Mining the Minors: Malachi (9)

New Testament quotations and allusions to Malachi are primarily (though not exclusively) related to the role of John the Baptist as the herald of Messiah who would make ready for the Lord “a people prepared”, tying together the two halves of our Bibles and bridging the 400-year revelation gap between the Testaments.

Let’s go through these in as close to chronological order as possible.

Mining the Minors: Malachi (8)

A word of thanks to any of our readers who have made it through even a portion of our massive Mining the Minors project as we begin winding down the series. To date, we have posted a grand total of 210 straight Saturdays, or over four years, on the messages of the twelve Minor Prophets, a task I felt many questions about attempting back in September of 2020.

At the time, I wondered if such a lengthy series might not be cut short by the Lord’s return. I expect that’s still possible, and if not this series, perhaps the next.

Mining the Minors: Malachi (7)

God’s fifth complaint through the prophet Malachi in the late fifth century BC completes his critique of the nation. Israel has questioned him five times to date and the Lord has answered all their queries, sincere or otherwise. He will answer three more today. Malachi will make several further comments, both encouraging and challenging, but YHWH has fully laid out his case by verse 15 of chapter 3.

Following these final comments comes four hundred years in which Heaven was effectively silent. Old Testament revelation ended with Malachi. First time Bible readers moving chronologically may find themselves wondering, “Did Israel respond?”

I suppose the answer to that is, “The Israel that mattered responded.” We will see the seeds of a faithful nation-within-a-nation shortly.

Mining the Minors: Malachi (6)

As we noted last week, the last half of chapter 2 has been Malachi speaking on God’s behalf. As we move into chapter 3, God will return to directly addressing the nation in the first person. Prior to that, we receive a remarkable look into the future announcing the coming of both John the Baptist and the Word made flesh.

“Where is the God of justice?” the people have been asking. God is in the process of providing his answer: “Behold, he is coming.” The manger in Bethlehem might still be 400 years away, yet “the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness”.

First, the fourth of God’s five complaints against Judah and its priests.

Mining the Minors: Malachi (5)

The bulk of Malachi’s prophecy consists of the prophet quoting God directly, passing on corrective messages from YHWH to his nation and its priests. Verses 10-17 of chapter 2 are the first time the prophet has had anything to say for himself, slipping into the first person plural (“we”, “us”). Also, until this point Malachi has exclusively targeted the priests. Now he rebukes the men of his entire nation.

His primary concern remains the profaning of covenants.

Mining the Minors: Malachi (4)

There is no way to overstate the danger to Israel posed by the ongoing corruption of their religious leaders in the early fifth century BC. Judah had only recently returned from seventy years of Babylonian captivity intended to correct their idolatry. As far as obvious, literal idol worship was concerned, the exile cured Israel for good. However, the hearts of most of the priests were no more open toward God than the previous generations, and their sinfulness quickly began to manifest in new and offensive ways, the first of which we studied last week.

Malachi’s five complaints show how speedily corrupt spiritual leaders can wreck a nation. God assured the priests he would deal with them. It was only a matter of time.

Mining the Minors: Malachi (3)

The Lord’s table is a sufficiently important subject that I’ve felt the need to touch on it recently outside this series. Today’s post is probably more effective if you read it in connection with that one.

Our reading in Malachi is the first of five complaints made by the Lord against his people approximately a century after they were allowed to return to their historic homeland by a Persian monarch with respect for Israel’s God. Sadly, all that God had done on their behalf didn’t keep Judah and Israel from going astray in a variety of new ways.

Mining the Minors: Malachi (2)

“I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.”

Few statements in scripture are so frequently alleged to teach something they really don’t. Paul’s famous quotation of Malachi is not about election to individual salvation or damnation, not in Romans 9 and definitely not in its original context, which we will look at today. Rather, let me suggest it concerns the election of two nations to strategic roles in human history (as discussed here): one as the beneficiary of grace and the other as an object lesson never to be forgotten. “Loved” and “hated” are relative terms that have more to do with God’s sovereign dispensation of mercy and justice than with his emotional state.

Table Manners

Once upon a time, there was a tabernacle constructed in accordance with the will of God revealed on Mount Sinai. In that tabernacle, outside the veil on the north side, was a table of acacia wood covered with gold, atop which were plates and dishes for drink offerings and the bread of the Presence, twelve loaves in two piles. The high priest was to replace the bread regularly and arrange it before the Lord every Sabbath, after which he and his sons were to eat it in a holy place.

