Malachi 1

Him, come to try and to refine His people. Let them repent, therefore, and renounce their sins, that they may be able to abide the day of His coming and to stand when He appeareth. God will be faithful to His promises; they need not question that, as though it were a vain thing to serve Him. And when He comes to fulfil them, He will divide the righteous from the wicked; He will deliver the wicked as stubble to the flames, and cause the Sun of Righteousness to arise on the righteous, with healing in His wings.

The prophecy concludes with a brief admonition (chap. 4: 4-6), in which they are enjoined to remember the law of Moses, but to look for the coming of a better law; to stand in the old ways, but to look for the new. In fine, Malachi is “like a late evening which brings a long day to a close;” but he is also like a morning dawn, which brings with it the promise of a new and more glorious day.

With more fulness and distinctness than most of the prophets, he teaches us that that day of blended judgment and mercy of which they had all spoken dawned upon the world when, for the fall and rising of many, the Son of Man manifesteth forth His glory. Not only does the last of the prophets foresee the Gospel day, on which the Sun of Righteousness is to shine out with unclouded splendor; he also foresees the bright morning star which is to herald and announce its advent. And thus Malachi is a link between the two dispensations and covenants. As we close the Old Testament we catch a glimpse of the Christ whom we are to meet, and with whom we are to walk, in the New Testament; and of the Baptist who came before Him, in the power and spirit of Elijah, to prepare His way, and to attest that this was He of whom Moses and the prophets did write. Cox.

Chap. 1. To show the people their great guilt, the Lord testifies to His special love for their nation, particularly as compared with the posterity of Esau (verses 2-5); rebukes the priests for their contempt of His worship (verses 6-10); assures them that He will find countless sincere worshippers among the heathen (verse 11); exposes and denounces their heinous sins (verses 12-14).

1. This prophecy, as a whole, comprises so much rebuke for sin and threatening of judgment that it may fitly be called a “burden” in the usual sense—sins and judgments, which it is a heart-burden to think of and to reveal. H. C.

2-5. The “oracle” or prophecy of Malachi opens with a few prefatory verses on Jehovah’s love for the sons of Israel—a theme of which the whole book is but a series of variations. And it is surely most appropriate that the closing Scripture of the Old Testament should have for its ruling theme that Divine inalienable love the supreme manifestation of which the New Testament was to record. Cox.

2. The keynote is love. “I have loved you, saith the Lord.” The whole of the message comes out of this. What is their present state but an ungrateful rejection of Divine love, and dishonoring of the Divine covenant? Phelps.

2,3. The Lord begins His endeavors to convict the Jews of sin by setting before them the special love He had borne for their nation ever since Jacob was chosen to be the heir of His promises and Esau was rejected. This hating of Esau was rather a not-loving, and looks especially to the fact that God rejected him from being the heir of the promises made to Abraham and Isaac. The history shows that Esau did not value the inheritance of those promises. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls him “that profane person,” as if to intimate that his rejection was not an arbitrary act of God in the sense of being irrespective of Esau’s ill desert. As to the words “I hated Esau,” let it be carefully noted that God’s hatred is never malign and never causeless.

The key to this passage, as to many others, is the fact we are so apt to forget, that God does nothing arbitrarily; that He has a reason, a good and kind reason, for all His choices and acts. We are not here told what His reason for hating Edom was. Nor could we arrive at all the reasons that went to make up His reason without reviewing the entire history of Israel and Edom, and the bearing of that history on the history and welfare of the whole world. If, for wise and kind ends that embraced the welfare of the whole world, God loved Israel, He could do no other than hate Edom, the insolent and implacable foe of Israel. And that His love for Israel did embrace ends of mercy that went beyond Israel is hinted in the closing lines of this brief preface:

‘Great is Jehovah beyond the border of Israel.’"

Cox.

