"MALACHI"

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Have we not all One Father? Why then are we unfaithful to each other?

The lips of a Priest guard knowledge, and men seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the Angel of Jehovah of Hosts.


CHAPTER XXIV

THE BOOK OF “ MALACHI”

This book, the last in the arrangement of the prophetic canon, bears the title: Burden or Oracle of the Word of Jehovah to Israel by the hand of male’akhi. Since at least the second century of our era the word has been understood as a proper name, Malachi or Malachias. But there are strong objections to this, as well as to the genuineness of the whole title, and critics now almost universally agree that the book was originally anonymous.

It is true that neither in form nor in meaning is there any insuperable obstacle to our understanding “male’akhi” as the name of a person. If so, however, it cannot have been, as some have suggested, an abbreviation of Male’akhiyah, for, according to the analogy of other names of such formation, this could only express the impossible meaning Jehovah is Angel.[949] But, as it stands, it might have meant My Angel or Messenger, or it may be taken as an adjective, Angelicus[950]. Either of these meanings would form a natural name for a Jewish child, and a very suitable one for a prophet. There is evidence, however, that some of the earliest Jewish interpreters did not think of the title as containing the name of a person. The Septuagint read by the hand of His messenger,[951] “male’akho”; and the Targum of Jonathan, while retaining “male’akhi,” rendered it My messenger, adding that it was Ezra the Scribe who was thus designated.[952] This opinion was adopted by Calvin.

Recent criticism has shown that, whether the word was originally intended as a personal name or not, it was a purely artificial one borrowed from chap. iii. 1, Behold, I send My messenger, “male’akhi,” for the title, which itself has been added by the editor of the Twelve Prophets in the form in which we now have them. The peculiar words of the title, Burden or Oracle of the Word of Jehovah, occur nowhere else than in the titles of the two prophecies which have been appended to the Book of Zechariah, chap. ix. 1 and chap. xii. 1, and immediately precede this Book of “Malachi.” In chap. ix. 1 the Word of Jehovah belongs to the text; Burden or Oracle has been inserted before it as a title; then the whole phrase has been inserted as a title in chap. xii. 1. These two pieces are anonymous, and nothing is more likely than that another anonymous prophecy should have received, when attached to them, the same heading.[953] The argument is not final, but it is the most probable explanation of the data, and agrees with the other facts. The cumulative force of all that we have stated—the improbability of male’akhi being a personal name, the fact that the earliest versions do not treat it as such, the obvious suggestion for its invention in the male’akhi of chap. iii. 1, the absence of a father’s name and place of residence, and the character of the whole title—is enough for the opinion rapidly spreading among critics that our book was, like so much more in the Old Testament, originally anonymous.[954] The author attacks the religious authorities of his day; he belongs to a pious remnant of his people, who are overborne and perhaps oppressed by the majority.[955] In these facts, which are all we know of his personality, he found sufficient reason for not attaching his name to his prophecy.

The book is also undated, but it reflects its period almost as clearly as do the dated Books of Haggai and Zechariah. The conquest of Edom by the Nabateans, which took place during the Exile,[956] is already past.[957] The Jews are under a Persian viceroy.[958] They are in touch with a heathen power, which does not tyrannise over them, for this book is the first to predict no judgment upon the heathen, and the first, moreover, to acknowledge that among the heathen the true God is worshipped from the rising to the setting of the sun.[959] The only judgment predicted is one upon the false and disobedient portion of Israel, whose arrogance and success have cast true Israelites into despair.[960] All this reveals a time when the Jews were favourably treated by their Persian lords. The reign must be that of Artaxerxes Longhand, 464—424.

The Temple has been finished,[961] and years enough have elapsed to disappoint those fervid hopes with which about 518 Zechariah expected its completion. The congregation has grown worldly and careless. In particular the priests are corrupt and partial in the administration of the Law.[962] There have been many marriages with the heathen women of the land;[963] and the laity have failed to pay the tithes and other dues to the Temple.[964] These are the evils against which we find strenuous measures directed by Ezra, who returned from Babylon in 458,[965] and by Nehemiah, who visited Jerusalem as its governor for the first time in 445 and for the second time in 433. Besides, “the religious spirit of the book is that of the prayers of Ezra and Nehemiah. A strong sense of the unique privileges of the children of Jacob, the objects of electing love,[966] the children of the Divine Father,[967] is combined with an equally strong assurance of Jehovah’s righteousness amidst the many miseries that pressed on the unhappy inhabitants of JudÆa.... Obedience to the Law is the sure path to blessedness.”[968] But the question still remains whether the Book of “Malachi” prepared for, assisted or followed up the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. An ancient tradition already alluded to[969] assigned the authorship to Ezra himself.

Recent criticism has been divided among the years immediately before Ezra’s arrival in 458, those immediately before Nehemiah’s first visit in 445, those between his first government and his second, and those after Nehemiah’s disappearance from Jerusalem. But the years in which Nehemiah held office may be excluded, because the Jews are represented as bringing gifts to the governor, which Nehemiah tells us he did not allow to be brought to him.[970] The whole question depends upon what Law was in practice in Israel when the book was written. In 445 Ezra and Nehemiah, by solemn covenant between the people and Jehovah, instituted the code which we now know as the Priestly Code of the Pentateuch. Before that year the ritual and social life of the Jews appear to have been directed by the Deuteronomic Code. Now the Book of “Malachi” enforces a practice with regard to the tithes, which agrees more closely with the Priestly Code than it does with Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy commands that every third year the whole tithe is to be given to the Levites and the poor who reside within the gates of the giver, and is there to be eaten by them. “Malachi” commands that the whole tithe be brought into the storehouse of the Temple for the Levites in service there; and so does the Priestly Code.[971] On this ground many date the Book of “Malachi” after 445.[972] But “Malachi’s” divergence from Deuteronomy on this point may be explained by the fact that in his time there were practically no Levites outside Jerusalem; and it is to be noticed that he joins the tithe with the terÛmah or heave-offering exactly as Deuteronomy does.[973] On other points of the Law he agrees rather with Deuteronomy than with the Priestly Code. He follows Deuteronomy in calling the priests sons of Levi,[974] while the Priestly Code limits the priesthood to the sons of Aaron. He seems to quote Deuteronomy when forbidding the oblation of blind, lame and sick beasts;[975] appears to differ from the Priestly Code which allows the sacrificial beast to be male or female, when he assumes that it is a male;[976] follows the expressions of Deuteronomy and not those of the Priestly Code in detailing the sins of the people;[977] and uses the Deuteronomic phrases the Law of Moses, My servant Moses, statutes and judgments, and Horeb for the Mount of the Law.[978] For the rest, he echoes or implies only Ezekiel and that part of the Priestly Code[979] which is regarded as earlier than the rest, and probably from the first years of exile. Moreover he describes the Torah as not yet fully codified.[980] The priests still deliver it in a way improbable after 445. The trouble of the heathen marriages with which he deals (if indeed the verses on this subject be authentic and not a later intrusion[981]) was that which engaged Ezra’s attention on his arrival in 458, but Ezra found that it had already for some time been vexing the heads of the community. While, therefore, we are obliged to date the Book of “Malachi” before 445 B.C., it is uncertain whether it preceded or followed Ezra’s attempts at reform in 458. Most critics now think that it preceded them.[982]

