God’s Covenant Promises and the Unfaithfulness of His People - A Theology of Malachi

God’s Covenant Promises and the Unfaithfulness of His People

A Theology of Malachi

A scholar of the Old Testament can approach the study of the text in a variety of ways.  One could choose a central theme, such as Eichrodt’s “covenant” approach, and examine how that theme appears throughout the entire Old Testament.  By choosing a central idea, however, a scholar may leave out some books if they do not contain that single theme, or stretch the contents of a book to fit with the selected idea.  Walter Brueggemann used the dialectical approach by examining the opposites found within the Old Testament.  Childs stated that the Old Testament should be viewed as the ancient Hebrews viewed it: religious literature.[1]  While these methods of developing Old Testament Theology are valid, another method, first undertaken by von Rad and Wright, also captures the theology of the Old Testament as a whole, the tradition-history or kerygmatic approach.  This approach takes the twelve confessions of the Old Testament, identified in song by the Israelites themselves, to show how each book in the collection relates to the whole.  The twelve confessions are creation, ancestors, Egypt and the Exodus, Sinai, wilderness, conquest, Mount Zion, David, the prophets, exile, and restoration.  One or more of these items can be found in each of the Old Testament books.[2]

The book of Malachi is no different.  Malachi, the last book of the Protestant version of the Old Testament, completes the “Book of the Twelve”.[3]  Malachi’s prophecy does fit in with the larger collection of the Old Testament, particularly when the scholar takes the kerygmatic approach as outlined above.  The confession of Sinai, the giving of the law, and God’s covenant with Levi and the entire Israelite group, outlined in this Sinai experience, is Malachi’s focal message.  God promised to love the Israelites and to bless them, if they would, in return, follow his commands.  Malachi served as a messenger to the later, post-exilic Israelites, calling them back to God’s covenant at a time when they had forgotten it.  The book of Malachi focuses on the unfaithfulness of the Israelites in terms of sacrifice, marriage, and tithe, placing these three things in relation to the Levitical covenant that indicated that God would either bless or curse the people depending on their response.

Malachi the author

            The name Malachi is mentioned only once in this book, in Malachi 1:1 (NIV), and most scholars are divided upon whether Malachi is a proper name or only a title derived from Malachi 3:1 given to the anonymous author.[4]  Regardless of whether Malachi is a proper name or not, it likely means “my messenger” rather than the briefly mentioned but normally negated “Yahweh is my messenger” or “my angel”.[5]  Thus, the prophet of this book was either named or titled “my messenger”.  Very little else is known about Malachi, other than his interest in the priestly class, as identified in his diatribe about God’s covenant promises and the activities of the Levites.  Malachi maligned the legalistic attitude of the priests of his day, and championed the earlier attitudes of the pre-exilic priests and prophets who discussed God’s relationship with his people as a matter of the heart and mind, not just outward actions.[6]  This theme is consistent throughout the book, even though Malachi was not the only author.  That is, before the book reached its final form, later editors may have read this text and added an additional message for the people of their time.[7]  Nonetheless, these messages remained within the context of Malachi’s original message of a covenant reminder for the people of God.

History of post-exile people

Malachi’s message is roughly contemporary with Nehemiah and Ezra.  The Jews were exiled to Babylon in 586 BC and in 539 BC, Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonian empire and took control of Palestine.[8]  In 515 BC, the temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt.  The completion of the temple ushered in the Second Temple period, in which Malachi proclaimed his message.  Nehemiah was going to lead a number of Jews back to Jerusalem in 445 BC to help rebuild Jerusalem, but his reforms had not yet occurred.  Persians ruled the area, and the Jews were living among unfriendly peoples.  Disappointment had set in and the priests became less strict in following God’s covenant commands.[9]  It was in this despondent situation, suspected to be between 480 and 458 BC, that Malachi brought God’s message to His people.[10]  He could see the people heading back down the path that had led them to exile and the removal of God’s blessing in the first place, and he wanted to keep them from such destruction.[11]

Unfaithfulness of the priests in sacrifice

            The priests were the first audience to which Malachi directs his message.  God’s covenant love for the Jews was physically exemplified in the blessings He would pour down on them if they kept his commands.  The situation in Jerusalem had degraded so far that the Jews doubted God’s love for them.  However, they had forgotten God’s message to them, as captured in Leviticus 26, which indicated that if they would keep God’s commands, God would bless them, but if they did not, God would withhold his blessing and send curses down on them instead.

