I’ve been greatly helped in my study of Malachi by Mark Dever’s book The Message of The Old Testament and The Malachi Commentary in the New American Commentary series, the author of this particular book is E. Ray Clendenen; I was, however, most helped by reading Malachi over and over and over and over.
Malachi is a different book, it is categorized as a minor prophet but it is truly unlike any of the other’s in its category. Malachi is written almost like a dialogue: God asks questions and then the response of Israel is given; God says more stuff then Israel, etcetera. And Malachi is not full of kinda understandable words much like the other minor prophets, but it is clear—with the understanding of the historical context of what’s going on at the time—and it has some historical writing in it as well as prophesy. But let’s first look at the background.
Hundreds of year prior to the proclamation of Malachi the God of the Bible chose Abram out of all the people of the world and blessed him and his offspring, God stating that He would love Abram and his descendant’s. The LORD God did this because He wanted to. The Almighty brought Abram’s descendants out of slavery by astonishing and shocking—sometimes horrifying—acts which could be explained only by God’s intervention: God killed masses at times, brought plagues, changed the very reasoning of some, healed, changed the natural order of how the world goes mostly; why did God do these things? He loved Israel (Abram’s offspring). For very short and infrequent periods of time Israel was thankful and grateful for God’s love…but it was often and blatant that the people of Israel rejected God’s love.
God is no sovereign softie however, He warned Israel and when they continued in their mockery of Him God disciplined Him, the biggest way being that foreign nations literally enslaved and took Israel—and Judah, which for our sake here can be lumped into Israel—out of their native land (Canaan we’ll call it) and into the captors land to live. (God not only warned that the captivity would happen but also, in a comforting way, told them that there would be a certain number of years that they would be enslaved in the foreign land then God would return Israel to Canaan).
So Israel was enslaved for years until, by some cool happenings, some were allowed to go back to Canaan and rebuild Israel’s city walls as well as the Temple God had instructed them to build, which is where all those sacrifices of animals were made to God.
This is the background to Malachi, God, more times than is countable, forgave and loved Israel despite Israel’s rebellion and overall hatred and mockery of God. For literally hundreds of years this has been going on but God was faithful to do what He said He would.
So then, the city of Israel is being rebuilt, the Temple is, for all practical purposes, completed, everything in Israel seems to be going well! More people are returning from exile, the once eerily emptied streets are being filled with children running around, women carrying products to market, men talking of their days’ venture.
But then Malachi comes onto the scene, a no name guy—he actually is never before or after mentioned again. And he starts saying that Israel is, though looking good outwardly, filled with big problems. So lets see what is being addressed.
The beginning of Malachi is laid out with a comparison: Israel vs. Edom, Edom being Esau’s—brother of Jacob, kids of Isaac--descendant. Israel is complaining that Edom’s land and people are being blessed more than they are. If you can get a 3-year-old with a wrinkled, wet face in your mind, use that picture for Israel at this moment. Israel is sincerely saying, ‘God does not love us, if He did we would be like Edom.’ So obviously, in the first couple of lines, we see that this rebellious and not-understanding-God attitude has prevailed through the exile. God, in response to this particular complaint says if Israel would but entrust themselves to God He would bless Israel’s land--because according to chapter 3 verse 11 there was a ‘devourer’ in the land of Israel, which probably was some kind of creature like a locust eating all the food Israel was trying to grow, God said He would stop it though! The Creator not only is willing to bless Israel’s land now but reminds Israel of His might—He can easily make Edom an inhabitable and deplorable place (found in verse 4)—but of His purpose—displaying His glory and goodness beyond the borders of Israel (found in verse 5); the latter God did because I, the writer of this here post, am not a Jew though I do follow God; I am not from the land of Israel near the Mediterranean but am half the world away geographically.
The next issue God takes up is the way Israel’s sacrificial system is going down: the people of Israel were offering blemished or lame lambs for their sacrifice AND the priests were accepting them as good sacrifices. This may seem odd and maybe trivial to us but to God it said a lot. As is outlined in the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus there was a certain type of lamb that was to be offered in worship to God: the first born without blemish. You have to understand that sometimes this was hard to give up! It could be the prime and best of a herd AND it was never known how many other lambs would be born to the herd. However this is what God asked of the people to sacrifice. But, and this was a clear caveat, if the first born had blemishes of any kind, being blind, or lame or not good in anyway that person was to take the second-born, or the next that had no blemish.
Who is responsible for this particular offense of unacceptable sacrifices being accepted? Both the people of Israel and the priests. The people are responsible because they are the ones saying they will obey, ‘Sure I’ll give the first-born unblemished sacrifice,’ but come sacrifice time they bring in a lousy creature to be offered to God (verse 14). So the people were deceiving one another and God. God calls out their foolishness by saying if they tried to offer such a creature to one of their governor’s the political or geographical leader would not even accept such a pathetic gift, why would the God of the universe (verse 8)?
But a greater responsibility and rebuke was laid on the priests, the leaders of the whole nation. They were the ones who were supposed to be teaching Israel what was good and acceptable but instead they were guiding the people into sin and not correcting Israel but were blessing their sin and saying it was good (chapter 2.9). God lamented in chapter 1 that there was not even ONE priest who cared for God’s honor enough to close the Temple doors so that the very alter of God, where God’s presence was, would remain unpolluted (verse 10). The very ones given the responsibility to teach the nation what was good and who God was were doing the very opposite.
