Malachi 3:18

Then shall ye return,.... Either the wicked, who will be "converted" (z), as some render the word, and will have a different view of things, and change their minds and language; or they that feared

Your words have been stout against me, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, What have we spoken so much against thee?

Then, when that day of the Lord punishing the Jews by the Romans shall come, and he shall do thus for his jewels, shall ye, the blasphemous scoffers, proud contemnors of God and. religion, return; return to your reason, enforced by the convincing power of God’ s judgments to come to yourselves, or to change your opinion of God and his government. Discern between the righteous and the wicked; clearly see, with envy towards them, with horror and grief in yourselves, the unexpected escape and happiness of the righteous who served God and your misery that served him not, but were wicked, and perish now in your wickedness. Then, when that day of the Lord punishing the Jews by the Romans shall come, and he shall do thus for his jewels, shall ye, the blasphemous scoffers, proud contemnors of God and. religion, return; return to your reason, enforced by the convincing power of God’ s judgments to come to yourselves, or to change your opinion of God and his government. Discern between the righteous and the wicked; clearly see, with envy towards them, with horror and grief in yourselves, the unexpected escape and happiness of the righteous who served God and your misery that served him not, but were wicked, and perish now in your wickedness.

Malachi 3:18 Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.Ver. 18. Then shall ye return and discern] You wicked blasphemers, that have slandered God’ s housekeeping, and brought up an evil report of his providence and justice; as if in managing the matters of the world he were less equal or less careful: you, I say, shall return, not to your right minds by a thorough conversion, by an entire change of the whole man, from evil to good (alas for your misery, it is past time of day with you for any such good works); but you shall alter your opinions when your eyes are once unsealed by the extremity of your sufferings (as the mole’ s eyes are said to be, when pangs of death are upon her), to see and acknowledge a sensible difference between the righteous (ever more "excellent than his neighbour," let him dwell where he will, Proverbs 12:26, because "sealed up to the day of redemption" Ephesians 4:30), and the wicked, who is but a vile person, an ουτος (let him be great as Antiochus Epiphanes the great King of Syria); between him that serveth God, accounting it the highest honour to be his vassal, as Constantine, Theodosius, and Valentinian (the emperors) called themselves Daniel 11:21, Vasallos Christi repersentives of Christ (Socrat.), and him that serveth him not, but casteth off the yoke of his obedience, being a son of Belial; and counteth it the only liberty to live as he wishes, and not to be ruled by God. Then shall ye return] Then, when it is too late, when the day of grace is past, the gales of grace gone over, the gate shut, the drawbridge taken up. Then shall ye, wretched lingerers and loiterers, Epimetheuses, experts in hindsight, wise after the fact, that come in at length with your fool’ s Had-I-know, return; not as the prodigal did, who seasonably and savingly came to himself, Luke 15:17, having been before utterly bestraught, and quite beside himself, by the deceitfulness of sin, called foolishness of madness, Ecclesiastes 7:25; nor as those true converts mentioned in Solomon’ s prayer, that bethink themselves and repent, and make supplication to their judge, 1 Kings 8:47; but as Judas, who, while he played alone, won all, but haunted with the furies of a guilty conscience, which would needs make one with him, he repented after a sort, with a poenitentia sera Iscariotica, as Pareus calleth it, had some after thoughts, but not to a transmentation; μεταμεληθεις, Matthew 27:3; some inward wamblings, but they boiled not up to the full height of a godly sorrow, and therefore came to nothing.

Verse 18. Then shall ye return] To your senses, when perhaps too late; and discern-see the difference which God makes, between the righteous and the wicked, which will be most marked and awful. Between him that serveth God] Your obedience to whom, ye said, would be unprofitable to you. And him that serveth him not.] Of whom ye said, his disobedience would be no prejudice to him. You will find the former received into the kingdom of glory; and the latter, with yourselves, thrust down into the bitter pains of an eternal death. Reader, ponder these things. In the great day of the Lord, at least, if not long before, it will be fully discovered who have been the truly wise people; those who took up their cross and followed Christ; or those who satisfied the flesh, with its affections and desires, following a multitude to do evil.

18. return, and discern] When “judgment shall return unto righteousness” (Psalms 94:15), when, that is, the judgement of God shall not only be, as it ever is, but be seen to be righteous, then not only shall “all the upright in heart follow it” with glad approval, but those who have impiously called it in question (Malachi 3:14-15) shall witness and confess the justice of the discriminating sentence.

Then shall ye return, or turn - , not, “return” in the sense of returning to God, for in that day will be the time of judgment, not of repentance; nor yet, “then shall ye again see;” for this is what

18. In that day the skeptics will see that Jehovah does distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, and that he does reward all according to their deeds, whether they be good or evil (2 Corinthians 5:10).