3. God loved Jacob and hated Esau. The first of these sayings is uttered by Malachi, the last of the prophets, at a time when God had given Israel the most signal proof of His mercy by bringing His people back from their captivity in Babylon. Before the prophet’s eyes was

Israel, restored against all human expectations, and at the same time the land of the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, utterly devastated. At this sight, comparing the opposite conditions of those two kindred and neighboring nations, he places upon the lips of Jehovah these words which sum up the whole of their history: “I have loved Jacob and I have hated Esau.” Is it arbitrarily or capriciously that God has conceived this sentiment? The Old Testament says nothing of the sort. It represents Esau as a carnal and profane man, incapable in any way of serving the purposes of God for the establishment of the reign of faith; and the nation descended from him had followed in the footsteps of its first father. Was it not the Edomites who rejoiced in the day of the ruin of Jerusalem, who, with a diabolical hatred, urged the victors to overthrow it even to its very foundations, and who lay in ambush along the wayside, waiting to rob and murder the unhappy fugitives? That is why, though the older of the two branches, Esau and his race, favored as they were with temporal blessings, were morally rejected, while Jacob and his descendants were substituted for them, in view of the superior work which God meant to accomplish. In this there is no arbitrary hatred, no capricious preference; there is a free choice, independent, no doubt, of the human law of primogeniture, but a wise choice akin to that of the artisan who adapts the tool to the work he intends to perform. Godet.

The Bible does not say that Esau lost the birthright by Jacob’s cheating him out of it. It does not say that Jacob, by attempting to steal the blessing that was designed for Esau, actually secured any good for himself, or took away any good from Esau. Esau lost the birthright because he despised it. He showed this in agreeing to the bargain. But he also showed it in the habits of life he adopted. He preferred a life of excitement, and he knew that he was thus unfitting himself both for enjoying the birthright and for performing the duties it would impose. He married Hittite and Horite wives, knowing that this unfitted him for exercising his birthright; and, as a matter of fact, these marriages, by drawing him to the Horite country, ultimately effected the separation between him and the birthright. Of his own free will he abandoned the promised land, thus eventually losing all his claims there (Gen. 36: 6-8). Meanwhile, Jacob, after wasting half his life in a bootless contest with God over the matter, at last surrendered all his false claims, and let God lead him - and God led him into the possession of all the blessings that Esau had abandoned. W. J. B.

3,4. Whenever the Edomites have set themselves to build themselves up, God has pulled them down. To this day Petra and its dependent towns are “desolate cities,” the houses of which “none should inhabit, ordained to be ruins” by God Himself. To this day the rangers of the desert hurry by the abandoned tenements and temples, and through the long rock-hewn avenues, deeming them perilous and accursed, and muttering prayers for the Divine protection. Here, then, according to Malachi, was the proof that God loved Israel. They might be few, feeble, despised, and exposed to a thousand calamities and dangers. Nevertheless, they were at least redeemed from their captivity; Jerusalem was fast rising from its ruins; the temple was rebuilt; a bright prospect of hope illumined their future. Whereas they had but to look out on the mountain range which formed the southern rampart of their land to descry the home of other children of Abraham who were still captives in a strange land, whose cities were left unto them desolate, whose prospect was darkened by an ever-deepening gloom, a night to which there would be no dawn. To what was this difference, this preference, owing, but to the love of Jehovah? Cox.

