AND NOW THIS IS MY COMMANDMENT UNTO YOU - , not a commandment, which
He gave them, but a commandment in regard to them. As God said of old,
upon obedience , “I will command My blessing unto you,” so now He
would command what should reach them, but a curse. “He returns from
the people to the priests,... [ Continue Reading ]
IF YE WILL NOT LAY TO HEART - , namely, the rebukes addressed to them,
“to give glory to God.” For the glory of God is the end and aim of
the priesthood. This should be the principle and rule of their whole
life, “to the greater glory of God.” “I will send the curse upon
you,” namely, that which He... [ Continue Reading ]
LO, I WILL REBUKE THE SEED FOR YOUR SAKE - o, i. e., that it should
not grow. He who worketh by His sustaining will all the operations of
nature, would at His will withhold them. Neither priests nor Levites
cultivated the soil; yet, since the tithes were assigned to them, the
diminution of the harve... [ Continue Reading ]
AND YE SHALL KNOW THAT I HAVE SENT THIS COMMANDMENT UNTO YOU: - this,
which He had just uttered. They who believe not God when threatening,
know that He is in earnest and not to be trifled with, through His
punishing. “That My covenant might be with Levi.” God willed to
punish those who at that time... [ Continue Reading ]
MY COVENANT WAS WITH HIM LIFE AND PEACE; - literally “the life and
the peace;” that, which alone is true “life and peace.” The
covenant was not with Levi himself, but with Aaron, his
representative, with whom the covenant was made in the desert, as is
indeed here expressed; and, in him, with all his... [ Continue Reading ]
THE LAW OF TRUTH WAS IN HIS MOUTH - Apart from those cases, which were
brought to the priests at the tabernacle (Deuteronomy 17:9;
Deuteronomy 19:17 (add Deuteronomy 21:5; Ezekiel 44:23), hence, the
use of אלהים Exodus 21:6; Exodus 22:7.), in which their voice was
the voice of God through them, to t... [ Continue Reading ]
FOR THE PRIEST’S LIPS SHOULD KEEP KNOWLEDGE - o “He assigns the
reason for what he had just said, the law of truth was in his mouth;
they had done what it was their duty to do; as in Ecclesiasticus it is
said of Aaron (Ecclesiasticus 45:17), ‘God gave unto him His
commandments, and authority in the... [ Continue Reading ]
BUT YE - o are departed out of the way “of knowledge, truth, equity,
fear of God, which I appointed to Aaron and the Levites.” “Ye have
caused many to stumble at the law.” He does not simply say, “in
the law,” but “at” it. The law was what they stumbled at. They
did not only misunderstand the law, t... [ Continue Reading ]
THEREFORE HAVE I MADE YOU CONTEMPTIBLE - They had said in their hearts
Malachi 1:7, “The table of the Lord is contemptible.” So God would
requite them “measure for measure.” Yet not only so, but in their
office as judges, against the repeated protestations in the law
Leviticus 19:15, “Thou shalt not... [ Continue Reading ]
HAVE WE NOT ALL ONE FATHER? - o
HATH NOT ONE GOD CREATED US? - Malachi turns abruptly to another
offence, in which also the priests set an evil example, the capricious
dismissal of their Hebrew wives and taking other women in their stead.
Here, as before, he lays down, at the outset, a general moral... [ Continue Reading ]
TREACHEROUSLY HAS JUDAH DEALT; AN ABOMINATION IS COMMITTED IN ISRAEL -
The prophet, by the order of the words, emphasizes the “treachery”
and the “abomination.” This have they done; the very contrary to
what was required of them as the people of God. He calls the remnant
of Judah by the sacred name... [ Continue Reading ]
THE LORD WILL CUT OFF THE MAN THAT DOETH THIS, THE MASTER AND THE
SCHOLAR - , literally “The Lord cut off from the man that doeth
this, watcher and answerer.” A proverbial saying apparently, in
which the two corresponding classes comprise the whole. Yet so,
probably, that the one is the active agent... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THIS YE HAVE DONE AGAIN - , adding the second sin of cruelty to
their wives to the taking foreign women; “they covered the altar of
God with tears,” in that they by ill-treatment occasioned their
wives to weep there to God; and God regarded this, as though they had
stained the altar with their t... [ Continue Reading ]
AND YE SAY, WHEREFORE? - They again act the innocent, or
half-ignorant. What had they to do with their wives’ womanly tears?
He who knows the hearts of all was Himself the witness between them
and the wife of youth of each; her to whom, in the first freshness of
life and their young hearts, each had... [ Continue Reading ]
AND DID NOT HE - , God, of whom he had spoken as the witness between
man and his wife, “make one,” namely, Adam first, to mark the
oneness of marriage and make it a law of nature, appointing “that
out of man (created in His own image and similitude), woman should
take her beginning, and, knitting th... [ Continue Reading ]
HE HATETH PUTTING AWAY - o He had allowed it “for the hardness of
their hearts,” yet only in the one case of some extreme bodily
foulness discovered upon marriage, and which the woman, knowing the
law, concealed at her own peril. Not subsequent illness or any
consequences of it, however loathsome (a... [ Continue Reading ]
YE HAVE WEARIED THE LORD WITH YOUR WORDS - o “By your blasphemous
words, full of unbelief and mistrust, you have in a manner wearied
God. He speaks of God, after the manner of men, as a man afflicted by
the ills of others. Whence also the Lord says in Isaiah Isaiah 1:14,
“I am weary to bear them,” a... [ Continue Reading ]