Malachichapter 3
18 verses · Malachi · 460 to 430 BC · The Twelve
“Behold, I will send My messenger, who will prepare the way before Me. Then the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple—the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight—see, He is coming,” says the LORD of Hosts.
Introduction
Malachi, The Twelve, Malachi Overview.
This chapter answers a complaint the book has just voiced, that God no longer judges between good and evil. Malachi speaks for a God who says He is coming, and whose coming will test the very people who ask for it. The chapter holds the fourth and fifth of the book's arguments and the opening of the sixth. It moves from the temple to the harvest to a small company of faithful people. Listen for the promise of a messenger sent ahead, a line the Gospels take up. Read it as the answer to anyone who wonders whether serving God is worth it.
Context
- Who
- People saying it does not pay to serve God
- What
- The answer to the question of God's justice, the call to return with the full tithe, and the sixth disputation with the remnant who feared the LORD.
- Where
- Jerusalem and its temple, and the farms of Judah whose harvests supplied the tithe, in the Persian province of Judah.
- When
- The Persian period, most likely about 460 to 430 BC, the years in which Nehemiah 13 records the Levites' portions unpaid.
- Why
- To assure a doubting people that God would come in judgment and in blessing, and to call them back to obedience while there was time.
Historical context
A messenger is promised who will prepare the way, and then "the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple." The people had been asking where the God of judgment was. The answer is that He is coming, and the follow-up question is whether they can stand it.
Show the rest of the historical context, 4 more paragraphs
Two trades supply the images. A refiner sat over molten silver skimming off the dross, and knew the metal was ready when he could see his own reflection in it. A fuller cleaned and whitened cloth with strong alkaline soap and hard physical scrubbing. Both are slow, deliberate, and rough, and both produce something clean rather than destroy it.
The tithe section is the most quoted part of the book. The storehouse was a set of rooms in the temple where grain, wine, and oil were kept to support the Levites and priests, who had no farmland of their own. Nehemiah found those rooms emptied and the Levites gone back to their fields because they were not being fed, the system had simply stopped working.
The windows of heaven and the devourer rebuked are farming language: rain in season, and pests or blight held off. Both were the difference between eating and not eating.
The chapter ends with a book of remembrance written before God for those who feared Him and spoke often to one another. Persian kings kept official daybooks recording services done for the crown, and Esther turns on one being read aloud at night. A ledger of loyal service was a familiar object at court, and God is described as keeping one.
Significance
The complaint quoted here is honest and modern-sounding: it is vain to serve God, and the proud are the ones getting ahead. Malachi does not deny that it looks that way.
Show the rest of the significance, 1 more paragraph
The answer is that a record exists. The people who kept talking about God together in a discouraging generation were being written down, and God calls them "my jewels", my special treasure, the same word used for Israel at Sinai.
This chapter in Jewish lifeWhat this chapter is in Jewish life and reading.
What is done
The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this lane, printed no weekly portion and no Haftarah from this chapter, and no festival reading for the book. That table carries the Haftarah of each of the fifty-four weekly portions and the books read whole at the feasts, and it carries nothing for the special Sabbaths or the fast days. This card therefore names no public reading of the chapter and leaves that question to a source that holds those readings.
The corpus joins the chapter to the weeks of the Torah portions through the works arranged by portion. Under the second verse it carries Midrash Tanchuma, Vayigash 5:12. Under the eighth verse it carries Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayechi 10.
How it is read
Rashi is the one commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries, quoted here from The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. Every quotation of it is held to fifty words or fewer because the translation is modern. The corpus numbers this book by the Hebrew text, whose third chapter runs on to the end of the book; this row draws on its first eighteen verses, which the English Bible keeps as chapter 3.
Rashi reads the messenger of the first verse by his purpose, sent "to put the wicked away". The one who sits as a refiner in the third verse "will free himself from all his affairs to be like a refiner, who refines and purifies silver" (Rashi on Malachi 3:1:1 and 3:3:1). The sixth verse he reads as patience with a mind unchanged: "Although I keep back My anger for a long time, My mind has not changed from the way it was originally" (Rashi on Malachi 3:6:1).
The robbing of God in the eighth verse he reads with the Sages as robbery in the plain sense, and names the word an Aramaism (Rashi on Malachi 3:8:1). The curse of the ninth verse falls on the work of their hands, and still they rob. The food in God's house is "food accessible for My servants", the devourer rebuked is the locust in the grain and the vines, and the desirable land is "A land that I desire" (Rashi on Malachi 3:9:1, 3:10:1, 3:11:1 and 3:12:1).