The Book of “Malachi” is an argument with the prophet’s contemporaries, not only with the wicked among them, who in forgetfulness of what Jehovah is corrupt the ritual, fail to give the Temple its dues, abuse justice, marry foreign wives,[983] divorce their own, and commit various other sins; but also with the pious, who, equally forgetful of God’s character, are driven by the arrogance of the wicked to ask, whether He loves Israel, whether He is a God of justice, and to murmur that it is vain to serve Him. To these two classes of his contemporaries the prophet has the following answers. God does love Israel. He is worshipped everywhere among the heathen. He is the Father of all Israel. He will bless His people when they put away all abuses from their midst and pay their religious dues; and His Day of Judgment is coming, when the good shall be separated from the wicked. But before it come, Elijah the prophet will be sent to attempt the conversion of the wicked, or at least to call the nation to decide for Jehovah. This argument is pursued in seven or perhaps eight paragraphs, which do not show much consecutiveness, but are addressed, some to the wicked, and some to the despairing adherents of Jehovah.

1. Chap. i. 2–5.—To those who ask how God loves Israel, the proof of Jehovah’s election of Israel is shown in the fall of the Edomites. 2. Chap. i. 6–14.—Charge against the people of dishonouring their God, whom even the heathen reverence.

3. Chap. ii. 1–9.—Charge against the priests, who have broken the covenant God made of old with Levi, and debased their high office by not reverencing Jehovah, by misleading the people and by perverting justice. A curse is therefore fallen on them—they are contemptible in the people’s eyes.

4. Chap. ii. 10–16.—A charge against the people for their treachery to each other; instanced in the heathen marriages, if the two verses, 11 and 12, upon this be authentic, and in their divorce of their wives.

5. Chap. ii. 17—iii. 5 or 6.—Against those who in the midst of such evils grow sceptical about Jehovah. His Angel, or Himself, will come first to purge the priesthood and ritual that there may be pure sacrifices, and second to rid the land of its criminals and sinners.

6. Chap. iii. 6 or 7–12.—A charge against the people of neglecting tithes. Let these be paid, disasters shall cease and the land be blessed.

7. Chap. iii. 13–21 Heb., Chap. iii. 13—iv. 2 LXX. and Eng.—Another charge against the pious for saying it is vain to serve God. God will rise to action and separate between the good and bad in the terrible Day of His coming.

8. To this, Chap. iii. 22–24 Heb., Chap. iv. 3–5 Eng., adds a call to keep the Law, and a promise that Elijah will be sent to see whether he may not convert the people before the Day of the Lord comes upon them with its curse.

The authenticity of no part of the book has been till now in serious question. BÖhme,[984] indeed, took the last three verses for a later addition, on account of their Deuteronomic character, but, as Kuenen points out, this is in agreement with other parts of the book. Sufficient attention has not yet been paid to the question of the integrity of the text. The Septuagint offers a few emendations.[985] There are other passages obviously or probably corrupt.[986] The text of the title, as we have seen, is uncertain, and probably a later addition. Professor Robertson Smith has called attention to chap. ii. 16, where the Massoretic punctuation seems to have been determined with the desire to support the rendering of the Targum “if thou hatest her put her away,” and so pervert into a permission to divorce a passage which forbids divorce almost as clearly as Christ Himself did. But in truth the whole of this passage, chap. ii. 10–16, is in such a curious state that we can hardly believe in its integrity. It opens with the statement that God is the Father of all us Israelites, and with the challenge, why then are we faithless to each other?—ver.10. But vv. 11 and 12 do not give an instance of this: they describe the marriages with the heathen women of the land, which is not a proof of faithlessness between Israelites. Such a proof is furnished only by vv. 13–16, with their condemnation of those who divorce the wives of their youth. The verses, therefore, cannot lie in their proper order, and vv. 13–16 ought to follow immediately upon ver.10. This raises the question of the authenticity of vv. 11 and 12, against the heathen marriages. If they bear such plain marks of having been intruded into their position, we can understand the possibility of such an intrusion in subsequent days, when the question of the heathen marriages came to the front with Ezra and Nehemiah. Besides, these verses 11 and 12 lack the characteristic mark of all the other oracles of the book: they do not state a general charge against the people, and then introduce the people’s question as to the particulars of the charge. On the whole, therefore, these verses are suspicious. If not a later intrusion, they are at least out of place where they now lie. The peculiar remark in ver.13, and this secondly ye do, must have been added by the editor to whom we owe the present arrangement.