            The priests had broken God’s covenant by offering blemished sacrifices on the altar, that is, injured or diseased animals of some sort.  They had assumed that if they followed the gist of the law and continued to offer the sacrifices that they would be fulfilling the law.  God told them that it would be better to shut the temple doors than continue in the blasphemous way they had been conducting the sacrifices (Mal. 1:10 NIV).

In this passage, Malachi uses two different relationships to identify the duties the priests had to carry out before God.  Malachi 1:6 reads as follows: “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?”  The son-father relationship and the servant-master relationship both bring responsibility to the fore, and regardless of the relationship with which the priests identified themselves, they would have had to accept the responsibility of obeying God’s commands, thus bringing themselves back under the covenant God made with Levi.[12]  When hearing Malachi’s words in this section, the priests may have thought of Exodus 20:12 or Deuteronomy 1:31, which highlight the parent motif recognized in Malachi 1:6.  These relationships were also typical of any ancient near eastern treaty, and the mention of them here underscored the importance of a covenant with God, even though the term covenant is not always explicit.[13]  Modern day readers may not understand the ancient traditions of treaties and covenants immediately from the text.  Gaining historical understanding of the period and culture in which Malachi’s audience found themselves is crucial to understanding how his message would be understood and received.  His audience, the priests and the people of Judah, were profoundly aware of the covenant.  Even in such a sinful state as they were, the priests were cognizant of the demands God had placed on them through His covenant with them.

            Covenant in relation to the priests is either explicitly mentioned or alluded to in most of the section dealing with Malachi’s admonition of the priestly culture.  The discourse on how the priests had defiled the altar, by offering blemished sacrifices, should have caused consternation for the priests, as the covenant described in Leviticus explicitly states how sacrifices should be conducted.  One of the major decrees was that the animal had to be pure and spotless (Lev. 22:19-22).  Because the priests had not followed those decrees, they are in danger of bringing God’s curse upon their heads unless they turned from their wayward ways, once they have been warned (Mal. 2:2).  Curses played a key role in covenants and treaties in the Ancient Near East, and Malachi’s audience would have been familiar with such dire ramifications of their covenant-breaking actions.  The threat of imminent curses was meant to keep the Jews in line so they would once again live within the covenant with God and experience the blessings of his love.[14]

The covenant of Levi can be found elsewhere in the Old Testament.  God made a covenant with Levi through his descendants in Numbers 3 when God set apart the tribe of Levi to care for the temple.  God made this covenant with Levi to ensure that His people would follow His ways; the Levites were to be the conduits of instruction and were to help the people keep God’s covenant.  Moreover, the Levites were the ones to participate in the discipline of the whole people of God after they had created the golden calf while God was giving the law to Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex. 32:36-39).[15]  In Deuteronomy 33, the Levites were deemed the spiritual leaders of the people.[16]  The Levites had great authority over the people, and with that authority came much responsibility.  When the priests in Malachi’s day defiled the altar, they were misguiding the people about God’s covenant, and their actions, as Malachi indicated, had serious consequences (Num. 3:6-12).[17]  Malachi 2 opens with a dereliction against the priests, stating that if they did not obey and did not honour God’s name, He would curse them, rebuke their descendants, and cause the priests themselves to be “despised and humiliated” (Mal. 2:1-9).

            Malachi outlined in detail how the priests broke the covenant and what they should do to keep the covenant, and why – to attain God’s blessing once again.  The priests’ actions, however, were not done within a vacuum.  That is, the people who followed the priests also had duties to fulfill, so Malachi ended his first section, leaving the priests in suspense by dwelling on the humiliation to come for them because of their deeds, and proceeded to discuss how the people as a whole had violated God’s covenant.

