Journal Through the Bible: Week 102 Thursday

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Malachi chapter 2

Does God issue any commands?

• God commanded the priests to hear His words, lay the offering of sacrifice to heart, and give glory to His name.
• God commanded them to stop putting away the wives they had taken in their youth. (The Morris study Bible notes say that the priests who married foreign wives - as in the book of Ezra - may have divorced their Jewish wives, the ones they married as young men, and taken the Canaanite women as their wives. Their sin would then be two-fold.)

Does God make any promises?

• God said that if the priests would not listen He would curse them. They would be corrupted through the excrement of the animals for sacrifice. (Most likely the phrases "spread dung upon your faces" and "one shall take you away with it" mean that their dead bodies would lie in the filth of the slain animals.) Those that witnessed this curse would know that God had made a covenant with Levi of life and peace that his descendants had broken.
• God promised to cut off the man that profaned the holiness of the LORD and married the daughter of a strange god. (verses 11-12)

Does this chapter teach anything about Jesus?

• 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. (verse 7) The Levitical priests had not done this but Jesus is our High Priest and He fulfilled these requirements.

Does this chapter teach anything about yet-future events?

• The last verse implies that judgment is coming to those who do evil but say it is good in the sight of the LORD or who do whatever is right in their own eyes because they do not think there really is a God of judgment. This was true in the days of Malachi and it is true today. One day the LORD will appear and will judge us all.