CHAPTER XXV

FROM ZECHARIAH TO “ MALACHI”

Between the completion of the Temple in 516 and the arrival of Ezra in 458, we have almost no record of the little colony round Mount Zion. The Jewish chronicles devote to the period but a few verses of unsupported tradition.[987] After 517 we have nothing from Zechariah himself; and if any other prophet appeared during the next half-century, his words have not survived. We are left to infer what was the true condition of affairs, not less from this ominous silence than from the hints which are given to us in the writings of “Malachi,” Ezra and Nehemiah after the period was over. Beyond a partial attempt to rebuild the walls of the city in the reign of Artaxerxes I.,[988] there seems to have been nothing to record. It was a period of disillusion, disheartening and decay. The completion of the Temple did not bring in the Messianic era. Zerubbabel, whom Haggai and Zechariah had crowned as the promised King of Israel, died without reaching higher rank than a minor satrapy in the Persian Empire, and even in that he appears to have been succeeded by a Persian official.[989] The re-migrations from Babylon and elsewhere, which Zechariah predicted, did not take place. The small population of Jerusalem were still harassed by the hostility, and their morale sapped by the insidiousness, of their Samaritan neighbours: they were denied the stimulus, the purgation, the glory of a great persecution. Their Persian tyrants for the most part left them alone. The world left them alone. Nothing stirred in Palestine except the Samaritan intrigues. History rolled away westward, and destiny seemed to be settling on the Greeks. In 490 Miltiades defeated the Persians at Marathon. In 480 ThermopylÆ was fought and the Persian fleet broken at Salamis. In 479 a Persian army was destroyed at PlatÆa, and Xerxes lost Europe and most of the Ionian coast. In 460 Athens sent an expedition to Egypt to assist the Egyptian revolt against Persia, and in 457 “her slain fell in Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, at HaliÆ, in Ægina, and in Megara in the same year.”

Thus severely left to themselves and to the petty hostilities of their neighbours, the Jews appear to have sunk into a careless and sordid manner of life. They entered the period, it is true, with some sense of their distinction.[990] In exile they had suffered God’s anger,[991] and had been purged by it. But out of discipline often springs pride, and there is no subtler temptation of the human heart. The returned Israel felt this to the quick, and it sorely unfitted them for encountering the disappointment and hardship which followed upon the completion of the Temple. The tide of hope, which rose to flood with that consummation, ebbed rapidly away, and left God’s people struggling, like any ordinary tribe of peasants, with bad seasons and the cruelty of their envious neighbours. Their pride was set on edge, and they fell, not as at other periods of disappointment into despair, but into a bitter carelessness and a contempt of their duty to God. This was a curious temper, and, so far as we know, new in Israel. It led them to despise both His love and His holiness.[992] They neglected their Temple dues, and impudently presented to their God polluted bread and blemished beasts which they would not have dared to offer to their Persian governor.[993] Like people like priest: the priesthood lost not reverence only, but decency and all conscience of their office.[994] They despised the Table of the Lord, ceased to instruct the people and grew partial in judgment. As a consequence they became contemptible in the eyes of the community. Immorality prevailed among all classes: every man dealt treacherously with his brother.[995] Adultery, perjury, fraud and the oppression of the poor were very rife.

One particular fashion, in which the people’s wounded pride spited itself, was the custom of marriage which even the best families contracted with the half-heathen people of the land. Across Judah there were scattered the descendants of those Jews whom Nebuchadrezzar had not deemed worth removing to Babylon. Whether regarded from a social or a religious point of view, their fathers had been the dregs of the old community. Their own religion, cut off as they were from the main body of Israel and scattered among the old heathen shrines of the land, must have deteriorated still further; but in all probability they had secured for themselves the best portions of the vacant soil, and now enjoyed a comfort and a stability of welfare far beyond that which was yet attainable by the majority of the returned exiles. More numerous than these dregs of ancient Jewry were the very mixed race of the Samaritans. They possessed a rich land, which they had cultivated long enough for many of their families to be settled in comparative wealth. With all these half-pagan Jews and Samaritans, the families of the true Israel, as they regarded themselves, did not hesitate to form alliances, for in the precarious position of the colony, such alliances were the surest way both to wealth and to political influence. How much the Jews were mastered by their desire for them is seen from the fact that, when the relatives of their half-heathen brides made it a condition of the marriages that they should first put away their old wives, they readily did so. Divorce became very frequent, and great suffering was inflicted on the native Jewish women.[996]

So the religious condition of Israel declined for nearly two generations, and then about 460 the Word of God, after long silence, broke once more through a prophet’s lips.

We call this prophet “Malachi,” following the error of an editor of his book, who, finding it nameless, inferred or invented that name from its description of the priest as the “Male’ach,” or messenger, of the Lord of Hosts.[997] But the prophet gave himself no name. Writing from the midst of a poor and persecuted group of the people, and attacking the authorities both of church and state, he preferred to publish his charge anonymously. His name was in the Lord’s own book of remembrance.[998]

The unknown prophet addressed himself both to the sinners of his people, and to those querulous adherents of Jehovah whom the success of the sinners had tempted to despair in their service of God. His style shares the practical directness of his predecessors among the returned exiles. He takes up one point after another, and drives them home in a series of strong, plain paragraphs of prose. But it is sixty years since Haggai and Zechariah, and in the circumstances we have described, a prophet could no longer come forward as a public inspirer of his nation. Prophecy seems to have been driven from public life, from the sudden enforcement of truth in the face of the people to the more deliberate and ordered argument which marks the teacher who works in private. In the Book of “Malachi” there are many of the principles and much of the enthusiasm of the ancient Hebrew seer. But the discourse is broken up into formal paragraphs, each upon the same academic model. First a truth is pronounced, or a charge made against the people; then with the words but ye will say the prophet states some possible objection of his hearers, proceeds to answer it by detailed evidence, and only then drives home his truth, or his charge, in genuine prophetic fashion. To the student of prophecy this peculiarity of the book is of the greatest interest, for it is no merely personal idiosyncrasy. We rather feel that prophecy is now assuming the temper of the teacher. The method is the commencement of that which later on becomes the prevailing habit in Jewish literature. Just as with Zephaniah we saw prophecy passing into Apocalypse, and with Habakkuk into the speculation of the schools of Wisdom, so now in “Malachi” we perceive its transformation into the scholasticism of the Rabbis.