Unfaithfulness of people in marriage

Even though the priests were supposed to be examples for the rest of God’s people by modeling how to obey His commands, it was not solely their fault that the people sinned, nor was the burden of the people’s sins entirely on their shoulders.  Malachi reprimanded the people of Judah, the Jews remaining in Jerusalem, for breaking God’s covenant as well.  One instance of how the Jews missed the mark of the covenant was in marriage.  God’s covenant with the Jews was symbolized in the promises they made to each other in individual marriage.  When they broke their marriage vows to each other, they broke their “marriage vow” (or covenant) with God.[18]  Malachi specifically states that they “broke faith” with each other, by “desecrating the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying the daughter of a foreign god.”  Not only did the men of Judah marry foreign pagan women, they also divorced the wives of Judah they already had (Mal. 2:11, 14).  Malachi told them that they should not be surprised that God had turned against them since they had already turned their backs on God when they did these things.  This problem was still ongoing when Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem, as he spoke of it in Nehemiah 13:23-27.  Intermarriage was such a major issue because the Jews were living in a foreign land prior to returning to Jerusalem, as they had been exiled to Babylonia. Marriage to foreign women was not the problem, so long as these women abandoned the religion of their former nation and came under God’s control.  Malachi’s wording of “daughter of a foreign god” was purposeful, to remind the Jews of the dangers of intermarriage with other religions.  Invariably they would be dragged away from the one true God; even with the great King Solomon participated in this sin.[19]  Even in Malachi’s day it was still common practice to meld together the religious beliefs of the foreign nation with the Jews’ own religion.[20]  Nonetheless, God’s command given at Mount Sinai, the origin of the covenant and the Law, was that there should be no other gods but Him.  Thus, the Jews were acting outside the covenant when they took these pagan women and married them.

Textual considerations

Ancient copies of this section on marriage and divorce, particularly Malachi 2:15, are not clear and thus require some interpretation.[21]  Although Deuteronomy 24:1-4 supports a man’s divorce of his wife, it is only toleration, not a command.[22]  Rogerson even states that the Talmud more correctly renders the Hebrew of Malachi 2:15 by saying that “God hates the man who divorces his first wife.”[23]  In whatever way this passage is reworked, Malachi’s intent was clear: God does not like divorce, as is explicitly stated in verse 16.  This is a teaching supported throughout the Old and New Testaments.  The teaching in Deuteronomy 24 is one example, and Jesus himself said in Matthew 5:31-32 and 19:4-6 and 9 that divorce for reasons other than marital unfaithfulness were akin to adultery and divorce should be avoided.  Divorce was another practice that caused the Jews to fall outside of the covenant relationship that Malachi was concerned with renewing.

One complaint of the people was that God no longer paid attention to their acts of worship, which Malachi said happened because of their transgressions against the marriage covenant.  Malachi stated that the people “weep and wail because he [God] no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure” and they asked why this was so (Mal. 2:13-14).  One explanation for this complaint is that the people of Judah may have forgotten the covenant they made with God at Sinai, which stated that if they did not obey God’s commands, He would turn from them.  Leviticus 26 outlines in a powerful way the calamities to come if God’s people rejected His ways, and yet the Jews of Malachi’s time had done just that.  Because of their marital unfaithfulness, judgment was imminent.  Malachi described the coming judgment, but also identified another errant behaviour that kept the post-exilic Jews from coming near to God: they were avoiding paying the tithe.

Unfaithfulness of the people in tithing

            Nehemiah, in Nehemiah 13:10, commented on the lack of tithing against which Malachi spoke out in Malachi 3:9.[24]  Tithing was a means of both supporting the Levitical priesthood and showing devotion to the Lord.  Moreover, tithes and offerings were used to help take care of the widows, orphans, and other outcasts in society.  This practice was also part of the covenant, as identified in Leviticus 27:30, Numbers 18:26:29, and Deuteronomy 14:22-29.  The lack of tithing suggests lack of spirituality on the part of the Jews, and increasing their tithe would symbolize the renewal of their full faith in God.[25]  Moreover, fulfilling the covenant responsibility to tithe would initiate God’s blessings once again.  Having not tithed properly, God cursed the people, just as the priests were under threat of curses for not fulfilling their duties.  The two groups, the priests and the people, are integrally tied together, as the people must support the priests by providing them with the tithes and offerings, and the priests must properly offer sacrifices to God on behalf of the people.[26]  The problems of the priests identified in Malachi 1 no doubt were at least partially linked to the fact that the people were not supporting their priests and so the priests were struggling to carry out their duties in a lawful manner.  Once the proper tithe came in, the priests could offer pure sacrifices and the entire group could show their full devotion to God.

Malachi brought the various parts of his message together regarding the covenant sins of the people with his criticism of the current tithing process.  If the people would just bring to God what was His, He could work through them.  Every member of the Jewish family would be able to take part in a relationship with God by offering back part of what He had blessed them with in the first place.  This act of generosity would thereby open up opportunities for the priests to minister properly, further helping the community toward a greater experience of God’s blessing.  The covenant relationship between God and his people was just that, for his people, not just for the priests or for select members of the community.