The last part of the chapter Rashi reads as a dispute between two kinds of speakers. The complainers say "We worship Him for nothing, for we will receive no reward", and they have come to praise the wicked for their deeds (Rashi on Malachi 3:14:1 and 3:15:1). Against them, "The God-fearing men spoke to one another not to adopt their evil deeds". God has not hurried to repay, but He has heard, and the book of remembrance is written so that "Their words shall be preserved for Me" (Rashi on Malachi 3:16:1). The treasure of the seventeenth verse is the reward stored up, and on that day "There I will show you what the difference is between a righteous man and a wicked man" (Rashi on Malachi 3:17:1).
The corpus carries five further notes on these verses without an English text, each marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. They stand cited and unquoted at Ibn Ezra on Malachi 3:4:1, 3:5:1, 3:7:1, 3:13:1 and 3:18:1.
What the rabbis say
The corpus carries thirty-three rabbinic locators on these eighteen verses and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. On the first verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 16:11 and Bereshit Rabbah 99:11. On the second verse it holds Midrash Tanchuma, Vayigash 5:12 and Midrash Tehillim 143:1. On the third verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 12:4 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Kiddushin 4:7. On the fourth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 17:4 and Eikhah Rabbah 5:21. On the fifth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 10:2 and Bamidbar Rabbah 9:10. On the sixth verse it holds Aggadat Bereshit 8:3 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sotah 1:17.
On the seventh verse it holds Eikhah Rabbah, Petichta 25 and Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:46. On the eighth verse it holds Bereshit Rabbati, Parashat Vayechi 10 and Ein Yaakov, Rosh Hashanah 3:2. On the ninth verse it holds Avodah Zarah 36b:1 and Bava Batra 60b:13. On the tenth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 12:11 and Bamidbar Rabbah 8:4. On the eleventh verse it holds Devarim Rabbah 3:6. On the twelfth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 14:10 and Bereshit Rabbah 80:7.
On the thirteenth verse it holds Esther Rabbah 5:4 and Midrash Aggadah, Leviticus 25:48:4. On the fourteenth verse it holds Bamidbar Rabbah 11:1 and Midrash Tehillim 137:1. On the sixteenth verse it holds Aggadat Bereshit 52:1 and Avot DeRabbi Natan 8:5. On the seventeenth verse it holds Aggadat Bereshit 35:1 and Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Pischa 12:27. On the eighteenth verse it holds Aggadat Bereshit 23:1 and Aggadat Bereshit 23:2. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.
Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Malachi 3:1:1 to 3:17:1, The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Malachi 3:4:1, 3:5:1, 3:7:1, 3:13:1 and 3:18:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/malachi/3.json, the 33 Talmud and Midrash locators on Hebrew verses 1 to 18; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, printing no portion and no Haftarah for this chapter and no festival reading for this book.
The heads below are this chapter's scenes. The numbered points under each are its verses.
The messenger comes suddenly, like a refiner's fire
Malachi 3:1-2
The demand of 2:17 is answered with an arrival: "Behold, I will send My messenger". Matthew 11:10, Mark 1:2 and Luke 7:27 quote the verse of John the Baptist. The Lord follows as "the Messenger of the covenant," and verse 2 asks "who can endure the day of His coming?"
Malachi 3:1
“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 ungodly man,” and that God answers, “Which?” Behold, I send My messenger before My face, and he shall prepare My way before Me - they, then, were not prepared for His Coming, for whom they clamored.”
1 more voice on this verseWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Malachi 3:1
“And that we may not have to ask, Of what God was the Word made flesh? he does himself previously teach us, saying, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came as a witness, that he might bear witness of that Light. He was not that Light, but [came] that he might testify of the Light." By what God, then, was John, the forerunner, who testifies of the Light, sent [into the world]?”
Irenaeus · written before 202 · Against Heresies 3:11.4patristic
Cross references
Malachi 3:1
- Quoted inLuke 7:27“This is the one about whom it is written: ‘Behold, I will send My messenger ahead of You, who will prepare Your way before You.’”
'Behold, I send my messenger' (of John the Baptist)
- Quoted inMark 1:2As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: “Behold, I will send My messenger ahead of You, who will prepare Your way.”
'Behold, I send my messenger' (Mark's composite 'as it is written in the prophets', w/ Isa 40:3)
- Quoted inMatthew 11:10“This is the one about whom it is written: ‘Behold, I will send My messenger ahead of You, who will prepare Your way before You.’”