But the interest of this change of style must not prevent us from appreciating the genuine prophetic spirit of our book. Far more fully than, for instance, that of Haggai, to the style of which its practical simplicity is so akin, it enumerates the prophetic principles: the everlasting Love of Jehovah for Israel, the Fatherhood of Jehovah and His Holiness, His ancient Ideals for Priesthood and People, the need of a Repentance proved by deeds, the consequent Promise of Prosperity, the Day of the Lord, and Judgment between the evil and the righteous. Upon the last of these the book affords a striking proof of the delinquency of the people during the last half-century, and in connection with it the prophet introduces certain novel features. To Haggai and Zechariah the great Tribulation had closed with the Exile and the rebuilding of the Temple: Israel stood on the margin of the Messianic age. But the Book of “Malachi” proclaims the need of another judgment as emphatically as the older prophets had predicted the Babylonian doom. “Malachi” repeats their name for it, the great and terrible Day of Jehovah. But he does not foresee it, as they did, in the shape of a historical process. His description of it is pure Apocalypse—the fire of the smelter and the fuller’s acid: the day that burns like a furnace, when all wickedness is as stubble, and all evil men are devoured, but to the righteous the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings, and they shall tread the wicked under foot.[999] To this the prophet adds a novel promise. God is so much the God of love,[1000] that before the Day comes He will give His people an opportunity of conversion. He will send them Elijah the prophet to change their hearts, that He may be prevented from striking the land with His Ban.

In one other point the book is original, and that is in its attitude towards the heathen. Among the heathen, it boldly says, Jehovah is held in higher reverence than among His own people.[1001] In such a statement we can hardly fail to feel the influence upon Israel of their contact, often close and personal, with their wise and mild tyrants the Persians. We may emphasise the verse as the first note of that recognition of the real religiousness of the heathen, which we shall find swelling to such fulness and tenderness in the Book of Jonah.

Such are in brief the style and the principles of the Book of “Malachi,” whose separate prophecies we may now proceed to take up in detail.


CHAPTER XXVI

PROPHECY WITHIN THE LAW

“MALACHI” i.—iv.

Beneath this title we may gather all the eight sections of the Book of “Malachi.” They contain many things of perennial interest and validity: their truth is applicable, their music is still musical, to ourselves. But their chief significance is historical. They illustrate the development of prophecy within the Law. Not under the Law, be it observed. For if one thing be more clear than another about “Malachi’s” teaching, it is that the spirit of prophecy is not yet crushed by the legalism which finally killed it within Israel. “Malachi” observes and enforces the demands of the Deuteronomic law under which his people had lived since the Return from Exile. But he traces each of these to some spiritual principle, to some essential of religion in the character of Israel’s God, which is either doubted or neglected by his contemporaries in their lax performance of the Law. That is why we may entitle his book Prophecy within the Law.

The essential principles of the religion of Israel which had been shaken or obscured by the delinquency of the people during the half-century after the rebuilding of the Temple were three—the distinctive Love of Jehovah for His people, His Holiness, and His Righteousness. The Book of “Malachi” takes up each of these in turn, and proves or enforces it according as the people have formally doubted it or in their carelessness done it despite.

1. GOD’S LOVE FOR ISRAEL AND HATRED OF EDOM
(Chap. i. 2–5).

He begins with God’s Love, and in answer to the disappointed[1002] people’s cry, Wherein hast Thou loved us? he does not, as the older prophets did, sweep the whole history of Israel, and gather proofs of Jehovah’s grace and unfailing guidance in all the great events from the deliverance from Egypt to the deliverance from Babylon. But he confines himself to a comparison of Israel with the Gentile nation, which was most akin to Israel according to the flesh, their own brother Edom. It is possible, of course, to see in this a proof of our prophet’s narrowness, as contrasted with Amos or Hosea or the great Evangelist of the Exile. But we must remember that out of all the history of Israel “Malachi” could not have chosen an instance which would more strongly appeal to the heart of his contemporaries. We have seen from the Book of Obadiah how ever since the beginning of the Exile Edom had come to be regarded by Israel as their great antithesis.[1003] If we needed further proof of this we should find it in many Psalms of the Exile, which like the Book of Obadiah remember with bitterness the hostile part that Edom played in the day of Israel’s calamity. The two nations were utterly opposed in genius and character. Edom was a people of as unspiritual and self-sufficient a temper as ever cursed any of God’s human creatures. Like their ancestor they were profane,[1004] without repentance, humility or ideals, and almost without religion. Apart, therefore, from the long history of war between the two peoples, it was a true instinct which led Israel to regard their brother as representative of that heathendom against which they had to realise their destiny in the world as God’s own nation. In choosing the contrast of Edom’s fate to illustrate Jehovah’s love for Israel, “Malachi” was not only choosing what would appeal to the passions of his contemporaries, but what is the most striking and constant antithesis in the whole history of Israel: the absolutely diverse genius and destiny of these two Semitic nations who were nearest neighbours and, according to their traditions, twin-brethren after the flesh. If we keep this in mind we shall understand Paul’s use of the antithesis in the passage in which he clenches it by a quotation from “Malachi”: as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.[1005] In these words the doctrine of the Divine election of individuals appears to be expressed as absolutely as possible. But it would be unfair to read the passage except in the light of Israel’s history. In the Old Testament it is a matter of fact that the doctrine of the Divine preference of Israel to Esau appeared only after the respective characters of the nations were manifested in history, and that it grew more defined and absolute only as history discovered more of the fundamental contrast between the two in genius and destiny.[1006] In the Old Testament, therefore, the doctrine is the result, not of an arbitrary belief in God’s bare fiat, but of historical experience; although, of course, the distinction which experience proves is traced back, with everything else of good or evil that happens, to the sovereign will and purpose of God. Nor let us forget that the Old Testament doctrine of election is of election to service only. That is to say, the Divine intention in electing covers not the elect individual or nation only, but the whole world and its needs of God and His truth.

The event to which “Malachi” appeals as evidence for God’s rejection of Edom is the desolation of the latter’s ancient heritage, and the abandonment of it to the jackals of the desert. Scholars used to think that these vague phrases referred to some act of the Persian kings: some removal of the Edomites from the lands of the Jews in order to make room for the returned exiles.[1007] But “Malachi” says expressly that it was Edom’s own heritage which was laid desolate. This can only be Mount Esau or Se’ir, and the statement that it was delivered to the jackals of the desert proves that the reference is to that same expulsion of Edom from their territory by the Nabatean Arabs which we have already seen the Book of Obadiah relate about the beginning of the Exile.[1008] But it is now time to give in full the opening passage of “Malachi,” in which he appeals to this important event as proof of God’s distinctive love for Israel, and, “Malachi” adds, of His power beyond Israel’s border (“Mal.” chap. i. 2–5).