When we talk about the “table of the Lord”, we are not talking about that sort of physical, literal table. Not at all.

Mining the Minors: Malachi (1)

The name Malachi appears exactly once in scripture, giving us no connection to the historical books of the Old Testament by which to identify or describe its very last recorded prophet. That’s unless you want to count John the Baptist as the last, and there’s a pretty good case to be made for him. Nevertheless, since our mission here has been to explore the twelve Minor Prophets, we’ll leave John out of it. Except we can’t. John is going to make a cameo appearance in Malachi’s final verses, making for about the neatest possible segue from Testament to Testament.

Go ahead, tell me the Bible is just a bunch of books cobbled together by human authors and editors.

The Priests Go First

When Malachi condemns the people of Israel for their unfaithfulness, he starts with the priests.

Hmm. That may seem a little unfair. After all, the priests in Israel had limited control over the minds and hearts of the people. When Israelites chose to bring blind, lame and sick animals to offer their God, it could hardly be said to be the priesthood’s fault.

Could it?

Things That Last and Things That Don’t

“Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed his name.”

There are things that last and things that don’t.

Children, Fathers and Hearts

Concerning New Jersey’s largest city, Steven Malanga says, “An astonishing 60 percent of the city’s kids are growing up without fathers.” According to a recent UNICEF report, “Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child.” Theodore Dalrymple writes of a British woman with nine children by five different fathers, none of whom contribute consistently to their children’s upkeep.

Letters from the Best Man (6)

The following is absolutely fictional and increasingly common. There is no Brad and definitely no Jill, in case that is not obvious. There are, however, way too many people in their position.

Dear Brad,

I was just thinking of you this morning, and voila! there goes my email notification. Funny how that works.

Your question is not exactly a surprise. Still, I wasn’t about to bring up the subject until you did. But you’re nine months into your separation from Jill and as you say, it looks as if she will almost surely file for divorce at the one year mark. While you’re a long way from considering remarriage at this point, I agree that it makes sense to get your ducks in a row, so to speak, about what the scriptures say concerning the end of a marriage before emotions cloud the issue.

The Priests Go First

The most recent version of this post is available here.

‘Leftist Utopia’ and the End

In a blog post aptly entitled “I’m Sorry, But Your Utopia is Just a Little Creepy”, David Thompson assembles a series of rather ominous quotes and links on the modern family.

First, from Anthony Daniels (or ‘Theodore Dalrymple’ if you prefer), doctor and psychiatrist, on observations arising out of his practice in England:

“In the course of my duties, I would often go to patients’ homes. Everyone lived in households with a shifting cast of members, rather than in families. If there was an adult male resident, he was generally a bird of passage with a residence of his own somewhere else. He came and went as his fancy took him. To ask a child who his father was had become an almost indelicate question. Sometimes the child would reply, “Do you mean my father at the moment?” Others would simply shake their heads, being unwilling to talk about the monster who had begot them and whom they wished at all costs to forget.”

Slavery in the Old Testament [Part 2]

Since the accusation has been made that God endorses slavery, I began in yesterday’s post to examine the subject of slavery in Israel to ask whether God, in fact, endorsed it at all. Let’s continue with a second relevant principle to bear in mind.

Two Principles Worth Considering (continued)

As established yesterday, the fact that God tells his people to obey laws in general does not mean they are good laws or that he approves of them.

But this case is different. The objection may well be raised that the Mosaic Law is not like ‘laws in general’ in that it came directly from God, and said exactly what he wanted it to say.

However, even the Law of Moses did not perfectly represent God’s will, preference or desire for his people. This may initially sound a bit heretical, but God was not ‘ok’ with some parts of Israel’s Law, especially when they were slavishly and literally followed rather than used as a guideline to discern a higher, more loving intent. Those who merely followed the letter of the Law doing the minimum possible would inevitably fall short of God’s real purpose.

Principle #2: The Law did not represent God’s perfect will.

The Law in its written form (the ‘letter’) represented whatever diluted version of God’s will that his people might reasonably and generously be expected to follow, given that they were a mixture of believers and unbelievers characterized by stubbornness, selfishness and rebellion from Day 1. And even so, Joshua told the Israelites who promised to obey the law that they wouldn’t be able to keep it.