Malachi 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD gives a warning to the priests: because they have turned aside from his instruction, shown partiality in applying the law, and led many to stumble, he will curse their blessings, and he has already made them despised and lowly before the people. He contrasts this with his covenant with Levi, whose teaching was true and who turned many from wrongdoing. The chapter then charges Judah with breaking faith by marrying the daughter of a foreign god and by divorcing the wives of their youth, so that their tears at the altar go unanswered. It closes with the people wearying the LORD by saying that evildoers please him, and asking where the God of justice is.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • The speaker addresses the priests.
   • This command is directed to the priests.
2. 2:2
   • The LORD of hosts sets a condition: if the priests will not listen.
   • The LORD of hosts sets a condition: if the priests will not take it to heart to give glory to his name.
   • The LORD of hosts says he will send the curse upon them.
   • The LORD of hosts says he will curse their blessings.
   • The LORD of hosts says he has already cursed them.
   • The reason given is that the priests do not take it to heart.
3. 2:3
   • The LORD says he will rebuke their seed, which may mean their offspring or their sown grain.
   • The LORD says he will spread dung on their faces.
   • The dung is the offal of their festival sacrifices.
   • The LORD says they will be carried away with it.
4. 2:4
   • The priests will know that the LORD sent this command to them.
   • The purpose is that the LORD's covenant with Levi may continue.
   • The LORD of hosts says this.
5. 2:5
   • The LORD's covenant with Levi was one of life and peace.
   • The LORD gave life and peace to him.
   • The covenant called for reverence, and Levi revered the LORD.
   • Levi stood in awe before the LORD's name.
6. 2:6
   • True instruction was in Levi's mouth.
   • No wrongdoing was found on Levi's lips.
   • Levi walked with the LORD in peace and uprightness.
   • Levi turned many away from iniquity.
7. 2:7
   • The lips of a priest should preserve knowledge.
   • People should seek instruction from the priest's mouth.
   • The priest is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.
8. 2:8
   • The priests addressed have turned aside from the way.
   • They have caused many to stumble by their instruction.
   • They have corrupted the covenant of Levi.
   • The LORD of hosts says this.
9. 2:9
   • The LORD has made these priests despised and lowly before all the people.
   • The reason is that they have not kept the LORD's ways.
   • The reason is that they have shown partiality in matters of instruction.
10. 2:10
    • The speaker asks whether they do not all have one father.
    • The speaker asks whether one God did not create them.
    • The speaker asks why each man deals treacherously against his brother.
    • Dealing treacherously profanes the covenant of their fathers.
11. 2:11
    • Judah has dealt treacherously.
    • An abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem.
    • Judah has profaned the LORD's holy thing, which may mean his sanctuary or his holiness.
    • The LORD loved that holy thing.
    • Judah has married the daughter of a foreign god.
12. 2:12
    • The LORD will cut off the man who does this.
    • Those cut off are described by an obscure pair, rendered as the master and the scholar, or as anyone awake and answering.
    • They are cut off from the tents of Jacob.
    • The one cut off includes the man who brings an offering to the LORD of hosts.
13. 2:13
    • The people do a second thing as well.
    • They cover the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping and with groaning.
    • The LORD no longer regards the offering.
    • The LORD no longer receives it with favor from their hand.
14. 2:14
    • The people ask why.
    • The answer is that the LORD has been a witness between the man and the wife of his youth.
    • The man has dealt treacherously against her.
    • She is his companion.
    • She is the wife of his covenant.
15. 2:15
    • The speaker asks whether he did not make one, a statement whose sense is obscure.
    • The one who made had the remainder of the spirit.
    • The speaker asks why one.
    • The answer is that he sought godly offspring.
    • The hearers are told to take heed to their spirit.
    • No one is to deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
16. 2:16
    • The LORD, the God of Israel, hates putting away, that is, divorce; the wording is ambiguous as to whether the hater is God or the man who divorces.
    • One covers his garment with violence.
    • The LORD of hosts says this.
    • The hearers are told to take heed to their spirit.
    • The hearers are told not to deal treacherously.
17. 2:17
    • The people have wearied the LORD with their words.
    • The people ask how they have wearied him.
    • They have wearied him by saying that everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD.
    • They say that the LORD delights in such people.
    • They ask where the God of judgment is.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

Malachi speaks to the priests of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, perhaps a century after the return from exile in Babylon (roughly the 400s BC). Priests were the men of the tribe of Levi who ran the sacrifices, and who also acted as the official teachers and judges in questions of religious law. "Order" translates a word for a royal or divine command, not a piece of advice.