Most remarkably have these words been fulfilled. The style of the remains existing in Petra, the metropolis of Edom, shows that they were framed at dates posterior to the time of this prophecy; and we know in fact historically, that it subsequently became a rich and flourishing city. The intention of the Edomites, as disclosed by the prophet, was therefore accomplished by themselves and their successors; but the Lord’s intention has also been accomplished. Of the Edomites themselves, not even a name remains; and their city has for ages remained broken and desolate. The very site, indeed, had long been uncertain, and its place was undetermined in the maps. But, as in the index which closes a book, the various events of centuries are crowded into a few pages; so in these latter days, events that used to be spread over centuries are crowded together into days and years, and the old world history seems tame to the history we live. In this wonderful age events come in “Multitudes, multitudes to the valley of decision;” and old cities and nations—Egypt, Assyria, Edom; Thebes, Nineveh, Petra, are called forth from their tombs; and rattling their dry bones together, and shaking off the time-crust of many ages, they stand up in grim array to bear witness to God’s truth. Edom was called—and Petra answered to her name. There she stands beautiful in her coat of many colors; but empty, and void, and waste. Singularly beautiful even in ruin, and with the freshness of youth still upon her brow, the utter desolation in which “the daughter of Edom” lies shut up amid the silence of her mountains, is most impressive and even affecting. Kitto.

6. This reasoning from the honor due and usually accorded to a father is full of force as applied to the great God. How much more a Father is He than any of these “fathers of our flesh,” and how much greater! Most forcibly, therefore, does He demand from us, “Where is My honor?” “Where is My fear?” This appeal was made with special pertinence to the priests to whom God had given high responsibilities and ample means of knowing His name and His love. H. C.—If God were disposed to relinquish His claim, the usurpation of another master might be yielded to with the more plausible pretence; but this is not the case. If we believe His word, He never means to part with His right over His creatures. “If I am a Father, where is My reverence? if I am a master, where is My fear?” He cannot suppose, without the utmost absurdity, He will ever divest Himself of His authority, which He could never do without impairing His dignity, and introducing confusion into His empire. He owes it to Himself not to relinquish what we owe to Him. R. Hall.

The Fatherhood of God does not subvert the authority of moral law. It does not excuse sin. It summons and encourages to holiness. Mercy does not exclude justice any more than justice excludes mercy. Both are equally universal, and co-operate at every step. It is a great doctrine of judgment which pervades the writings of the minor prophets. These mighty preachers taught that God chastised men because He loved them, that the fiercest retribution moved within redemptive lines. God lets us eat the husks and experience all the bitter harvest of wrong-doing, that we may be brought to ourselves and so return to Him in penitence. No man, therefore, who makes real to himself the unspeakable love of God for him can become indifferent to his moral state. To him God will always be a consuming fire. But on the other hand, the reflection that the moral rule of God is paternal, that love pervades holiness as fire permeates a mass of molten metal, that the perdition of a single soul entails an irreparable loss upon Himself, to avert which

He exerts Himself to the utmost, is the mightiest of all incentives to repentance, and the most powerful argument to patience. He is waiting and watching for every one of you, anxious to give the signal which shall make all the bells of heaven ring out because you have come home. Behrends.

We may each of us charge upon ourselves what is here charged upon the priests. We are every one of us to look upon God as our Father and Master, and upon ourselves as His children and servants. Our relation to God as our Father and Master strongly obliges us to fear and honor Him. If we honor and fear the fathers of our flesh, much more the Father and Master of our spirits (Heb. 12:9). It is a thing to be justly complained of, and lamented, that God is so little feared and honored even by those that own Him for their Father and Master. Where is His honor? Where is His fear? H.

And ye say. From this verse to chap. 2, verse 9, the prophet reproves the priests and the people for sacrificing the refuse of beasts, which, according to the law, ought to have been rejected; and denounces punishment against the priests for not teaching the people their duty in this respect. Abp. Newcome.

7. Mine altar; the table of the Lord. These names may be indifferently used for signifying either the altar or the table of shewbread: and by “polluted bread” may be understood either bread, properly so called, or else the flesh of the sacrifices; so that whether we understand by this variety of words the same or different things—viz., the shewbread by some, and the sacrifices by others, the scope will be the same—that is, to declare the contempt they had of God’s service, and that not in one particular kind only, but in all. Pecock.

