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Malachi’s second disputation is the longest of the six (1:6-2:9). He wanted the remnant to understand that their misfortunes were not the result of God’s disengagement. Their lack of zeal was to blame. The people were not as expeditious to repent as they were after Zechariah’s appeal (Zech. 1:6), and they did not comply with God’s intercession like in the days of Haggai (Hag. 1:14). Instead, a spiritual malaise had settled over the community, specifically over the priesthood.

Using question-and-response as his preferred teaching tool, Malachi delivered his disputation against the priesthood. God set up his indictment of the priests by first establishing an agreement with the people about the respect and honor that a son owed his father, or a servant his master. Knowing everyone would agree with the terms of common earthly relationships, he asked, “A son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is the honor due me? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me?” (1:6). The analogy highlighted that if God was their heavenly father and master, how much more respect did he deserve than an earthly father or master?

Malachi accused the priests of despising the name of the Lord (1:6). A significant moment in the story of God extending himself to his chosen people was when God disclosed his name to Moses from the burning bush (Ex. 3:14). A whole extensive theology exists around God’s name. His name represents his character and essence. To disrespect the name of God was to reject him completely, as if the revealing of his name was of no consequence to the Jewish people.

Sham offerings

In Malachi’s hypothetical dialogue, the priests were clueless how they had offended God’s name. They asked, “how have we polluted it?” (1:6). God was specific in his reply. Their temple offerings were unacceptable, defiling his altar. According to biblical law, the priests could sacrifice only healthy animals without defect (Deut. 15:21, Lev. 1:3; 3:6; 22:25). All major offerings in the temple were supposed to represent the first fruit of the community’s harvests or flocks. Only pure sacrifices could make atonement for the people. The priests of Malachi’s day had lowered the standards of ritual sacrifice on their own authority. They tolerated lame, blind, and sick animals as offerings, and they did so in direct contradiction to the Mosaic law (1:8).

This disputation did not provide a reason for the priests’ actions, but they were likely motivated by greed or convenience. Were they lowering sacrifice requirements out of indifference and replacing the divine way with a more convenient one? Were priests getting paid to accept defective animals as legitimate? The lame and blind animals were of no worth to their owners at the market, but they could still be adequate food for the priests who depended on the animal sacrifices for sustenance. Whether it was because of carelessness or corruption, the offense was the same. The priests knew the Torah standards; they had them memorized. Their sin was not accidental; it was intentional (2:8).

God wanted to terminate the whole sham operation of faulty offerings (1:7). He threatened to shut the temple doors before allowing the sacrificial system to continue. God lamented, “Oh, that someone among you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not kindle fire on my altar in vain!” (1:10). The temple doors most likely referred to the entrance to the outdoor courtyard where the priests conducted sacrifices twice daily on the altar for burnt offerings.

According to the laws of Leviticus, certain annual offerings were obligatory, but other offerings were voluntary. These were called freewill offerings (Num. 15:3). God reserved a special curse for the hypocrite who made a freewill offering and knowingly tried to cheat the divine: “Cursed be the cheat who has a male in the flock and vows to give it and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished” (1:14). The priests were implicated with “the cheat.” They were the ones who decided the acceptability of the animal and they knew the Mosaic regulations for freewill offerings (Lev. 27:11-12). Freewill offerings were supposed to be male sheep, goats, or bulls without blemish or deformity. The modern-day equivalent would be a Christian who publicly vows a large tithe but secretly falters on it.

Malachi, like other prophets, looked beyond his frustrations with his contemporaries to a future day when the whole earth would worship Yahweh and worship him purely. God said, “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name and a pure offering, for my name is great among the nations” (1:11). No such universal recognition of Yahweh happened in Malachi’s day. Only in the age to come will the prophet’s vision be fully realized, and God’s name will be glorified among the nations.

Prophets and priests

The job of the prophet was to deliver the message of the Lord to the intended audience, which, in this case, was the priests. Challenging the priestly class had to be difficult, even for a prophet. Priests were crucial community leaders who acted as intermediaries between God and the people. Malachi must have been certain of the divine revelation given to him or he would not have risked confronting the sole operators of the temple sacrificial system. Most likely, he delivered his indictment in the temple courts, the priestly domain where they made atonement for the people and issued blessings to the worshipers. As Malachi transitioned from his message of indictment to the details of God’s punishment, he made clear once again that the priests were the recipients of his address: “And now, O priests, this command is for you” (2:1).

Malachi did not single out the High Priest or distinguish between the Zadokites or the Levites. His accusations were comprehensive, including all responsible for officiating in the temple. Traditionally, the priests were the ones to pronounce the Aaronic blessing over the people (Num. 6:22-27). Malachi rebuked them, warning that if they did not listen and change their ways God would put their blessings under a curse (2:2). They would lose their advantage as priests if God cursed all their blessings, rendering them impotent.

Blessings and curses

Malachi was big on covenant language. He echoed the Deuteronomic blessings and curses in his oracles to the remnant (Deut. 28-29). He was not creating a new theology but reinforcing the established theology revealed to Moses. Violating the covenant had repercussions, but covenant regulations also offered the adherents a choice. Obey God and be blessed, or disobey him and be cursed.