2:2

"LORD" in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew consonants that readers traditionally did not say aloud. "Hosts" is an old word for armies, the title pictures God as commander of vast forces. "Your blessings" are most likely the blessings the priests pronounced over the people as part of their job; the threat is that the words they speak to bless will work the opposite way.

2:3

"Your descendants" translates a Hebrew word meaning "seed," which can mean offspring or literal grain seed, so the threat may be against the priests' children or against their harvest. The waste is the dung and entrails of the animals sacrificed at the festivals, normally carted outside the settlement and burned. Smearing it on a priest's face is a deliberate reversal of his status: a priest handling filth is unfit to serve, and here he is thrown out with the refuse.

2:4

Levi was one of Jacob's sons; his descendants became the tribe set apart to serve at the sanctuary, with the priesthood drawn from them. The "covenant with Levi" is the binding agreement that gave that tribe its office in return for faithful service. A covenant is a formal, sworn agreement with obligations on both sides.

2:5

"Life and peace" names what the agreement granted; "peace" (shalom) means wholeness and well-being, not merely absence of war. "Reverence" and "awe" translate words built on the Hebrew for fear, a mixture of dread and respect, the proper attitude of a subject before a king.

2:6

"True teaching" translates torah, the priest's ruling or instruction. Part of a priest's official work was deciding cases: what was clean or unclean, what an offense required, what the written law meant in a particular situation.

2:7

"Messenger" is the Hebrew word mal'akh, used both for human envoys and for the beings usually called angels. It is also the root of the prophet's own name, Malachi, "my messenger."

2:8

The King James says "ye are departed out of the way." It is a picture of leaving the road God marked out and wandering somewhere else.

2:9

"Played favorites" is literally "lifted faces" in Hebrew, the gesture of a judge raising up the face of someone bowing before him, and so a standard idiom for showing partiality. The charge is that the priests gave rulings that favored some people over others.

2:10

"One father" is ambiguous in the Hebrew and was debated in antiquity: it may mean the shared human ancestor Abraham or Jacob, or it may mean God, as the next line suggests. "Break faith" translates a verb used for treachery generally and very often for betrayal by a husband or wife; it is the key word of the rest of this chapter.

2:11

"A detestable thing" translates a term for practices regarded as intolerable pollution of Israel's worship. "Treated as common" means stripped of holy status, handled as if ordinary; the Hebrew phrase can mean either the LORD's sanctuary or his holiness in general. "The daughter of a foreign god" means a woman who belongs to another god's people and worship, the objection is to the allegiance she brings, and the phrasing casts the marriage as a religious alliance.

2:12

"Cut off" is legal language for being removed from the community and its line of descent, the family ends. "The tents of Jacob" is an old poetic way of saying the households of Israel. "The one who is awake and the one who answers" is obscure in the Hebrew and has never been settled: proposals include a proverbial pairing meaning "every last person," a reference to watchman and respondent in temple duty, and a phrase about witnesses in court. The offering named at the end is the grain offering brought to the temple.

2:13

The altar was the stone structure where offerings were burned. Flooding it with tears and groaning describes loud public mourning at the sanctuary, the men are lamenting that their sacrifices bring no results, and the answer given is that the sacrifices are being refused.

2:14

In this book God's charge is regularly followed by the people answering back with a question, and then by the reply; the exchange is a set literary pattern, not a record of a conversation. "Witness" is courtroom language: a marriage was a sworn agreement, and God is named as the one who saw the oath sworn and can testify to it. "The wife of your youth" means the woman a man married when both were young, and carries the sense of long years shared.

2:15

This verse is the most obscure in the book and the Hebrew can be read several ways; the rendering keeps the difficulty rather than smoothing it out. "Make them one" is generally taken as an allusion to the creation account, where husband and wife become one flesh. "A portion of the spirit" may mean the breath of life God gives, or the remainder of that life-giving power still at his disposal; ancient and modern translators disagree. "Godly children" means offspring raised inside Israel's covenant.

2:16

The Hebrew here is disputed. The traditional reading is "I hate divorce"; the consonants can also be read as "if he hates and divorces" or "the man who hates his wife and divorces her," which some ancient versions followed. Under the law of the time a husband could dismiss a wife by handing her a written notice; she had no matching right. "Covers his clothing with violence" is an idiom: what a man wears shows what he is, so the wrong is on open display. Spreading a garment over a woman was also a gesture of claiming her in marriage, and the image may deliberately turn that gesture inside out.

2:17

Malachi is built as a running argument in rounds: God makes a charge, the people answer back with a question, and God replies. This is the last of them. The complaint being quoted is that people who do evil seem to do well while nothing happens to them, so justice looks either absent or asleep.