Malachi 3:9

Ye [are] cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, [even] this whole nation.

Ver. 9. Ye are cursed with a curse] Vulgate: Ye are cursed with penury and scarcity of victuals, according to Deuteronomy 28:23, &c., and so great was this people's poverty, that they were forced for food to sell not their fields only, but their sons and daughters, Neh 5:1-5 They had pinched on God's side, and he had paid them home in the same kind; they thought in the famine to have kept the more to themselves, and they had the less for keeping from him that which was his. A just hand of God upon all church robbers; for the most part they are always in want and needy, their wealth melting away as snow before the sun, and their fields of blood, purchased with the spoils of Christ, proving as unfortunate and fatal to them as the gold of the temple of Tholose did to Scipio's soldiers, of which whoever carried any part away never prospered afterwards. What get men by such a detiny that shall prove their fatal destiny? Say they leave the gold behind them, yet they are likely to carry the guilt to hell with them, James 5:1,2; yea, to cough in hell, as Latimer phrased it, unless they make restitution; to digest in hell, what they have devoured on earth, as Austin. Because Pharaoh saith, the river is mine own, therefore, saith God, I will dry up the river, Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 29:9. The merchant that denieth to pay his custom forfeits all his commodities: so here.

For ye have robbed me] And therefore I have cursed you. God never punisheth people but there is just cause for it, could they but see it; but that they are hardly drawn to, as here, and Isaiah 26:11; the root of the matter is in themselves, as Job speaks in another case; the plague of their own hearts, 1 Kings 8:38, procureth them all the mischief, and may say to them, as the heart of Apollodorus, the tyrant, seemed to say to him; who dreamed one night that he was flayed by the Scythians, and boiled in a caldron, and that his heart spake to him out of the kettle, it is I that have drawn thee to all this (' Eγω σοι τουτων αιτια). Let men, therefore, when under any misery, lay their hand upon their heart, thrust their hand into their bosom, with Moses, they shall be sure to bring it out leprous; let them turn short again upon themselves, and say every man, What have I done? what evil have I committed, or, at least, admitted? what good have I omitted, or intermitted? Profane Esau, beguiled of the blessing, cries out of his father's store, of his brother's subtlety; not a word of his own profaneness in slighting and selling his birthright; he had forgot since he did eat and drink, and went his way, Genesis 25:34. The Jerusalem paraphrast adds, that he also despised his portion in the world to come, and denied the resurrection. But this he never taketh notice of. So Pompey, beaten by Caesar out of the field, blamed the Divine providence for his ill success, when he should rather have assaulted his own reckless security (that he never considered into what place he were best to retire if worsted), and especially his sacrilege not long before the defeat, when he sacked Jerusalem, and ransacked the temple, 1Ma 9:54-56; 2Ma 3:24-25; 2Ma 4:39-42; 2Ma 5:15-16; 2Ma 13:4; 2Ma 13:8; 2Ma 15:30; 2Ma 15:34. He might have considered what became (a little before his time) for the same offence of Alcimus, Heliodorus, Lysimachus, Antiochus, Menelaus, and Nicanor, all notorious church robbers, and all hanged up in gibbets, as it were, for an example and admonition to all that should come after. Sacrilege is a snare (saith Solomon, Pro 20:25), that, 1. catcheth suddenly; 2. holdeth surely; 3. destroyeth certainly. Cavete.

Even this whole nation] The disease was grown into an epidemic, like that which physicians call corruptio totius substantiae, the entire nature is diseased, or that which the prophet Isaiah also complaineth of, Malachi 1:5,6 "The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint," &c. This sin of sacrilege was grown national; there was a conjuncture of all sorts in this wickedness; a rabble of rebels they were, ripe for judgment; yea, though God's judgments were upon them, yet they persisted, Nehemiah 13:18, and increased wrath, Ezra 10:14. God had smitten them, but they sorrowed not, Jeremiah 5:3; but to be revenged on him, as it were, for laying famine upon them, they took away his tithes.