Malachias 2:13

13 And these things which I hated, ye did: ye covered with tears the altar of the Lord, and with weeping and groaning because of troubles: meet to have respect to your sacrifice, or to receive from your hands welcome?

Malachias 2:13 Meaning and Commentary

Malachi 2:13

And this have ye done again
Or "in the second" ^F2 place; to their rejection and ill treatment of Christ they added their hypocritical prayers and tears, as follows: covering the altar of the Lord with tears and weeping, and with
crying out;
for the Messiah they vainly expect, pretending great humiliation for their sins: though some, as Kimchi and Aben Ezra, make the first evil to be their offering illegal sacrifices on the altar, complained of in the former chapter ( Malachi 1:1-14 ) ; and this second, their marrying strange wives, on account of which their lawful wives came into the house of God, and wept over the altar before the Lord, complaining of the injury that was done them: insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth
it with good will at your hand;
which expresses an utter rejection and abrogation of legal sacrifices; and which some make to be the reason of their covering the altar with tears and weeping: or the altar is represented as weeping, because sacrifice is no more offered upon it; see ( Daniel 9:27 ) ( Hosea 3:4 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F2 (tynv) "secundo", Pagninus, Vatablus, Calvin, Cocceius, Burkius.

Malachias 2:13 In-Context

11 Juda has been forsaken, and an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Juda has profaned the holy things of the Lord, which he delighted in, and has gone after other gods.

12 The Lord will utterly destroy the man that does these things, until he be even cast down from out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and from among them that offer sacrifice to the Lord Almighty.

13 And these things which I hated, ye did: ye covered with tears the altar of the Lord, and with weeping and groaning because of troubles: meet to have respect to your sacrifice, or to receive from your hands welcome?

14 Yet ye said, Wherefore? Because the Lord has borne witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, whom thou has forsaken, and she was thy partner, and the wife of thy covenant.

15 And did he not do well? and the residue of his spirit. But ye said, What does God seek but a seed? But take ye heed to your spirit, and forsake not the wife of thy youth.