I have loved you, saith Jehovah. But ye say, “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” Is not Esau brother to Jacob?—oracle of Jehovah—and I have loved Jacob and Esau have I hated. I have made his mountains desolate, and given his heritage to the jackals of the desert. Should the people of Edom say,[1009] “We are destroyed, but we will rebuild the waste places,” thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, They may build, but I will pull down: men shall call them “The Border of Wickedness” and “The People with whom Jehovah is wroth for ever.” And your eyes shall see it, and yourselves shall say, “Great is Jehovah beyond Israel’s border.”

2. “HONOUR THY FATHER” (Chap. i. 6–14).

From God’s Love, which Israel have doubted, the prophet passes to His Majesty or Holiness, which they have wronged. Now it is very remarkable that the relation of God to the Jews in which the prophet should see His Majesty illustrated is not only His lordship over them but His Fatherhood: A son honours a father, and a servant his lord; but if I be Father, where is My honour? and if I be Lord, where is there reverence for Me? saith Jehovah of Hosts.[1010] We are so accustomed to associate with the Divine Fatherhood only ideas of love and pity that the use of the relation to illustrate not love but Majesty, and the setting of it in parallel to the Divine Kingship, may seem to us strange. Yet this was very natural to Israel. In the old Semitic world, even to the human parent, honour was due before love. Honour thy father and thy mother, said the Fifth Commandment; and when, after long shyness to do so, Israel at last ventured to claim Jehovah as the Father of His people, it was at first rather with the view of increasing their sense of His authority and their duty of reverencing Him, than with the view of bringing Him near to their hearts and assuring them of His tenderness. The latter elements, it is true, were not absent from the conception. But even in the Psalter, in which we find the most intimate and tender fellowship of the believer with God, there is only one passage in which His love for His own is compared to the love of a human father.[1011] And in the other very few passages of the Old Testament where He is revealed or appealed to as the Father of the nation, it is, with two exceptions,[1012] in order either to emphasise His creation of Israel or His discipline. So in Jeremiah,[1013] and in an anonymous prophet of the same period perhaps as “Malachi.”[1014] This hesitation to ascribe to God the name of Father, and this severe conception of what Fatherhood meant, was perhaps needful for Israel in face of the sensuous ideas of the Divine Fatherhood cherished by their heathen neighbours.[1015] But, however this may be, the infrequency and austerity of Israel’s conception of God’s Fatherhood, in contrast with that of Christianity, enables us to understand why “Malachi” should employ the relation as proof, not of the Love, but of the Majesty and Holiness of Jehovah.

This Majesty and this Holiness have been wronged, he says, by low thoughts of God’s altar, and by offering upon it, with untroubled conscience, cheap and blemished sacrifices. The people would have been ashamed to present such to their Persian governor: how can God be pleased with them? Better that sacrifice should cease than that such offerings should be presented in such a spirit! Is there no one, cries the prophet, to close the doors of the Temple altogether, so that the altar smoke not in vain?

The passage shows us what a change has passed over the spirit of Israel since prophecy first attacked the sacrificial ritual. We remember how Amos would have swept it all away as an abomination to God.[1016] So, too, Isaiah and Jeremiah. But their reason for this was very different from “Malachi’s.” Their contemporaries were assiduous and lavish in sacrificing, and were devoted to the Temple and the ritual with a fanaticism which made them forget that Jehovah’s demands upon His people were righteousness and the service of the weak. But “Malachi” condemns his generation for depreciating the Temple, and for being stingy and fraudulent in their offerings. Certainly the post-exilic prophet assumes a different attitude to the ritual from that of his predecessors in ancient Israel. They wished it all abolished, and placed the chief duties of Israel towards God in civic justice and mercy. But he emphasises it as the first duty of the people towards God, and sees in their neglect the reason of their misfortunes and the cause of their coming doom. In this change which has come over prophecy we must admit the growing influence of the Law. From Ezekiel onwards the prophets become more ecclesiastical and legal. And though at first they do not become less ethical, yet the influence which was at work upon them was of such a character as was bound in time to engross their interest, and lead them to remit the ethical elements of their religion to a place secondary to the ceremonial. We see symptoms of this even in “Malachi,” we shall find more in Joel, and we know how aggravated these symptoms afterwards became in all the leaders of Jewish religion. At the same time we ought to remember that this change of emphasis, which many will think to be for the worse, was largely rendered necessary by the change of temper in the people to whom the prophets ministered. “Malachi” found among his contemporaries a habit of religious performance which was not only slovenly and indecent, but mean and fraudulent, and it became his first practical duty to attack this. Moreover the neglect of the Temple was not due to those spiritual conceptions of Jehovah and those moral duties He demanded, in the interests of which the older prophets had condemned the ritual. At bottom the neglect of the Temple was due to the very same reasons as the superstitious zeal and fanaticism in sacrificing which the older prophets had attacked—false ideas, namely, of God Himself, and of what was due to Him from His people. And on these grounds, therefore, we may say that “Malachi” was performing for his generation as needful and as Divine a work as Amos and Isaiah had performed for theirs. Only, be it admitted, the direction of “Malachi’s” emphasis was more dangerous for religion than that of the emphasis of Amos or Isaiah. How liable the practice he inculcated was to exaggeration and abuse is sadly proved in the later history of his people: it was against that exaggeration, grown great and obdurate through three centuries, that Jesus delivered His most unsparing words.