God promised the people that He would bless them if they followed His commands, including the command to offer tithes to the temple priests.  God’s reminder in Malachi 3:6 that He does not change underscores that fact, because part of the covenant relationship is that obedience brings blessing for the people of God.  The phrase used to describe the people in this passage, the “descendants of Jacob”, is apt because just as Jacob deceived Esau and stole his birthright (described in Genesis 25), so the Jews were trying to deceive God and take from Him what was rightfully His.  Nevertheless, just as God promised Jacob and his immediate descendants, so he promised the Jews in Malachi’s time – blessing would come if they followed the covenant.[27]  When they sinned, God did not destroy his people, but neither did He bless them, as they were hoping.[28]  They had forgotten the covenant of their forefathers in this regard, so much so that they claimed that service to God was useless and nothing would be gained from it (Mal. 3:14).  They claimed that they had carried out the requirements God had put before them, but Malachi, throughout his entire message, indicated that they had certainly not done so.  In fact, another example of the shortcomings of the people was illustrated in the presence of the poor in their society.

            The outcasts and downtrodden in the Jewish society were being ignored, another consequence of not tithing.  Malachi 3:5 states that the widows, orphans, and foreigners in the land were being taken advantage of and oppressed.  Many of these less fortunate people were pressed into slavery, the very plight from which God had rescued his people hundreds of years before in Egypt, and now some people were right back in the same situation.[29]  This situation was far from what God had promised the Jews, but it was through their own doing that such events occurred.  The tithe to the Levite priests was to go in part to the needy in the society to keep them from being enslaved.  In this way, the people of God were to resemble one family.  If some in their midst were ignored, the family was not whole.[30]  Just as the marriage relationship between husband and wife mirrored the relationship between God and his people, so to did the relationship between each individual of the group to each other, in a different way.  When their relationships failed, so did the one between themselves and God.  Malachi was trying to teach the Jews this lesson by identifying how the covenant with God affected their lives.  Either judgment or blessing would come to them, depending on how they responded to the covenant.  Heretofore, the Jews had not fulfilled their covenant duties and curses were imminent, although God stated numerous times through Malachi that blessing would come if they would only return and open their hearts (and moneybags in some circumstances) to God.

Judgment or blessing and the Law

The complacency that set in after the second temple was built would soon be broken, because God’s messenger of the covenant would come and purify the Levites (the priests) and the proffered sacrifices would finally be acceptable to God.[31]  Judgment would be poured out on the iniquitous.  In the end, if the Jews did accept Malachi’s message and understood that if they remained righteous, God would eventually come through for them at the right time, and there would be a clear distinction between righteous and wicked (Mal. 3:18).

Nehemiah and Ezra later undertook active reforms to improve the covenant relationship and deal with the issues mentioned in Malachi, such as the lackluster approach of the Levite priests, the intermarriage and divorce of the people, and the lack of tithing.  Through their tireless efforts, the inhabitants of Jerusalem and its environs once again committed themselves to the ancient covenant with God (Neh. 13 and Ezra 9-10).  Malachi’s message quite possibly paved the way for such reforms to occur.  His focus on the covenant and the law ensured that the Jews would remain the unique people of God, a light shining in a dark world.[32]

God would bestow his blessing on the priests and the people if they obeyed.  God would open the storehouses and bless them beyond measure.  This is the central theme of Malachi: a call of obedience to the covenant, which would produce either judgment or blessing on the people depending on what they chose.  Malachi identified the shortcomings in the society because of the lack of covenant relationship, since the priests were offering impure sacrifices, the men were marrying foreign, pagan women and divorcing their first wives, and no one was paying the tithe, forcing the priests to abandon their duties.  These failings on the part of the people had resulted in their current situation of living outside of God’s blessing, a recurring theme throughout the Old Testament, and one clearly identified and discussed at length in Leviticus 26.

Lest Malachi’s message be somehow misconstrued, he reiterated in chapter 4 the importance of following the Law of Moses, which was the backbone of the covenant God had made with his people on Mount Sinai.  A final reminder of the law and the judgment to come was aimed at keeping the Jews in holy fear and reverence to God (Mal. 4:4-6).  Thus, even as the book was amended in later days, the main thrust of the text remained the same: salvation or destruction would come based on the level of obedience under the covenant.  God’s promise of such interaction had not changed since the beginning, and would not change in the future.  The Jews could rely on His covenant promise.

Bibliography

Baldwin, Joyce G.  Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: An Introduction & Commentary.  Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 1972.

