Week 38e--Malachi

The theme and the name of the last book in the Old Testament are the same--God’s messenger.

And boy, does he have something to say!

The priests have not been bringing their best to the Temple as offerings. (Notes in my Bible suggest that this happened before Nehemiah arrived to straighten them out, but there is nothing in the text to say when Malachi was written.) The priests are bringing lame and blind lambs to be sacrificed when other, better lambs are available. God is ticked.

“Priests are to be messengers from God to the people. You are not doing your job!”

Malachi also brings up the issue of Jews marrying foreign wives. (Again, perhaps this is before Nehemiah helped get them straightened out.)

Here in Malachi we find the verse where God says, “For I hate divorce.” But when I read it in context, I see it has much less to do with human marriages than I thought. Again and again God has seen their worship of foreign idols as infidelity. As breaking the marriage covenant between God and the people. As divorce. The people have divorced their hearts from Him. And He hates it.

God says that he will send a messenger who will clear the way for Himself. (This is a reference to John the Baptist, who will prepare the way for Jesus.)

We next find “the tithing verse,” Malachi 3:10: Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house. And prove me now herewith, sayeth the LORD of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” (KJV, because that’s how I memorized it when I was a kid)

Malachi too has some end-times words. He will record the names of the faithful in a book, and “they will be mine on the day that I prepare My own possession” (3:17).

“For you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings” (4:2). 

God’s messenger reminds us al to remember God’s law--and to pray that our hearts may be restored.