Maybe the intent of Israel was not bad though, you know, you can be sincere in intent but it just is done in a poor way. In our culture today this is huge, ‘Oh but he meant well; God does not care how He is worshipped as long as it is from the heart.’ I can see where we get this, David himself in a Psalm says that God was not concerned with the sacrifices David made, no matter how many they were, God cared for the heart only. But here in Malachi God cared greatly that Israel and the priests sacrificed the way God had clearly instructed. Obviously you can be sincere but wrong about something. Mark Dever says, ‘Sincerity is necessary, but it is not sufficient.’ That is because there is more to the sacrifices. The sacrifices, as we know from the New Testament book of Hebrews, were in no way able to save Israel from their sins--it is an animal for goodness sake!—but it was to point directly to Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ who was to come who was going to be PERFECT and WITHOUT BLEMISH AND DEFECT. If the Christ was imperfect as a sacrifice His atonement, His blood WOULD, indeed, be worthless to all humanity, unable to save anyone from their plight. So you can see why this was a big deal, the unblemished first-born, it was to remind Israel of the coming Messiah and to the nations of the world looking in that God is who He said He was. God says that Israel, in offering lame animals, has despised Him. Those are some strong words. ‘Okay God, aren’t you being a little too picky here? I mean, it is hard sometimes and it is not like Israel was offering nothing.’ These words are the sentiment of chapter 1 verse 13. But God seemed to care a lot about this issue and the consequences were great too: cursed land, the priests lineage would, metaphorically, have poop smudged on their faces (chapter 2 verse 3)—huge insult at the time by the way, especially whenever you speak of future generations.
The next big theme is in chapter 2: infidelity. Verse 14 tells why another reason God seems not to care for the sacrifices of Israel, against what He asked of them Israel is marrying foreign women and divorcing their wives. God says that Israel’s infidelity is an affront to God Himself and it is destructive for the culture and society of Israel. This is interesting since we usually see divorce or unfaithfulness as something between 2 or 3 people, not something having to deal with God and an entire culture of people. Also, there is disdain here IN the divorce; the Israelites were divorcing because they hated the wife of their youth—their Israel woman they married first (16). It is not necessarily the divorce itself—God had some guidelines about when it was acceptable to divorce—but the motive for divorce: someone else was more appealing and ‘the old’ was boring and became someone who was disdained.
Also, Israel was being unfaithful to God. This seems to be all-encompassing because there are so many ways Israel is following other god’s other than YHWH, who is the God of the Bible. But the link with the previous subject is that the way Israel acted socially manifested their worship of God, which, at this time, was poor: divorce was a God issue not just something of preference, at least that is how God sees it here.
The final major concern that is pointed out is that Israel sees injustice going on in the world and concludes that God, unlike what He said, is not just and cares not for executing and bringing about justice (2.17). Beginning in chapter 3 an interesting thing is done, God helps Israel see that many times the justice that will be brought about is the ULTIMATE or ETERNAL justice. We too can look at the world around us today and see clearly that there are acts of injustice going on everyday in every area of life in every country in the whole world. But in verse 4 and 5 God points out that for those who have followed and entrusted themselves to His love in the Final Judgment of all the inhabitants that have ever been found on the face of the Earth, God’s followers will be refined and made pure but those who have not will be destroyed finally and eternally. God’s justice is ultimate and will not ultimately suffer injustice. This means that one who lives a life doing injustice may die and the world living during that individual’s lifetime will never see justice happen to that person. But there will be a time in the future when that person will be given life for a short time only to recount what he did in life and then rightly sentenced to eternal justice; so justice, when all is said and done, will be rightly served to all. This is not only astounding but astonishing and is meant to help Israel see that God IS in control and that He IS a God of justice, Israel—and we—at times, might have to wait a while to see it.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHY GOD KEEPS CRYING OUT TO ISRAEL, God speaks to Israel because they do not know they are rebelling; He lets them see their rebellion but says, I know your sin but turn to me and I will bless you (3.7). This should shock us! For hundreds of years Israel has in compliance or ignorance turned its back on God YET HE CONTINUES TO LOVE THEM AND PROSPER THEM. The Apostle Paul in the New Testament says that love is patient and has forbearance, well do we see God displaying and being love in that exact way here.
In chapter 3 verse 16 we see a few in Israel who respond to God and God takes note. Chapter 4 goes on to speak of future things which, thankfully, we can see fulfilled directly in the New Testament Gospels, though some of which we will not see until that Final Judgment.
Israel, like me, in retaliation to God’s love, whined and sinned instead of loving God. But God’s relentless love will win, it has in me and can in you too.
To close, Malachi is not about following a bunch of rules to the ‘T,’ but it is about true worship of God. The worship of God is not about what goes on inside the church building walls but everything it is, as Dever points out was true in John the Baptist and others, ‘living as if we believe [God], by running with joyous abandon toward him, and by trusting that he will love us as his own through Christ Jesus.’
Please note that this is in no way exhaustive. I’ve purposely left out some big stuff but, in ignorance, left out more stuff. I hope you will, if anything else, be intrigued enough to read Malachi on your own. If you have questions, concerns, qualms or caveats please let me know, I’d enjoy a dialogue.
