Malachi 3:9

Ye [are] cursed with a curse,.... Or "with penury", as the Vulgate Latin version; which, though not a proper rendering of the word, is the meaning of the curse they were cursed with; rain was

Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?

Ye, O priests, your sin, your sacrilege, of which you are guilty, hath provoked me. Are cursed with a curse; are greatly cursed, and are likely still to be cursed, the curse shall continue whilst you continue in this your sinful course. For ye have robbed me; this brought, increased, and multiplied your curse. Or, as some, yet ye do rob me! Strange that you dare sin, whilst I am punishing for this very sin! Or by way of question, and do ye rob me? will you go on thus to sin when you are under the curse for it? will you, as Ahaz, sin when in distress; or, Pharaoh-like, harden under the judgment? Even this whole nation: like priest like people; the priests and Levites did unduly employ the tithes and offerings, and the people did unduly pay: it is like the people observed how much of the tithes were laid out otherwise than the law directed, and they were ready to think they might do well enough to keep that for a use better (as they did think) than the use the priests and Levites put it to, they thought it was ill spent by the priests, and well saved by them; but this, however seemingly excuse them to themselves, it leaves them guilty before God: the whole nation is sacrilegious, and the whole nation cursed for it.

Malachi 3:9 Ye [are] cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, [even] this whole nation.Ver. 9. Ye are cursed with a curse] Vulgate: Ye are cursed with penury and scarcity of victuals, according to Deuteronomy 28:23, &c., and so great was this people’ s poverty, that they were forced for food to sell not their fields only, but their sons and daughters, Nehemiah 5:1-5 They had pinched on God’ s side, and he had paid them home in the same kind; they thought in the famine to have kept the more to themselves, and they had the less for keeping from him that which was his. A just hand of God upon all church robbers; for the most part they are always in want and needy, their wealth melting away as snow before the sun, and their fields of blood, purchased with the spoils of Christ, proving as unfortunate and fatal to them as the gold of the temple of Tholose did to Scipio’ s soldiers, of which whoever carried any part away never prospered afterwards. What get men by such a detiny that shall prove their fatal destiny? Say they leave the gold behind them, yet they are likely to carry the guilt to hell with them, James 5:1-2; yea, to cough in hell, as Latimer phrased it, unless they make restitution; to digest in hell, what they have devoured on earth, as Austin. Because Pharaoh saith, the river is mine own, therefore, saith God, I will dry up the river, Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 29:9. The merchant that denieth to pay his custom forfeits all his commodities: so here. For ye have robbed me] And therefore I have cursed you. God never punisheth people but there is just cause for it, could they but see it; but that they are hardly drawn to, as here, and Isaiah 26:11; the root of the matter is in themselves, as Job speaks in another case; the plague of their own hearts, 1 Kings 8:38, procureth them all the mischief, and may say to them, as the heart of Apollodorus, the tyrant, seemed to say to him; who dreamed one night that he was flayed by the Scythians, and boiled in a caldron, and that his heart spake to him out of the kettle, it is I that have drawn thee to all this (’Eγωσοιτουτωναιτια). Let men, therefore, when under any misery, lay their hand upon their heart, thrust their hand into their bosom, with Moses, they shall be sure to bring it out leprous; let them turn short again upon themselves, and say every man, What have I done? what evil have I committed, or, at least, admitted? what good have I omitted, or intermitted? Profane Esau, beguiled of the blessing, cries out of his father’ s store, of his brother’ s subtlety; not a word of his own profaneness in slighting and selling his birthright; he had forgot since he did eat and drink, and went his way, Genesis 25:34.

(9) Comp. Malachi 2:2; Malachi 3:11.

Verse 9. Ye are cursed with a curse] The whole nation is under my displeasure. The curse of God is upon you.

9. a curse] Rather, the curse. The threatened curse has already fallen upon you. See ch. Malachi 2:2 with Malachi 3:11. have robbed] Rather rob, as in Malachi 3:8. The pronouns in the Hebrew are emphatic: Me ye are robbing. And the evil is not confined to the priests (ch. Malachi 1:6-8; Malachi 1:12-14), but extends to “the whole nation”.

Ye have been cursed with the curse - (not “with a curse”). The curse threatened had come upon them: but, as fore-supposed in Leviticus by the repeated burden, “If ye still walk contrary to Me,” they had persevered in evil.

8. The reply is in the form of a question. Will a man rob God?