'Behold, I send my messenger before thy face' ('this is he, of whom it is written')
ConnectionsMark 1:2
who can endure the day of His coming?: The people asked for the God of justice at 2:17, and this verse asks who could bear His arrival. Fire refines metal and a launderer's soap cleans cloth. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the refining as begun at Christ's first coming and completed at the final separation of Matthew 25.
Malachi 3:2
“But who may abide the day of his coming? - Only they who shall believe on his name; for they that will not, shall be blinded, and the unbelieving nations shall be destroyed by the Romans. Like fuller’s soap - כברית keborith, from ברר barar, to cleanse, any thing that deterges. Kali, or fern ashes, or such things. I doubt whether the composition which we call soap, was known in ancient times.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Malachi 3:2
“To the troublous times that should follow soon after. The Jewish doctors speak of the pangs or griefs of the Messiah, meaning (they say) the great afflictions that should be to Israel at the time of his coming; he himself speaks of great tribulation then approaching, such as was not since the beginning of the world, nor ever shall be, Matt. xxiv.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Malachi 3:2
“His mission is here regarded as a whole from the first to the second advent: the process of refining and separating the godly from the ungodly beginning during Christ's stay on earth, going on ever since, and about to continue till the final separation (Mt 25:31-46).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Malachi 3:3-4
He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: The fire becomes a craft: "He will sit as a refiner and purifier," and the metal He sits over is "the sons of Levi". Verse 4 looks back past the present corruption, when the offerings will please the LORD "as in days of old and years gone by".
Malachi 3:3
“And he shall sit as a refiner, and purifier of silver,.... Kimchi interprets this, as he does the latter part of the preceding verse Mal 3:2, of the day, and not of the Lord, which he compares to a judge that sits and separates the guilty from the innocent; see 1Co 3:13 but it is to be understood of the Lord himself, and expresses his diligence in sitting and separating good men and principles from bad ones, just as silver is purified and refined from dross.”
2 more voices on this verse
Malachi 3:3
“THIS is spoken of as one of the results of the coming of the Lord—He would test and try all things, destroy the false and the evil and make those pure whom He permitted to remain. Behold, the Promised One has come! He whom Israel sought suddenly appeared in His Temple as the Messenger of the Covenant. Glad were the eyes of Simeon, Anna and all those who waited for Him—and glad, this day, are our voices as we proclaim that the Messiah has appeared!”
Malachi 3:3
“Christ by his gospel shall purify and reform his church, and by his Spirit working with it shall regenerate and cleanse particular souls; for to this end he gave himself for the church, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word ( Eph. v. 26 ) and purify to himself a peculiar people, Tit. ii. Christ is the great refiner.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will please the LORD: This reverses chapter 1, where the LORD accepted nothing from the priests' hands. Matthew Henry says the Messiah will first make His people acceptable and then accept what they bring. Albert Barnes notes that the word please reverses a word Hosea used of their decline.
Malachi 3:4
“When the Messiah comes, First, He will, by his grace in them, make them acceptable; when he has purified and refined them, then they shall offer such sacrifices as God requires and will accept.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
I will draw near to you for judgment: The refining now comes as judgment: "I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers and perjurers". The list goes on to those who wrong the laborer, the widow, the fatherless and the foreigner. It closes on the root of them all, those who "do not fear Me".
Malachi 3:5
“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 body of those who had so clamored, would find that He came as a Judge, not for them but against them.”
Malachi 3:6-7
I, the LORD, do not change: The LORD grounds Israel's survival in His own constancy: "Because I, the LORD, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed". The faithfulness that judges also preserves. The offer "Return to Me, and I will return to you" meets another question, "How can we return?"
Malachi 3:6
“And that which follows: I am the Lord and I do not change, he states this because he had said earlier: he is like a consuming fire, and like the soap of fullers, so that we do not think that he changes his divine nature, since he is called an angel, or fire, or Borith for us.”
Jerome · written before 420 · Commentary on Malachipatristic
1 more voice on this verse
Malachi 3:6
“I am the Lord, I change not - The new dispensation of grace and goodness, which is now about to be introduced, is not the effect of any change in my counsels; it is, on the contrary, the fulfillment of my everlasting purposes; as is also the throwing aside of the Mosaic ritual, which was only intended to introduce the great and glorious Gospel of my Son. And because of this ancient covenant, ye Jews are not totally consumed; but ye are now, and shall be still, preserved as a distinct people - monuments both of my justice and mercy.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Will a man rob God? Bring the whole tithe
The call to return follows the promise that the LORD does not change. Albert Barnes sets the two side by side, God unchangeable in holiness and the people unchangeable in perversity. Adam Clarke says there is still space to repent.
Malachi 3:7
“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 grace of God.”