7,8. The ceremonial law specified, with almost extreme precision, what offerings should be made and how prepared, laying the greatest stress on their being the very best of their kind. The significance of this is obvious. No greater insult could be offered to God than to turn Him off with the refuse of their flocks and herds, and with polluted bread for His altar! Yet this the priests of that day had done, and moreover seemed still to have no sense of their horrible sin! Forcibly does the Lord say, “Offer such presents to your governor; will he feel himself honored?” H. C.

10. The sense of the passage is this: It were better that the temple doors were closed, and that the sacrifices should cease to be offered, than that they should be offered in a form not acceptable to God. B. C.—The service they did render was done in supreme selfishness, for they would not even close the doors of the temple or kindle the fire upon the altar without special pay for it. So utterly mercenary and heartless had they become in all their religious duties! No wonder the Lord declares to them, “I have no pleasure in you!” The pure, loving heart is above all things else first and highest in His esteem; it might almost be said to be all He cares for. H. C.

The entire Christian life must bear the character of a daily renewed thank-offering to the glory of Him who in grace bestowed a perfect atonement in Christ Jesus; a thank-offering of willing, undivided devotion of ourselves, with all that is ours, to Him. How much easier would it be once for all to die for the cause of God than, throughout a long course of years, day by day, to live to His glory! How much does it already cost to offer willingly to Him that which we most prize of our possessions; and how much more does it include daily to lay upon the altar before Him our hearts, with all their wishes and desires! But for what other purpose is man, as head of earthly creatures, placed below in such a temple, save that he as priest should offer such a sacrifice, daily consecrating to Him the spiritual offerings of self-denial, love and unconditional obedience? The Israelite might not bring within the holy gates aught that had blemish; and can the Christian dare to speak of faith or gratitude while in his conscience anything remains impure or insincere toward his God? Van O.

If we reflect that what we are called upon to offer to God is nothing less than ourselves, our souls and bodies, it must at once be seen that in that perfect, holy, living sacrifice is included every element of character, of endowment, of circumstance, by which each one of us is made to differ from others. Thus it is that not only as men, or as citizens, or as members of families, but as believers in Christ, we have severally a definite and personal work to do, for which we have received in our powers and in our positions the requisite equipment. Only let us be faithful to the ministry which we have received, without attempting to estimate its value or measure its efficacy: only let us be sure that religion is the consecration of our whole nature and not the special attribute of any one part of it; only let us come to God such as we are, bowed down it may be with the burden of toil and care, without the opportunity, as it seems, of preparing an offering for His acceptance: and He will welcome and purify and hallow all that we lay before

Him. The results of silent service, of complete self surrender, of patient trust, cannot be measured by our present experience. They survive us on earth and they follow us before the very throne of heaven. We are called then in Christ daily to bring to God our whole selves. This, and nothing less than this, is our rational service. And if so our religion will be as manifold and as personal as our lives, active now through this gift, now through that, and hallowing with the cross all that is truly human. Bp. Westcott.

When the hour came in which the true worshippers worshipped the Father in Spirit and in truth, then this incense was offered, even this pure offering. Instead of His being worshipped and served among the Jews only, a small people in a corner of the world, He will be served and worshipped in all places, from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same; in every place, in every part of the world, incense shall be offered to His name: nations shall be discipled, and shall speak of the wonderful works of God, and have them spoken to them in their own language. This is a plain prediction of that great revolution in the kingdom of grace, by which the Gentiles, who had been strangers and foreigners, came to be fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, and to welcome to the throne of grace as ever the Jews had been. It is twice said (for the thing was certain), My name shall be great among the Gentiles. H.