A son honours a father, and a servant his lord. But if I am Father, where is My honour? and if I am Lord, where is reverence for Me? saith Jehovah of Hosts to you, O priests, who despise My Name. Ye say, “How then have we despised Thy Name?” Ye are bringing polluted food to Mine Altar. Ye say, “How have we polluted Thee?”[1017] By saying,[1018] “The Table of Jehovah may be despised”; and when ye bring a blind beast to sacrifice, “No harm!” or when ye bring a lame or sick one, “No harm!”[1019] Pray, take it to thy Satrap: will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith Jehovah of Hosts. But now, propitiate[1020] God, that He may be gracious to us. When things like this come from your hands, can He accept your persons? saith Jehovah of Hosts. Who is there among you to close the doors of the Temple altogether, that ye kindle not Mine Altar in vain? I have no pleasure in you, saith Jehovah of Hosts, and I will not accept an offering from your hands. For from the rising of the sun and to its setting My Name is glorified[1021] among the nations; and in every sacred place[1022] incense is offered to My Name, and a pure offering:[1023] for great is My Name among the nations, saith Jehovah of Hosts. But ye are profaning it, in that ye think[1024] that the Table of the Lord is polluted, and[1025] its food contemptible. And ye say, What a weariness! and ye sniff at it,[1026] saith Jehovah of Hosts. When ye bring what has been plundered,[1027] and the lame and the diseased, yea, when ye so bring an offering, can I accept it with grace from your hands? saith Jehovah. Cursed be the cheat in whose flock is a male beast and he vows it,[1028] and slays for the Lord a miserable beast.[1029] For a great King am I, saith Jehovah of Hosts, and My Name is reverenced among the nations.

Before we pass from this passage we must notice in it one very remarkable feature—perhaps the most original contribution which the Book of “Malachi” makes to the development of prophecy. In contrast to the irreverence of Israel and the wrong they do to Jehovah’s Holiness, He Himself asserts that not only is His Name great and glorified among the heathen, from the rising to the setting of the sun, but that in every sacred place incense and a pure offering are offered to His Name. This is so novel a statement, and, we may truly say, so startling, that it is not wonderful that the attempt should have been made to interpret it, not of the prophet’s own day, but of the Messianic age and the kingdom of Christ. So, many of the Christian Fathers, from Justin and IrenÆus to Theodoret and Augustine;[1030] so, our own Authorised Version, which boldly throws the verbs into the future; and so, many modern interpreters like Pusey, who declares that the style is “a vivid present such as is often used to describe the future; but the things spoken of show it to be future.” All these take the passage to be an anticipation of Christ’s parables declaring the rejection of the Jews and ingathering of the Gentiles to the kingdom of heaven, and of the argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the bleeding and defective offerings of the Jews were abrogated by the sacrifice of the Cross. But such an exegesis is only possible by perverting the text and misreading the whole argument of the prophet. Not only are the verbs of the original in the present tense—so also in the early versions—but the prophet is obviously contrasting the contempt of God’s own people for Himself and His institutions with the reverence paid to His Name among the heathen. It is not the mere question of there being righteous people in every nation, well-pleasing to Jehovah because of their lives. The very sacrifices of the heathen are pure and acceptable to Him. Never have we had in prophecy, even the most far-seeing and evangelical, a statement so generous and so catholic as this. Why it should appear only now in the history of prophecy is a question we are unable to answer with certainty. Many have seen in it the result of Israel’s intercourse with their tolerant and religious masters the Persians. None of the Persian kings had up to this time persecuted the Jews, and numbers of pious and large-minded Israelites must have had opportunity of acquaintance with the very pure doctrines of the Persian religion, among which it is said that there was already numbered the recognition of true piety in men of all religions.[1031] If Paul derived from his Hellenic culture the knowledge which made it possible for him to speak as he did in Athens of the religiousness of the Gentiles, it was just as probable that Jews who had come within the experience of a still purer Aryan faith should utter an even more emphatic acknowledgment that the One True God had those who served Him in spirit and in truth all over the world. But, whatever foreign influences may have ripened such a faith in Israel, we must not forget that its roots were struck deep in the native soil of their religion. From the first they had known their God as a God of a grace so infinite that it was impossible it should be exhausted on themselves. If His righteousness, as Amos showed, was over all the Syrian states, and His pity and His power to convert, as Isaiah showed, covered even the cities of Phoenicia, the great Evangelist of the Exile could declare that He quenched not the smoking wicks of the dim heathen faiths.

As interesting, however, as the origin of “Malachi’s” attitude to the heathen, are two other points about it. In the first place, it is remarkable that it should occur, especially in the form of emphasising the purity of heathen sacrifices, in a book which lays such heavy stress upon the Jewish Temple and ritual. This is a warning to us not to judge harshly the so-called legal age of Jewish religion, nor to despise the prophets who have come under the influence of the Law. And in the second place, we perceive in this statement a step towards the fuller acknowledgment of Gentile religiousness which we find in the Book of Jonah. It is strange that none of the post-exilic Psalms strike the same note. They often predict the conversion of the heathen; but they do not recognise their native reverence and piety. Perhaps the reason is that in a body of song, collected for the national service, such a feature would be out of place.

3. THE PRIESTHOOD OF KNOWLEDGE (Chap. ii. 1–9).

In the third section of his book “Malachi” addresses himself to the priests. He charges them not only with irreverence and slovenliness in their discharge of the Temple service—for this he appears to intend by the phrase filth of your feasts—but with the neglect of their intellectual duties to the people. The lips of a priest guard knowledge, and men seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the Angel—the revealing Angel—of Jehovah of Hosts. Once more, what a remarkable saying to come from the legal age of Israel’s religion, and from a writer who so emphasises the ceremonial law! In all the range of prophecy there is not any more in harmony with the prophetic ideal. How needed it is in our own age!—needed against those two extremes of religion from which we suffer, the limitation of the ideal of priesthood to the communication of a magic grace, and its evaporation in a vague religiosity from which the intellect is excluded as if it were perilous, worldly and devilish.[1032] “Surrender of the intellect” indeed! This is the burial of the talent in the napkin, and, as in the parable of Christ, it is still in our day preached and practised by the men of one talent. Religion needs all the brains we poor mortals can put into it. There is a priesthood of knowledge, a priesthood of the intellect, says “Malachi,” and he makes this a large part of God’s covenant with Levi. Every priest of God is a priest of truth; and it is very largely by the Christian ministry’s neglect of their intellectual duties that so much irreligion prevails. As in “Malachi’s” day, so now, “the laity take hurt and hindrance by our negligence.”[1033] And just as he points out, so with ourselves, the consequence is the growing indifference with which large bodies of the Christian ministry are regarded by the thoughtful portions both of our labouring and professional classes. Were the ministers of all the Churches to awake to their ideal in this matter, there would surely come a very great revival of religion among us.

