the God of justice?” they asked. They will get their answer in the next chapter!