1 more voice on this verse
Malachi 3:7
“Reproof for the non-payment of tithes and offerings, which is the cause of their national calamities, and promise of prosperity on their paying them. from . . . days of your fathers--Ye live as your fathers did when they brought on themselves the Babylonian captivity, and ye wish to follow in their steps.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Malachi 3:8-10
Will a man rob God?: The robbery is named as "In tithes and offerings," and verse 9 lays the curse on "the whole nation". The remedy stays inside the covenant's terms: "Bring the full tithe into the storehouse". The "blessing without measure" from "the windows of heaven" is the harvest verse 11 describes.
Malachi 3:8
“But they appropriated all the tithes, robbing the Levites of their due nine-tenths; as they did also, according to JOSEPHUS, before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. Thus doubly God was defrauded, the priests not discharging aright their sacrificial duties, and robbing God of the services of the Levites, who were driven away by destitution [GROTIUS].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
You are cursed with a curse: The nation is already under the curse, and it goes on withholding. Matthew Henry calls it a great aggravation to persist in a sin under the very rebuke of providence. Adam Clarke reads the curse as the whole nation under God's displeasure.
Malachi 3:9
“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 it, were the more hardened in their sin. Perhaps as men do, they pleaded their punishment, as a reason why they should not amend. They defrauded God, under false pretences.”
1 more voice on this verse
Malachi 3:9
“We may compromise with conscience for half the price, but God will not endorse the compromise; and, like Ananias and Sapphira, we shall lose not only what we thought we had purchased so cheaply, but also the price we paid for it. If we would have God "open" His treasury, we must open ours. One cause of the barrenness of the Church is the parsimony of its members [MOORE].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Bring the full tithe into the storehouse: The storehouse was the set of temple rooms where grain, wine and oil were kept for the Levites, as Nehemiah 13:12 to 13 shows. Here the LORD invites His people to test Him. Matthew Henry observes that God will be a bountiful benefactor to those who return.
Malachi 3:10
“Bring ye all the tithes - They had so withheld these that the priests had not food enough to support life, and the sacred service was interrupted. See Neh 13:10. And prove me now herewith - What ye give to God shall never lessen your store. Give as ye should, and see whether I will not so increase your store by opening the windows of heaven - giving you rain and fruitful seasons - that your barns and granaries shall not be able to contain the abundance of your harvests and vintage.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
3 more voices on this verse
Malachi 3:10
“Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse,.... Or "treasury" (e); for there were places in the temple where the tithe was put, and from thence distributed to the priests and Levites, for the support of their families, as they wanted.”
Malachi 3:10
“GESENIUS not so well translates, "Even to a failure of sufficiency," which in the case of God could never arise, and therefore means for ever, perpetually: so Ps 72:5, "as long as the sun and moon endure"; literally, "until a failure of the sun and moon," which is never to be; and therefore means, for ever.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Malachi 3:10
“The oil that is multiplied shall not be stayed as long as there are vessels to receive it, 2 Kings iv. Note, God will not only be reconciled to sinners that repent and reform, but he will be a benefactor, a bountiful benefactor, to them. We are never straitened in him, but often straitened in our own bosoms.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Malachi 3:11-12
I will rebuke the devourer: The promise is practical: "I will rebuke the devourer for you," reversing the crop curses of Deuteronomy's warnings. Verse 12 widens it: "all the nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight". The blessing stays tied to the obedience of verse 10.
Malachi 3:11
“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 your vine cast her fruit before the time,” holding out a fair promise, but cut off by the frost-wind or the hail; the blossoms or the unripe fruit strewing the earth, as a token of God’s displeasure.”
all the nations will call you blessed: The blessing reaches past the harvest. Adam Clarke reads the land of delight as a land like Paradise, the garden of the LORD. Albert Barnes notes that the Persian masters of a small province would hardly have noticed its harvests, so the promise looks further.
Malachi 3:12
“All nations shall call you blessed - They shall see that a peculiar blessing of God rests upon you, and your land shall be delightsome; like Paradise, the garden of the Lord.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Your words have been stout, and a book of remembrance is written
Malachi 3:13-15
The next dispute follows the book's pattern: "Your words against Me have been harsh". They said, "It is futile to serve God," since keeping His requirements brought no gain, and "we call the arrogant blessed". The complaint ends at its extreme, that evildoers "even test God and escape".
Malachi 3:13
“Your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord,.... Hard and strong; they bore very hardly upon him, were exceeding impudent and insolent; murmuring at his providence; arraigning his justice and goodness; and despising his word, worship, and ordinances. Aben Ezra says, this is a prophecy concerning the time to come, that is, the times of the Messiah; and so it describes the Jews in his times.”
