God answers their complaints of the absence of His judgments, that they would come, but would include those also who clamored for them. For no one who knew his own sinfulness would call for the judgment of God, as being himself, chief of sinners. Augustine pictures one saying to God, “Take away the... [ Continue Reading ]
AND WHO MAY ABIDE THE DAY OF HIS COMING? AND WHO SHALL STAND WHEN HE APPEARETH? - The implied answer is, “No one;” as in the Psalm Psalms 130:3, “If Thou, Lord, wilt mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” Joel had asked the same , “The day of the Lord is great and very terrible; and who can abid... [ Continue Reading ]
AND HE SHALL SIT - o as a King and Judge on His throne, with authority, yet also to try accurately the cause of each, separating seeming virtues from real graces; hypocrites, more or less consciously, from His true servants. HE SHALL PURIFY o THE SONS OF LEVI - These had been first the leaders in d... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN (AND) SHALL THE OFFERING OF JUDAH AND JERUSALEM - The “law,” the new revelation of God, was to Isaiah 2:3. “go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Judah and Jerusalem then are here the Christian Church. “They shall be, pleasant (literally sweet) unto the Lord.” It is a rev... [ Continue Reading ]
AND I WILL COME NEAR TO YOU TO JUDGMENT - They had clamored for the coming of “the God of judgment;” God assures them that He will come to judgment, which they had desired, but far other than they look for. The few would be purified; the great mass of them (so that He calls them “you”), the main bod... [ Continue Reading ]
I AM THE LORD, I CHANGE NOT - , better, more concisely, “I, the Lord I CHANGE NOT - . The proper name of God, “He who Is,” involves His unchangeableness. For change implies imperfection; it changes to that which is either more perfect or less perfect: to somewhat which that being, who changes, is no... [ Continue Reading ]
EVEN FROM THE DAYS OF YOUR FATHERS - Back to those days and from them ye are gone away from My ordinances. “I am not changed from good; ye are not changed from evil. I am unchangeable in holiness; ye are unchangeable in perversity.” RETURN UNTO ME - The beginning of our return is from the preventing... [ Continue Reading ]
SHALL A MAN ROB OR CHEAT - , defraud God? God answers question by question, but thereby drives it home to the sinner’s soul, and appeals to his conscience. The conscience is steeled, and answers again, “In what?” God specifies two things only, obvious, patent, which, as being material things, they c... [ Continue Reading ]
YE HAVE BEEN CURSED WITH THE CURSE - (not “with a curse”). The curse threatened had come upon them: but, as fore-supposed in Leviticus by the repeated burden, “If ye still walk contrary to Me,” they had persevered in evil. God had already shown His displeasure. But they, so far from being amended by... [ Continue Reading ]
BRING THE WHOLE TITHES - , not a part only, keeping back more or less, and, as he had said, defrauding God, offering, like Ananias, apart, as if it had been the whole; into the treasury, where they were collected in the time of Hezekiah and again, at this time, by the direction of Nehemiah, “so that... [ Continue Reading ]
AND I WILL REBUKE THE DEVOURER - , the locust, caterpillar, or any like scourge of God. It might be, that when the rain watered the fields, the locust or caterpillar etc. might destroy the grain, so that the labors of man should perish; wherefore he adds, “I will rebuke the devourer. Neither shall y... [ Continue Reading ]
ALL NATIONS SHALL CALL YOU BLESSED - The promise goes beyond the temporal prosperity of their immediate obedience. Few could know or think much of the restored prolificalness of Judaea; none could know of its antecedents. A people, as well as individuals, may starve, and none know of it. Had the who... [ Continue Reading ]
YOUR WORDS HAVE BEEN STOUT AGAINST ME - , probably “oppressive to Me,” as it is said, the famine was strong upon the land. And ye have said, “What have we spoken among ourselves against Thee?” Again, the entire unconsciousness of self-ignorance and self-conceit! They had criticized God, and knew it... [ Continue Reading ]
YE HAVE SAID, IT IS VAIN TO SERVE THE GOD - o “as receiving no gain or reward for their service. This is the judgment of the world, whereby worldlings think pious, just, sincere, strict men, vain, i. e., especially when they see them impoverished, despised, oppressed, afflicted, because they know no... [ Continue Reading ]
AND NOW WE CALL THE PROUD HAPPY (BLESSED) - This being so, they sum up the case against God. God had declared that all nations should “call them blessed” Malachi 3:12. if they would obey. They answer, using His words; And “now we (they lay stress on the word we,) pronounce blessed,” in fact, those w... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN THEY THAT FEARED THE LORD SPAKE OFTEN AMONG THEMSELVES - The proud-speaking of the ungodly called out the piety of the God-fearing. “The more the ungodly spake against God, the more these spake among themselves for God.” Both went on until the Great Day of severance. True, as those said, the di... [ Continue Reading ]
AND THEY SHALL BE MINE, SAITH THE LORD OF HOSTS, IN THAT DAY WHEN I MAKE UP MY JEWELS - o the recurrence of the words, עשה אני אשר יום, Mal. 3:21. Hebrew (Malachi 4:3 in English), and the סגלה לי והייתםExo. 19:5; so that we have both phrases elsewhere. In Deuteronomy 7:6, there is the equivalent לעם... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN SHALL YE RETURN, OR TURN - , not, “return” in the sense of returning to God, for in that day will be the time of judgment, not of repentance; nor yet, “then shall ye again see;” for this is what they denied; and, if they had ceased to deny it, they would have been converted, not in that day, bu... [ Continue Reading ]