Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal unfaithfully every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?
Malachi now turns from the priests to the whole people. He opens with two questions no one would deny, then uses that agreement to expose how they were treating each other.
The prophet argues from two ties that already bind the people. One commentator sets them side by side.
There are two truths here — their common standing before God, on the ground of His covenant (Have we not all one Father?), and their common relationship to God as their Creator (Has not one God created us?). These common ties to God, in creation and (as we might say) redemption, bound them together in shared relationships, interests, and blessings. Knowing this should have kept them from sinning against their brothers. In doing so, they profaned the covenant God made with their fathers, whose second great commandment was, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
Chapter 1 and the first half of chapter 2 dealt with polluted offerings and failing priests. Verse 10 moves the charge into everyday life among the people. The two are not separate problems.
Pollution had reached the sanctuary, its ministers, and the offerings. As we shall see, the social life of Israel suffered just as much. There is the deepest connection between a false religion, or no religion at all, and the daily ways of the people.
The prophet asks why they are faithless to each other. One commentator says the answer lies further back.
They were wrong in their relations with one another. "Why then are we faithless to one another?" asks the prophet. Can we not supply the answer? Because they were wrong in their relations with the Lord. As one has said, "Satan first divided men from God, and then one man from another." The prophet seeks to correct this evil by reminding them that they have one Father and one God.
One commentator traces the steps of this decline, and finds the same order in the gospel of Matthew.
The priests had "departed out of the way," and then each man betrays his brother. In the gospel of Matthew we find a very similar thing. The evil servant says in his heart, "My master is delayed," and at once he begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with drunkards… This is always the moral order: first, relationships with God ignored, then relationships with our brothers, and finally association with the world.
Commentators differ over what the first question rests on. One reads it of God's covenant with the nation. Another takes the verse to speak of God as Maker of all men.
We agree at once that all men are the offspring of God. Paul's address to the people of Athens makes this clear (Acts 17). That chapter also makes clear that Paul speaks of men as part of God's creation, standing to God as creatures to their Creator… This is the relationship of creature to Creator that Malachi points to, in a book where men have lost their reverence for God.
Another writer grants that God is Father of all men, then shows what that does not do.
But this universal Fatherhood of God only makes man's wickedness and unbelief more inexcusable and ruinous. It has to do with nature only, and that nature is now fallen and sinful. It has proved itself God's enemy by rejecting the Son whom God sent to save. Salvation is found in no one but Christ Jesus, His only Son, our Lord. Only then are we who believe His sons by grace.
One commentator names the root of such treachery in a single word: brother.
They were brothers as common descendants of Abraham, and even in a deeper sense. As God's chosen people they stood alike on the ground of redemption, so all were on the same footing before Him… Yet the rich among them were dealing with the people as if they were not their brothers. They forgot the common relationship in which they stood before God, and treated them as if they were foreigners and pagans. The same evils reappear in varying forms in every age.
- One Father — the appeal rests on two ties: a shared covenant standing before God, and a shared Creator. Both bind the people to God, and so to each other.
- One breach — betraying a brother is never only a wrong against him. It profanes the covenant, whose second great command is to love your neighbor as yourself.
- One root — wrong dealings with each other trace back to wrong dealings with the Lord. Satan divides men from God first, then from one another.
- One slope — God ignored, brothers wronged, the world embraced. That is the order every time, in Malachi and in the parable of the evil servant.
- One remedy — creation makes all men God's offspring, but it does not save. Only faith in Christ makes anyone a child of God by grace.
Judah hath dealt unfaithfully, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the sanctuary of Jehovah which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Jehovah will cut off from the tents of Jacob the man that doeth this, him that calleth and him that answereth; and him that offereth an oblation unto Jehovah of hosts.
Judah had married "the daughter of a foreign god," and this verse is the sentence that follows. Why is the penalty so severe — and why does the man's offering at the altar give him no cover?
The verse sits at a hinge. The prophet has just dealt with polluted sacrifices and corrupt priests. Now he turns to homes and marriages. One writer shows how closely what a people believe is tied to how they live.
There is the deepest connection between a false religion, or no religion at all, and the way people live. … So, though they were not idolaters, they had formed the closest relationship in life with the pagan nations.
They had not bowed to an idol. They had simply married into families where idols were at home, and that alone brought the sentence.
No one arrives at this sin in a single step. The order never changes.
This is always the moral order. First, relationships with God are ignored. Then relationships with our brothers. Last of all comes association with the world.
So a worldly marriage is the last symptom, not the first. The man had already let go of God's claims long before the wedding.
The sentence names "the man who does this." Older translations read the next phrase as "the master and the scholar" — teacher and pupil alike. Both ends of the community fall under it, and the failure began at the top.
The order of these charges is solemn and instructive. First the leaders were wrong with the Lord — they turned aside from the way. Then they were unfaithful to one another. And last, while the shepherds were quarrelling the sheep were wandering. The quarrels of the leaders let the people of God drift into the world and form unholy ties.
The most startling clause is the last: the one being cut off is still presenting his gift at the altar. Religion had become a routine emptied of God, and a routine like that does not hold.
Such a religion must end sooner or later by seeming pointless to those who practise it. What is the good of it? "What a weariness this is!" they say. And if a man does not become an idolater himself underneath his religious boredom, he soon returns to the idolatrous world and joins himself to it. He "marries," as the prophet says, "the daughter of a foreign god," and becomes one flesh with her in the eyes of an avenging God, who will execute judgment on both.
Nothing about the man's age or his religious record holds that judgment back.
If there is no repentance, judgment in such a case will be swift and sure. … No position, neither age nor youth, nor any outward show of religion, should shield the offender. The God who had redeemed them out of Egypt was holy, and He required holiness from His people.
This was not a new failure for Israel, and the writers do not leave it in the past.
Scripture mentions this sin again and again, almost from the time God redeemed Israel out of Egypt, as one they kept falling into. … Ezra faced the same difficulty. It came almost as soon as God in His mercy brought the remnant out of Babylon and set them in their own land. And may we not say that it is the prevailing sin of the Church? Satan is the god of this world, and those who worshipped idols really worshipped demons. So alliance with the world has the same character as marriage with the daughter of a foreign god. … "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." (2 Cor. 6:14.)
So what breaks the pull of the world?
Paul explains the only way we can overcome the attractions of the world: "Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."
- Drift. The sin starts long before the wedding. God's claims go first, brothers next, the world last. The marriage is the symptom, not the start.
- Alliance. They were not bowing to idols. They were marrying into idolatry — the closest bond in life, formed with pagan households.
- Leaders. While the shepherds quarrelled, the sheep wandered. Master and scholar are both named, because both had gone.
- Exposure. The offering at the altar buys no exemption. Neither age nor youth nor outward religion shields the offender, and God judges the man who joins himself to the world along with it.
- Separation. Commentators apply it straight across. Alliance with the world has the same character today, and only the cross breaks its attraction.