Malachi's prophecy about the Messiah — the Messenger of the covenant — ends with remarkable words about God's unchangeableness...
Malachi's prophecy about the Messiah — the Messenger of the covenant — ends with remarkable words about God's unchangeableness, from which the whole subsequent dialogue develops between God and the prophet on the one side and the people on the other. ‘I am the Lord; I do not change,’ God says. Many different consequences follow from this fact. It is important in itself as a doctrinal statement; the Church Fathers, in particular St Basil the Great, contrasted the fluidity and changeability of creation with God's unchangeableness and saw in Him the only true foundation of all being, the ‘anchor of salvation’, as early Christians often called the Lord. God's unchangeableness is important for understanding human history, so that we may see and recognise Him in the events of the past. We need to know that God does not change so that we can trust in His goodness and mercy. This is precisely what the prophet stresses when he says that the sons of Jacob have not perished amid history's upheavals only because God, who made a covenant with Abraham, does not change.
But against this faithfulness of God, which flows from the unchangeableness of His own incomprehensible divine nature, human unfaithfulness becomes especially evident. And so, through Malachi in the fifth century BC, the Lord again says what He had said through the prophets of the eighth, seventh and sixth centuries: ‘Return to Me, and I will return to you.’ God does not change, and so the only cause of the breakdown of our relationship with Him lies in ourselves. Yet instead of believing and turning to God, Malachi's contemporaries say that they are guilty of nothing... And so, in answer to people's habitual ways of thinking, the prophet proclaims God's truth. This dialogue between God and fallen humanity essentially defines the entire genre of the book of Malachi. A dialogue in which Truth itself becomes one of the participants, in which it reveals itself through human thoughts. It must be said that dialogue became something of a genre of the age: besides the prophet Malachi, at least two of his great younger contemporaries also used it — the author of the book of Job and Socrates.
Two things are striking in Malachi's dialogues. First, God condescends to take part in the dialogue: He answers, argues, teaches and gives reasons. The almighty Creator of heaven and earth speaks with human beings! This is an extraordinary revelation, and it is on this basis that Malachi calls the coming Messiah the Messenger. The second thing that cannot escape our attention is how closely the ideas and attitudes of the Jews of the mid-fifth century BC match opinions widespread among our own contemporaries.
This is what the people say in their dialogue with God through Malachi: ‘How shall we return?’ ‘How do we know what God wants of us?’, ‘What more does He need?’ — we say the same today. What is this turning back to which the Messenger of the covenant calls us? ‘How are we robbing You?’, the Jews ask. ‘We are doing nothing wrong’, ‘What is wrong with us?’, we say. ‘What have we said against You?’, the Jews ask. ‘What have we done that God refuses to make us happy, healthy and rich?’ — we ask ourselves the same question. ‘It is vain to serve God, and what profit is there in having kept His ordinances...’, the Jews of Malachi's time assert, saying that God neither rewards righteousness nor punishes evil. Therefore, they say, it is better to do lawless deeds: unlike righteousness, they bring an income. We reproduce these arguments almost word for word. Since both the Jews of the fifth century and we today count the same thing to our credit — the restoration of the Temple (or churches) and of worship — the resemblance cannot fail to astonish us.
Behind all this lies an unwillingness to have God near. Deep within the human being, there seems to remain an unconscious knowledge of that searing flame of divine love of which Malachi speaks at the beginning of the chapter. And this flame frightens us. We fear that in the presence of the Almighty neither our life nor we ourselves will remain as we were. And so God calls us to trust, calls us to convince ourselves of His goodness. He says that we rob Him by neglecting the tithe. But the point is not that God needs our offerings. From the beginning, the tithe and the dedication of the firstborn were meant to be a sign to people that everything belongs to God and that everything we have is a gift from Him. The offering was an act of thanksgiving, without which a gift becomes theft. Yet the Lord is not even reproaching people for disregarding Him. Test Me, He says; see for yourselves that God is faithful. He calls people to experience trust and, in that experience, to find blessedness. Here Malachi speaks not of blessing, unlike other prophets. The time of the New Testament is already near, and its messenger — Malachi — speaks of blessedness, as the Lord Jesus Himself will soon do.
There is one more important point. When Malachi sets out the Jews' outrageous and, to be honest, rather foolish arguments that the righteous do not prosper while those who commit lawless deeds grow rich and remain unharmed, the Lord does not dignify this with a direct answer. The mention of the blessedness that can be found in trust makes an answer unnecessary. The difference between a comfortable but brief life and the blessedness of the righteous is all too obvious. The Lord says only that the righteous person seeks not good things but God. ‘And they shall be Mine... My own possession on that day... and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.’ They shall be Mine! There is not and cannot be any other good, any other reward for doing God's will. Everything else, in the words of Ecclesiastes, is vanity and chasing after the wind. This is the choice: to seek God Himself or to replace Him with earthly well-being. And the difference between the righteous person and the wicked, the Lord says, lies in what they choose. It is important that the prophet Malachi goes on to remind us that this is also what makes the difference between life and death.
3 A promise of the coming of the Messiah, and of his fore - runner, Mal 3:1-6.
A reproof of the Jews, and charge to amend, Mal 3:7-12.
A description of the wicked, Mal 3:13-15.
And of the righteous, Mal 3:16-18.
3:7 From mine ordinances - Which either directed my worship, or your dealings one with another.
3:9 Cursed with a curse - Are greatly cursed.
3:10 Bring ye - Make a punctual and full payment of all tithes; about this did Nehemiah contend with the rulers, and made them comply, and then all Judah obeyed and did the like, Neh 13:10-13. To the store - house - This was one or more large rooms, built on purpose for this use. That there may be meat - For the priests and Levites to live upon. Prove me - Make the experiment. The windows of heaven - A kind of proverbial speech, to express great abundance. A blessing - First of rain to water the earth, next a blessing of corn, wine and oil, and all other products of the earth.
3:11 The devourer - All kind of devourers, the locusts, the canker - worm, and the caterpillar, which though they are in incredible multitudes, yet a rebuke from God will check them all at once, as if they were but one. For your sakes - For your good. Your vine - Your vine shall carry their fruit 'till they are fully ripe.
3:12 All nations - All that are about you.A delightsome land - The revival of religion in a land, will make it delight - some, both to God, and to all good men.
3:15 And now - You say, we see before our eyes, that the proud contemners of God and his law, are the flourishing ones.Delivered - Escape all punishment.
3:16 Then - When contempt of God was grown so high. That feared the Lord - Those that were truly religious. Spake often - Conversed together the more frequently. And a book - All this is spoken after the manner of men. For them - On their behalf.
3:17 Make up my jewels - This shall be fully made good in the last great day, and in heaven to eternal ages. I will spare them - In the mean time they shall be spared, pitied, preserved, and loved.
3:18 Ye - Ye contemners of God and religion, return to your reason, forced by the convincing power of God's judgments.Discern - Clearly see the happiness of the righteous, and your own misery, who perish in your wickedness.
4 The approaching misery of the wicked, and happiness of the righteous, Mal 4:1-3.
A direction to keep to the law, and to expect Elijah, that is, John the Baptist, the fore - runner of the Messiah, Mal 4:4-6.
4:1 Cometh - Tho' it be at a distance from you, yet it is coming and will overtake you and overwhelm you too. As an oven - The refiner's fire, chap. Mal 3:2, is now represented as a fire, burning more dreadfully, as it did indeed when Jerusalem and the temple were on fire, when the fire raged every where, but most fiercely where the arched roofs made it double itself, and infold flames with flames. And this may well be an emblem of the day of judgment.