Bright, John.  A History of Israel.  Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972

Childs, Brevard S.  Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1979.

Cox, Claude.  “Old Testament Theology and History OLDT 0511.” Lecture, Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, ON, May 31-June 4, 2010.

Froese, Brian.  “Approaching a Theology of the Book of Malachi,” Direction 25, no. 1 (1996), pp. 14-20.

Harrison, George W.  “Covenant Unfaithfulness in Malachi 2:1-16,” Criswell Theological Review 2, no. 1 (1987), pp. 63-72.

Huey, F. B.  “An Exposition of Malachi.”  Southwestern Journal of Theology 30, no. 1 (1987), pp. 12-21.

Kaiser, Walter C.  “Divorce in Malachi 2:10-16,” Criswell Theological Review 2 no. 1 (1987), pp. 73-84.

MacKenzie, Steven L. and Howard N. Wallace.  “Covenant Themes in Malachi,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, no. 45 (1983), pp. 549-563.

“Malachi, Book of.” In Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 4, ed. David Noel Freedman, pp. 478-485.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.

Merrill, Eugene H.  Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament.  Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006.

Rogerson, J.  “Malachi.”  In Oxford Bible Commentary, eds. John Barton and John Muddiman, pp. 615-617.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Sweeney, Marvin Alan.  The Twelve Prophets: Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah.  Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000.

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[1] Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1979), p. 16.  Childs’ idea was discussed in Claude Cox, “Old Testament Theology and History OLDT 0511,” (Lecture, Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, ON, May 31-June 4, 2010).

[2] The various approaches to the study of Old Testament theology were outlined in Cox, “Old Testament Theology.”

[3]  The Book of the Twelve consists of the following prophetic books: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.

[4] All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise indicated.

[5] “Malachi, Book of.” In Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 4, ed. David Noel Freedman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 478.

[6] Ibid., p. 479.  See also, Joyce G. Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: An Introduction & Commentary (Downers Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 1972), p. 218.

[7] Baldwin, “Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi,” p. 214-215.

[8] Cox, “Old Testament Theology.”

[9] Bright, History of Israel, p. 379.  See also “Malachi, Book of,” p. 479.

[10] J. Rogerson, “Malachi,” In Oxford Bible Commentary, eds. John Barton and John

Muddiman, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 615.  See also Eugene H. Merrill, Everlasting Dominion: A Theology of the Old Testament (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), p. 94.  Merrill places Malachi around 460 BC.

[11] Merrill, Everlasting Dominion, p. 563.

[12] Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, p. 225.

[13] Steven L. MacKenzie and Howard N. Wallace, “Covenant Themes in Malachi,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, no. 45 (1983), pp. 557-558.

[14] Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, p. 233.

[15] Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, p. 234.

[16] George W. Harrison, “Covenant Unfaithfulness in Malachi 2:1-16,” Criswell Theological Review 2, no. 1 (1987), p. 64.

[17] Brian Froese, “Approaching a Theology of the Book of Malachi,” Direction 25, no. 1 (1996), p. 16.  See also Harrison, “Covenant Unfaithfulness,” p. 69

[18] Merrill, Everlasting Dominion, p. 564.

[19] Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, p. 238.  Solomon’s plight is described in 1 Kings 11:1-3.

[20] Marvin Alan Sweeney, The Twelve Prophets: Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), p. 733.

[21] Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, p. 240.  See Walter C. Kaiser, “Divorce in Malachi 2:10-16,” Criswell Theological Review 2 no. 1 (1987), pp. 75-77 for an in-depth discussion on the interpretation of v. 15.

[22] Kaiser, “Divorce in Malachi,” p. 81.

[23] Rogerson, “Malachi,” p. 616.

[24] As pointed out by Bright, History of Israel, p. 379.

[25] “Malachi, Book of,” p. 483.

[26] Sweeney, Twelve Prophets, p. 743.

[27] F. B. Huey, “An Exposition of Malachi,” Southwestern Journal of Theology 30, no. 1 (1987), p. 19.  See also Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, p. 244.

[28] Mal. 2:17 and 3:14-15 indicate that the Jews were questioning God’s treatment of them.

[29] Bright, History of Israel, p. 380, as mentioned in Neh. 5:5

[30] Rogerson, “Malachi,” p. 617.

[31] This phrase “the messenger of the covenant” in Mal. 3:1 is the source for experts’ statements that Malachi, or “my messenger”, is only a title and not a real name.

[32] Bright, History of Israel, p. 380.