1 more voice on this verse
Malachi 3:13
“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 not. “Before, he had said Mal 2:17. ‘Ye have wearied the Lord with your words, and ye said, Wherein have we wearied Him? When ye said, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord’” etc. Now he repeats this more fully.”
The speakers kept God's requirements and mourned before Him, and saw no profit. Augustine traces the complaint to reading the law's earthly promises as the whole reward. Albert Barnes calls it the judgment of the world, which measures everything by sight.
we call the arrogant blessed: The word blessed is the one verse 12 promised Judah from the nations, now turned onto the proud. John Gill reads the arrogant as presumptuous sinners who stretch out their hands against God. The test of verse 10 has been turned upside down.
Malachi 3:15
“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” Mal 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 whom God had pronounced cursed: Psa 119:21. “Thou hast rebuked the proud, who are cursed.” Their characteristic, among other bad men, is of insolence Pro 21:24. arrogance, boiling over with self-conceit, and presumptuous toward God.”
1 more voice on this verse
Malachi 3:15
“And now we call the proud happy,.... Or "therefore now" (q); since this is the case, that the worshippers of God are not regarded, and there is nothing got by serving him; they that are proud and haughty, that neither fear God nor regard men, are the happy persons; even presumptuous sinners, as the word (r) signifies, that stretch out their hands against God, and strengthen themselves against the Almighty; these enjoy all worldly happiness, while they that serve the Lord are mourning in sackcloth, and are in the utmost distress.”
Malachi 3:16-18
those who feared the LORD spoke with one another: Against the complaint stands a remnant: "those who feared the LORD spoke with one another," so "a scroll of remembrance was written before Him". They will be His "treasured possession". Verse 18 answers verse 15, for that day will "distinguish between the righteous and the wicked".
Malachi 3:16
“They that feared the Lord - There were a few godly in the land, who, hearing the language and seeing the profligacy of the rebels above, concluded that some signal mark of God’s vengeance must fall upon them; they, therefore, as the corruption increased, cleaved the closer to their Maker. There are three characteristics given of this people, viz.: - 1. They feared the Lord. They had that reverence for Jehovah that caused them to depart from evil, and to keep his ordinances. 2. They spake often one to another. They kept up the communion of saints.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Malachi 3:16
“Then - When contempt of God was grown so high. That feared the Lord - Those that were truly religious. Spake often - Conversed together the more frequently.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Malachi 3:16
"Then," when the ungodly utter such blasphemies against God, the godly hold mutual converse, defending God's righteous dealings against those blasphemers (Heb 3:13). The "often" of English Version is not in the Hebrew.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
My treasured possession: Treasured possession renders segullah, the word Exodus 19:5 uses for Israel as God's own people. Adam Clarke explains that it means a man's most prized property, and Albert Barnes ties the verse back to Exodus. A father spares a son who serves him.
Malachi 3:17
“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 (Mal 4:3 in English), and the סגלה לי והייתםExo. 19:5; so that we have both phrases elsewhere.”
distinguish between the righteous and the wicked: The complaint of verse 15 was that God made no difference between the two. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown warn against judging God's government before His work is complete. Wesley says the scoffers will see the happiness of the righteous and their own misery.
Malachi 3:18
“Then shall ye return - To your senses, when perhaps too late; and discern - see the difference which God makes, between the righteous and the wicked, which will be most marked and awful. Between him that serveth God - Your obedience to whom, ye said, would be unprofitable to you. And hits that serveth him not - Of whom ye said, his disobedience would be no prejudice to him. You will find the former received into the kingdom of glory; and the latter, with yourselves, thrust down into the bitter pains of an eternal death. Reader, ponder these things.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2 more voices on this verse
Malachi 3:18
“Ye - Ye contemners of God and religion, return to your reason, forced by the convincing power of God's judgments. Discern - Clearly see the happiness of the righteous, and your own misery, who perish in your wickedness.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Malachi 3:18
“Then shall ye . . . discern--Then shall ye see the falseness of your calumny against God's government (Mal 3:15), that the "proud" and wicked prosper. Do not judge before the time till My work is complete.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Keep studying
Studies13
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Sources for this chapter
The summary
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.
The context
E. B. Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
The form and classifications
the site's Malachi guide, src/components/book/guides/malachi/MalachiGuide.tsx, the six disputations table, disputations IV to VI.
The exposition
Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Albert Barnes; Augustine of Hippo, City of God 20.28; Carl Friedrich Keil, The Twelve Minor Prophets; Edward Bouverie Pusey, The Minor Prophets: A Commentary; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets; John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.