The second chapter of the book of the prophet Malachi begins with a fresh rebuke to Israel's unfaithful priests, no longer concerned...
The second chapter of the book of the prophet Malachi begins with a fresh rebuke to Israel's unfaithful priests, no longer concerned with carelessness in offering sacrifices. The Lord says that ‘the priest's lips should preserve knowledge, and people seek the law from his mouth’; teaching the people is therefore precisely the duty entrusted to the priesthood. In Malachi's time, however, the priests not only disregarded this duty but themselves set an example of breaking the law. In response, the Lord says that for human beings in general and for the Levitical priesthood in particular, the only source of dignity is doing the Creator's will. The direct logical conclusion is that when the covenant with the ‘descendants of Levi’, with Israel's priesthood, is broken, humiliation and disgrace naturally fall to the unfaithful priesthood.
According to the prophet, the priesthood leads the people astray chiefly through ‘partiality in matters of the law’. The Lord had charged the priests with interpreting the law, explaining its essence and resolving disputed questions in accordance with its spirit and with their own experience of life and prayer. Instead, the priests of Israel behaved as though someone had appointed them guards deciding what could or could not be permitted on the basis of the influence and standing of each person who came to them with a question. In practice, this meant that the noble and the rich received permission not to observe particular provisions of the law, while the poor and insignificant were required to fulfil them. Behind this practice lies an attitude to the Lord's law as optional human regulations rather than a revelation of the Almighty's will for people's salvation. Here lies the root of what the Lord Jesus Christ called ‘burdens hard to bear’; here a peculiar spiritual corruption invades religious life, eating away at the very foundation of human life — people's relationship with God. For the priests justified their opinions by appealing to the Creator's will, supposedly expressed in the law.
The prophet then turns to people's relationships with one another, which ought to be founded on their brotherhood before God. This is one of those rare passages in the Old Testament where the prophet dares to call God not the Creator and Ruler but the Father of humankind. ‘Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us?’, Malachi asks. For him, God is the One who pours forth life to all people, from whom every person's soul has its origin. The prophet feels keenly humanity's calling to likeness to God, and therefore every act of cruelty and unfaithfulness towards others is for him a renunciation of that calling. In the same way, for Malachi people's direct bond with their Creator implies above all faithfulness in worshipping the One God. Pagan cults and a pagan attitude to the faith of the fathers are therefore perceived as a betrayal of life itself.
2 The priests reproved for profaning the holy things of God, Mal 2:1-9.
The priests and people for various abuses with regard to marriage, Mal 2:10-17.
2:2 I have cursed them - I have already sent out the curse, and it is in part upon you.
2:3 I will corrupt - I will take away the prolific virtue and strength of it, that it shall bring forth no fruit. Spread dung - It is an expression of the greatest contempt.Of your solemn feasts - Your most solemn days and feasts, shall be as loathsome to me as dung, and shall make you, who offer them as unclean, and loathsome, as if I had thrown the dung of those sacrifices into your faces. Take you away - You shall be taken away with it, removed as equally unclean with the dung itself, equally fit to be cast out to the dunghill.
2:4 My covenant - If you will not confirm, and keep Levi's covenant among you, I will make it firm on my part, by punishing the violators of it.
2:5 With him - With Levi. Peace - Of long life, and prosperous, assured to the Levites in their due ministrations before God.Before my name - Behaved himself with reverence before God.
2:6 Was in his mouth - He taught to the people. Aaron, Eleazar, Phineas, every one of those priests or Levites, in what age soever they lived; who feared God, and were humble. Iniquity is not found - He judged not with respect of persons, or for bribes. He walked - His whole life was a continual walking with God; he lived with God, and to him.In peace - With God, and it was his aim to live peaceably with others.
2:7 Should keep knowledge - It is this that their office binds them to; it is the duty of all God's people to know his law, but the priest's duty to know it more than others. And they - The people.
2:8 But ye - Priests. Stumble at the law - By your false expositions of it. Have corrupted - You have violated it, have contradicted the great intentions of it, and done what in you lay, to defeat them.
2:9 Have been partial - You have perverted the law to please great men, or to serve some unworthy design. When we inquire into "the reasons of the contempt of the clergy," ought we to forget this?
2:10 One father - Abraham, or Jacob, with whom God made the covenant by which their posterity were made a peculiar people.Created us - The prophet speaks of that great and gracious work of God, creating them to be a chosen people. And so we Christians are created in Christ Jesus.
2:11 Hath profaned - Profanely violated the law, confining Israel to marry within themselves, and not to endanger themselves, by contracting affinity with idolaters. Which he loved - Which he, Judah, once loved. The daughter - Idolatresses. Even tho' they had wives before, whom they now cast off.
2:12 The master and the scholar - There shall be left neither any to teach nor any to learn. Him that offereth - The priests.