And now this Charge for you, O priests: If ye hear not, and lay not to heart to give glory to My Name, saith Jehovah of Hosts, I will send upon you the curse, and will curse your blessings—yea, I have cursed them[1034]—for none of you layeth it to heart. Behold, I ... you ...[1035] and I will scatter filth in your faces, the filth of your feasts....[1036] And ye shall know that I have sent to you this Charge, to be My covenant with Levi,[1037] saith Jehovah of Hosts. My covenant was with him life and peace,[1038] and I gave them to him, fear and he feared Me, and humbled himself before My Name.[1039] The revelation of truth was in his mouth, and wickedness was not found upon his lips. In whole-heartedness[1040] and integrity he walked with Me, and turned many from iniquity. For the lips of a priest guard knowledge, and men seek instruction[1041] from his mouth, for he is the Angel of Jehovah of Hosts. But ye have turned from the way, ye have tripped up many by the Torah, ye have spoiled the covenant of Levi, saith Jehovah of Hosts. And I on My part[1042] have made you contemptible to all the people, and abased in proportion as ye kept not My ways and had respect of persons in delivering your Torah.

4. THE CRUELTY OF DIVORCE (Chap. ii. 10–17).

In his fourth section, upon his countrymen’s frequent divorce of their native wives in order to marry into the influential families of their half-heathen neighbours,[1043] “Malachi” makes another of those wide and spiritual utterances which so distinguish his prophecy and redeem his age from the charge of legalism that is so often brought against it. To him the Fatherhood of God is not merely a relation of power and authority, requiring reverence from the nation. It constitutes the members of the nation one close brotherhood, and against this divorce is a crime and unnatural cruelty. Jehovah makes the wife of a man’s youth his mate for life and his wife by covenant. He hates divorce, and His altar is so wetted by the tears of the wronged women of Israel that the gifts upon it are no more acceptable in His sight. No higher word on marriage was spoken except by Christ Himself. It breathes the spirit of our Lord’s utterance: if we were sure of the text of ver.15, we might almost say that it anticipated the letter. Certain verses, 11–13a, which disturb the argument by bringing in the marriages with heathen wives are omitted in the following translation, and will be given separately.

Have we not all One Father? Hath not One God created us? Why then are we unfaithful to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?...[1044] Ye cover with tears the altar of Jehovah, with weeping and with groaning, because respect is no longer had to the offering, and acceptable gifts are not taken from your hands. And ye say, “Why?” Because Jehovah has been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, with whom thou hast broken faith, though she is thy mate[1045] and thy wife by covenant. And ...[1046] And what is the one seeking? A Divine Seed. Take heed, then, to your spirit, and be not unfaithful to the wife of thy youth.[1047] For I hate divorce, saith Jehovah, God of Israel, and that a man cover his clothing[1048] with cruelty, saith Jehovah of Hosts. So take heed to your spirit, and deal not faithlessly.

The verses omitted in the above translation treat of the foreign marriages, which led to this frequent divorce by the Jews of their native wives. So far, of course, they are relevant to the subject of the passage. But they obviously disturb its argument, as already pointed out.[1049] They have nothing to do with the principle from which it starts that Jehovah is the Father of the whole of Israel. Remove them and the awkward clause in ver.13a, by which some editor has tried to connect them with the rest of the paragraph, and the latter runs smoothly. The motive of their later addition is apparent, if not justifiable. Here they are by themselves:—

Judah was faithless, and abomination was practised in Israel[1050], and in Jerusalem, for Judah hath defiled the sanctuary of Jehovah, which was dear to Him, and hath married the daughter of a strange god. May Jehovah cut off from the man, who doeth this, witness and champion[1051] from the tents of Jacob, and offerer of sacrifices to Jehovah of Hosts.[1052]

5.“WHERE IS THE GOD OF JUDGMENT?”
(Chap. ii. 17—iii. 5).

In this section “Malachi” turns from the sinners of his people to those who weary Jehovah with the complaint that sin is successful, or, as they put it, Every one that does evil is good in the eyes of Jehovah, and He delighteth in them; and again, Where is the God of Judgment? The answer is, The Lord Himself shall come. His Angel shall prepare His way before Him, and suddenly shall the Lord come to His Temple. His coming shall be for judgment, terrible and searching. Its first object (note the order) shall be the cleansing of the priesthood, that proper sacrifices may be established, and its second the purging of the immorality of the people. Mark that although the coming of the Angel is said to precede that of Jehovah Himself, there is the same blending of the two as we have seen in previous accounts of angels.[1053] It is uncertain whether this section closes with ver.5 or 6: the latter goes equally well with it and with the following section.

Ye have wearied Jehovah with your words; and ye say, “In what have we wearied Him ?” In that ye say, “Every one that does evil is good in the eyes of Jehovah, and He delighteth in them”; or else, “Where is the God of Judgment?” Behold, I will send My Angel, to prepare the way before Me, and suddenly shall come to His Temple the Lord whom ye seek and the Angel of the Covenant whom ye desire. Behold, He comes! saith Jehovah of Hosts. But who may bear the day of His coming, and who stand when He appears? For He is like the fire of the smelter and the acid of the fullers. He takes His seat to smelt and to purge;[1054] and He will purge the sons of Levi, and wash them out like gold or silver, and they shall be to Jehovah bringers of an offering in righteousness. And the offering of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing to Jehovah, as in the days of old and as in long past years. And I will come near you to judgment, and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and the adulterers and the perjurers, and against those who wrong the hireling in his wage, and the widow and the orphan, and oppress the stranger, and fear not Me, saith Jehovah of Hosts.

