Malachi2chapter 2

Malachi 2:1-4

And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you turns the second dispute into direct address, the Lord threatening to curse the priestly blessings themselves if they refuse to give glory to his name. I will curse your blessings, yea, I have cursed them already states the sentence as already executed rather than merely threatened, and the graphic penalty of verse 3, dung spread upon their faces at their own solemn feasts, matches the disgrace done to the altar with disgrace now done to the priests who serve it. The purpose named is corrective rather than merely punitive, that my covenant might be with Levi, the ruin aimed at restoring the office to what it was meant to be.

Malachi 2:5-7

My covenant was with him of life and peace describes an ideal Levi the commentators generally identify with the tribe's priestly calling rather than one man, life and peace given in exchange for the fear wherewith he feared the Lord. The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips paints the model priest as a teacher whose walking with the Lord in peace and equity turned many away from iniquity, the pastoral office at its intended best. The principle drawn is timeless, for the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts, the same word for messenger Malachi uses of himself and, at 3:1, of the one still to come.

Malachi 2:8-9

But ye are departed out of the way turns from the ideal Levi to the actual priesthood, causing many to stumble at the law and corrupting the very covenant just described. Their partiality in the law, favoring persons rather than administering it evenly, is answered in kind, the Lord making them contemptible and base before all the people exactly as they had made his worship contemptible before them. The measure returned is the same one Obadiah names for Edom, as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee, applied here to Israel's own priesthood rather than to a foreign nation.

Malachi 2:10-12

The appeal to a shared father and one Creator, have we not all one father, hath not one God created us, grounds the charge that follows, dealing treacherously every man against his brother by profaning the covenant of their fathers. The specific treachery named is marriage to the daughter of a strange god, a phrase the bench reads as intermarriage with pagan worshippers rather than a charge against foreign birth as such, the same concern Ezra and Nehemiah confronted in the same period. The Lord's judgment is total, cut off from the tabernacles of Jacob, master and scholar alike, because the covenant people's holiness was meant to be Judah's distinguishing mark and was instead its point of failure.

Malachi 2:13-14

This have ye done again shifts the dispute from idolatrous marriage to marital treachery within the covenant community itself, covering the altar of the Lord with tears and weeping that the Lord no longer regards. The people's own question, Wherefore, receives a direct answer, the Lord hath been witness between a man and the wife of his youth, his companion and the wife of his covenant, whom he has dealt treacherously against, almost certainly by unjust divorce in favor of a more attractive or better connected new wife. Marriage is described here in covenantal language rare in the Old Testament, the Lord himself standing as witness to a bond he expects to be honoured as solemnly as the covenant with Levi.

Malachi 2:15-16

Did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit is among the most disputed sentences in the Twelve, and the bench divides over its exact sense: some read it of Adam and Eve, one flesh made from one pair though the Lord had spirit enough to make many, in order that he might seek a godly seed from a stable home; others connect it to Abraham, one man richly endowed yet seeking godly offspring through Isaac rather than through a plurality of wives. Verse 16 carries its own translation crux, rendered by the King James as the Lord that hateth putting away, and by other readings as a warning that the man who divorces covers his garment with violence, positions the commentators name without settling between them. What both readings agree on is the conclusion, therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously, marital faithfulness required regardless of which grammatical path leads there.

Malachi 2:17

Ye have wearied the Lord with your words closes the marriage dispute and opens directly into the next, the people's skepticism now turned into moral inversion, calling everyone that doeth evil good in the sight of the Lord, and asking, Where is the God of judgment? The question is not innocent doubt but complaint, the wicked's apparent prosperity used to erase the very distinction between good and evil the whole book has been pressing. The Lord's answer comes immediately at 3:1, Behold, I will send my messenger, the very messenger who will settle the question of judgment the people have just demanded.