Priestly qualifications

Malachi warned the priests that if they did not listen to God and bring glory to his name, he would rebuke their offspring and spread dung on their faces (2:3). No doubt hyperbole was the currency of the prophets, but this punishment seems excessively grotesque. Malachi’s warning targeted the most important aspects of the priesthood that qualified them for the position: their lineage and their purity.

Since the time of Aaron, the tribe of Levi had officiated the temple sacrifices. When God said, “indeed, I have already cursed them,” he might have been calling back to his earlier punishments of corrupt priests (2:2). For example, God had ended the line of Eli because of his evil sons Hophni and Phinehas. These young priests were guilty of laying with the women who came to Shiloh to worship, and they greedily helped themselves to the offerings for food without bothering to sacrifice them on the Lord’s altar (1 Sam. 2). God had allowed Eli’s sons to be killed at the hands of the Philistines, and Eli died after hearing the news. In case Malachi’s audience had forgotten, God reminded them he had already followed through on his threat to end one generation of priests.

Priests had to maintain a high standard of ritual purity to serve in the temple. Dung spread on their faces certainly would have disqualified them. Malachi used the Hebrew word peresh which can mean either dung or entrails. According to its usage in the Bible, the “dung of your offerings” likely was a reference to the intestines and stomach waste of animal sacrifices at the temple. The Mosaic law had commanded the priests to remove the animal’s entrails before offering it on the altar (Lev. 4:11-12). Priests later transported the waste from the temple area and burned it outside the holy space (Ex. 29:14). God’s warning involved disqualifying priests in a humiliating way—smearing animal sacrifice waste on their faces. The punishment fits the crime. The priests were defiling the Lord’s table with their inappropriate sacrifices, and in return God was going to defile them (1:7).

God invoked his covenant with Levi, calling it a “covenant of life and well-being” (2:5). He intended for the granting of life and peace to be the reward for the priests’ service to God. However, their lackadaisical approach to their privileged vocation threatened to nullify the “covenant of Levi” (2:4).

Malachi’s “covenant with Levi” was most likely pointing to one or two episodes in the Torah that set the tribe of Levi apart and gave them a special role in the community. Neither of those were relevant to Levi, the son of Jacob, who was not presented positively in Genesis. The first affair was the building of a golden calf at Mount Sinai. The Levites were the sole supporters of Moses against idol worship in that incident (Ex. 32:26-29). From that day forward, the sons of Levi were anointed as the “perpetual priesthood throughout all their generations” (Ex. 40:15).

Moses’s blessing of the tribe of Levi left a strong impression in the national conscious (Deut. 33:11). Before Moses died, he had appointed the Levites, his own tribe, as instructors of the law, which included making judicial decisions for the community.

The “covenant with Levi” could also have been a callback to the covenant of “perpetual priesthood” that God had made with Aaron’s grandson Phinehas. Phinehas is best known for stabbing an Israelite man and Midianite woman in an improper relationship while the Israelites were camped in the wilderness before entering the promise land. The zeal Phinehas possessed for God’s law had single-handedly turned back the wrath of God (Num. 25:13). The priesthood of Malachi’s day stood in stark contrast to the zeal of Phinehas. They resented their responsibilities and did not care to represent Yahweh’s message or will.

Malachi described the covenant faithfulness of an ideal priesthood (2:5-7). He described the exemplary priesthood as offering “true instruction,” walking with God in “integrity and uprightness” (2:6). It is not clear if he had in mind an ideal priesthood that had never existed or a historic priesthood from an earlier period. Malachi’s view of the priesthood was higher than that of other prophets.

Malachi presented the profile of a truly righteous priest: “For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts” (2:7). God had designated the priests to be the communicators of the law and the covenant enforcers (Deut. 31:9-13). Instead, postexilic priests were being covenant violators, and their lack of faith was contagious in the community. The priests had lowered the standards for themselves and therefore the community lowered their standard of obedience, as well. The priests were supposed to be spiritual role models, but instead, they were a “stumbling block” (Ezek. 44:12).

The priests had failed in their two major responsibilities. They did not make atonement for the people through their sacrifices, and they did not teach the people the law. As a result, God said, the priests were “despised and humbled before all the people” (2:9). The Hebrew word, bazah, means to despise or disdain. Malachi used bazah as a bookend word in the last curse pronouncement in the section (2:9). He used it three times at the beginning of the disputation, when God accused the priests of despising his name by polluting his altar (1:6-7). Because the priests despised God’s name, the people despised the priests.

As Christians, we believe it was ultimately the sacrifice of God, not of humans, that atoned for the sins of the nations. No priest was qualified to submit the sacrifice of God’s son. Jesus played both roles in the final atonement. He was the “great High Priest,” who the author of the book of Hebrews said empathized with our weaknesses, because he too had to endure and overcome every earthly temptation (Heb. 4:15). Yet, Jesus was also the last sacrifice, the perfect and unblemished offering of atonement. As it is worded in Hebrews, “it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:9). Malachi envisioned the ideal priest, one who was not despised but beloved. What stretched beyond the prophetic imagination is the idea that the perfect priest would offer the perfect sacrifice in himself.