6. REPENTANCE BY TITHES (Chap. iii. 6–12).

This section ought perhaps to follow on to the preceding. Those whom it blames for not paying the Temple tithes may be the sceptics addressed in the previous section, who have stopped their dues to Jehovah out of sheer disappointment that He does nothing. And ver.6, which goes well with either section, may be the joint between the two. However this be, the new section enforces the need of the people’s repentance and return to God, if He is to return to them. And when they ask, how are they to return, “Malachi” plainly answers, By the payment of the tithes they have not paid. In withholding these they robbed God, and to this, their crime, are due the locusts and bad seasons which have afflicted them. In our temptation to see in this a purely legal spirit, let us remember that the neglect to pay the tithes was due to a religious cause, unbelief in Jehovah, and that the return to belief in Him could not therefore be shown in a more practical way than by the payment of tithes. This is not prophecy subject to the Law, but prophecy employing the means and vehicles of grace with which the Law at that time provided the people. For I Jehovah have not changed, but ye sons of Jacob have not done with (?).[1055] In the days of your fathers ye turned from My statutes and did not keep them. Return to Me, and I will return to you, saith Jehovah of Hosts. But you say, “How then shall we return?” Can a man rob[1056] God? yet ye are robbing Me. But ye say, “In what have we robbed Thee?” In the tithe and the tribute.[1057] With the curse are ye cursed, and yet Me ye are robbing, the whole people of you. Bring in the whole tithe to the storehouse, that there may be provision[1058] in My House, and pray, prove Me in this, saith Jehovah of Hosts—whether I will not open to you the windows of heaven, and pour blessing upon you till there is no more need. And I will check for you the devourer,[1059] and he shall not destroy for you the fruit of the ground, nor the vine in the field miscarry, saith Jehovah of Hosts. And all nations shall call you happy, for ye shall be a land of delight, saith Jehovah of Hosts.

7. THE JUDGMENT TO COME
(Chap. iii. 13–21 Heb., iii. 13—iv. 2 Eng.).

This is another charge to the doubters among the pious remnant of Israel, who, seeing the success of the wicked, said it is vain to serve God. Deuteronomy was their Canon, and Deuteronomy said that if men sinned they decayed, if they were righteous they prospered. How different were the facts of experience! The evil men succeeded: the good won no gain by their goodness, nor did their mourning for the sins of their people work any effect. Bitterest of all, they had to congratulate wickedness in high places, and Jehovah Himself suffered it to go unpunished. Such things, says “Malachi,” spake they that feared God to each other—tempted thereto by the dogmatic form of their religion, and forgetful of all that Jeremiah and the Evangelist of the Exile had taught them of the value of righteous sufferings. Nor does “Malachi” remind them of this. His message is that the Lord remembers them, has their names written before Him, and when the day of His action comes they shall be separated from the wicked and spared. This is simply to transfer the fulfilment of the promise of Deuteronomy to the future and to another dispensation. Prophecy still works within the Law.

The Apocalypse of this last judgment is one of the grandest in all Scripture. To the wicked it shall be a terrible fire, root and branch shall they be burned out, but to the righteous a fair morning of God, as when dawn comes to those who have been sick and sleepless through the black night, and its beams bring healing, even as to the popular belief of Israel it was the rays of the morning sun which distilled the dew.[1060] They break into life and energy, like young calves leaping from the dark pen into the early sunshine. To this morning landscape a grim figure is added. They shall tread down the wicked and the arrogant like ashes beneath their feet.

Your words are hard upon Me, saith Jehovah. Ye say, “What have we said against Thee?” Ye have said, “It is vain to serve God,” and “What gain is it to us to have kept His charge, or to have walked in funeral garb before Jehovah of Hosts? Even now we have got to congratulate the arrogant; yea, the workers of wickedness are fortified; yea, they tempt God and escape!” Such things[1061] spake they that fear Jehovah to each other. But Jehovah gave ear and heard, and a book of remembrance[1062] was written before Him about those who fear Jehovah, and those who keep in mind[1063] His Name. And they shall be Mine own property, saith Jehovah of Hosts, in the day when I rise to action,[1064] and I will spare them even as a man spares his son that serves him. And ye shall once more see the difference between righteous and wicked, between him that serves God and him that does not serve Him.

For, lo! the day is coming that shall burn like a furnace, and all the overweening and every one that works wickedness shall be as stubble, and the day that is coming shall devour them, saith Jehovah of Hosts, so that there be left them neither root nor branch. But to you that fear My Name the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in His wings, and ye shall go forth and leap[1065] like calves of the stall.[1066] And ye shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be as ashes[1067] beneath the soles of your feet, in the day that I begin to do, saith Jehovah of Hosts.

8. THE RETURN OF ELIJAH (Chap. iii. 22–24 Heb., iv. 3–5 Eng.).

With his last word the prophet significantly calls upon the people to remember the Law. This is their one hope before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. But, in order that the Law may have full effect, Prophecy will be sent to bring it home to the hearts of the people—Prophecy in the person of her founder and most drastic representative. Nothing could better gather up than this conjunction does that mingling of Law and of Prophecy which we have seen to be so characteristic of the work of “Malachi.” Only we must not overlook the fact that “Malachi” expects this prophecy, which with the Law is to work the conversion of the people, not in the continuance of the prophetic succession by the appearance of original personalities, developing further the great principles of their order, but in the return of the first prophet Elijah. This is surely the confession of Prophecy that the number of her servants is exhausted and her message to Israel fulfilled. She can now do no more for the people than she has done. But she will summon up her old energy and fire in the return of her most powerful personality, and make one grand effort to convert the nation before the Lord come and strike it with judgment.

Remember the Torah of Moses, My servant, with which I charged him in Horeb for all Israel: statutes and judgments. Lo! I am sending to you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of Jehovah. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the sons, and the heart of the sons to their fathers, ere I come and strike the land with the Ban.

“Malachi” makes this promise of the Law in the dialect of Deuteronomy: statutes and judgments with which Jehovah charged Moses for Israel. But the Law he enforces is not that which God delivered to Moses on the plains of Shittim, but that which He gave him in Mount Horeb. And so it came to pass. In a very few years after “Malachi” prophesied Ezra the Scribe brought from Babylon the great Levitical Code, which appears to have been arranged there, while the colony in Jerusalem were still organising their life under the Deuteronomic legislation. In 444 B.C. this Levitical Code, along with Deuteronomy, became by covenant between the people and their God their Canon and Law. And in the next of our prophets, Joel, we shall find its full influence at work.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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