Let us not contrast our sacrifices and zeal merely with those of the Master whose name we bear, and whom we have avouched as our Great Exemplar: let us but measure our endeavors, in their number, and in the prudence, liberality, and perseverance that mark them, with the efforts and spirit of the men of this world, who are without hope and without God. Yielding up the comforts of home and the society of friends, forswearing ease, perilling character, lavishing life, and venturing even upon eternal ruin, as they do, the walks of this world’s business and of this world’s pleasures are strewed with the voluntary and costly sacrifices of time, property, comfort, life and salvation. But we, with a soul to save, a heaven to lose or win, a Christ to publish, and a God to serve—how shamefully calm are we found, and timid and half hearted! And this, while the world is rushing into ruin, and bearing on its swollen and rapid stream our friends, our neighbors and our children; while the earth which God has promised to bless (and that by human instrumentality) lies as yet, prostrate and groaning, under the curse poured out through all her coasts. The time is coming, and prophecy has foretold it, when in every land there shall be offered to God a pure offering—when, from the closet and the sanctuary, from the hill-top, the field, and the forest-side, where the children of God shall, like Isaac, walk forth at eventide to meditate, the voice of pious supplication shall ascend in one continuous stream; until our globe, as it rolls along its orbit, shall seem but a censer revolving in the hand of the great High-Priest, and pouring out at every aperture a cloud, dense and rich, of incense, fragrant and grateful to God. But, as yet, the ascending cloud is one of far other kind. Its skirts are dark with sullen gloom, and its bosom is charged with indignation and vengeance. Wailing and blasphemy, oppression and outrage, pollution and falsehood, have swollen and blackened it; and with it, a cry goes up, like that from the cities of the plain, piercing the ear of God. Day unto day uttereth speech of human wretchedness, and night unto night showeth knowledge of human wickedness. What has our faith done for its relief? W. R. W.

12-14. The prophet returns again to the sins of the priests, exposing and rebuking them with deserved severity. Who can wonder that the curse of Jehovah falls on such priests and on all such worshippers at His altar? How can He regard it as better than intended insult? Verily God is too great and too holy to be so contemned! Woe to the man who offers such abuse to the Great King whose “name is dreadful among the heathen!” H. C.

The charge against the priests is resumed in verses 12, 13, in which we have another graphic picture of their listless and perfunctory ministry. As we study it, we see them lounging about the temple courts, desecrating the name of the Lord by the insolent contempt with which they bring stolen and lame and sick beasts for sacrifice, finding the service an intolerable burden which ought to be their honor and pride, snuffing at the pollutions they themselves have laid on the altar, despising the sacrifices which they themselves have rendered despicable, and crying as they went about their ministry. “What a weariness it is!” Such a picture gives us a far clearer insight into the moral and religious condition of the Hebrews of this time than the facts chronicled in the Book of Nehemiah, and helps us to realize the utter debasement from which that brave and disinterested governor attempted to raise them. For it was “like priest, like people.” When the ministers of the altar treated it with supercilious contempt, how should the people honor it? They did not honor it. They took the priestly infection only too readily, and showed their contempt for the altar which the priest despised by bringing to it illegal offerings and sacrifices. Malachi gives us two instances of such contemptuous and fraudulent violations of the law, and leaves us to infer the rest from these (verse 14). Cox.

13. Should I accept this of your hand? Imagine that you go to your place of retirement reluctantly, listlessly. Your mind, perhaps, is in a state of reaction from the excitements of the day. You are indisposed to thought of any kind. You have no eagerness of search after God; it is not the struggling cry of your heart, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!” From sheer reluctance to endure the labor of thinking, you neglect preparatory meditation. You read the Scriptures indolently; you do not expect or seek for a spur to your own conceptions, in the words of inspired thinkers. Or, imagine that, in the act of prayer, your mind dreams its way through a dialect of dead words; it floats on the current of a stereotyped phraseology, which once leaped with life from the lips of holy men who originated it; but some of which, your memory obliges you to confess, never had any vitality in your own thoughts. It was never original with you; you have never worked it out in your own experience; you have never lived it; it has never forced itself into expression, as the fruit of self-knowledge or of self-conflict.

Imagine this as a scene of real life in the closet. Is this a caricature of some possible modes of secret devotion? And if it is not, is it marvellous that such devotion should be afflicted with a want of enjoyment of the Divine presence? “Should I accept this of your hand? saith the Lord.” Phelps.