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Malachi’s third disputation is short and to the point (2:10-16). Israelite men were divorcing their Israelite wives to marry pagan women, and God was not pleased!

While the second disputation targeted the priesthood, the third disputation addressed the community. Malachi’s disputations often began with a question where the answer was a presumed “yes.” Malachi asked, “Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?” (2:10). By reminding the people that Yahweh was their heavenly father, the prophet was highlighting their unique bond as a nation under divine headship. Yet, the people were too self-absorbed to uphold even their most committed attachments, particularly marriage.

Love your neighbor

In typical Malachi fashion, his innocent question set up the divine accusation. Malachi asked, “Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?” (2:10). How could they abuse each other if they were unified by their origin and beliefs? The covenant of their ancestors was a reference to God’s giving of the law to Moses on Mount Sinai.

We already know from the first and second disputations that the people had broken the terms of their national covenant by being unfaithful to God. Apparently, they were also being unfaithful to each other. Malachi used all the synonymous names for the nation—Israel, Judah, and Jerusalem—to show that no one was innocent in his charge (2:11).

Intermarriage

Malachi accused Judah of marrying “the daughter of a foreign god” (2:11). Calling the pagan wives “daughter of a foreign god” denoted that these were gentiles who had not converted to Judaism. Instead, they maintained their pagan beliefs, infecting the community with idolatry and polytheism. Malachi was not forbidding marriage to Gentile neighbors out of racial bias. In fact, the Hebrew scriptures upheld proselyte women in their history who declared their allegiance to Yahweh.

Recall that Ruth was a Moabite woman who married into an Israelite family that was living in Moab. Yet, it was Ruth the Moabite who made the Bible’s memorable declaration of covenant loyalty to Yahweh and the nation: “your people shall be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:6). Zipporah, the wife of Moses, was a Midianite. Yet, she recognized God’s anger over their uncircumcised son and saved the life of Moses. Zipporah understood Moses’s failure to honor the traditional symbol of his people, and she acted accordingly (Ex. 4:25). These examples of heroic Gentile women in Israel’s story reveal God’s concern with the purity of the nation’s spiritual life, not the purity of their bloodlines.

Malachi called intermarriage an “abomination” that “profaned the sanctuary” (2:11). He equated the incorporation of pagan women into the community with placing an idol in the temple. God had set the community apart as sacred, but when they made new bonds with heathen neighbors, they were polluting the sacred assembly. Malachi was so distressed by these mixed marriages he asked God to cut them off from the community, to excommunicate the couples from the “tents of Jacob” (2:12).

The men who were married to pagan women visited the temple, hoping their offerings would atone for their sins. Malachi accused the transgressors of “cover[ing] the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning” (2:13). The pagan traditions of their wives had already influenced their approach to Yahweh. Pagan-style worship practices involved crying, groaning, and cutting to manipulate the false gods (Isa. 15:2-3; 1 Kings 18:26-30). The demonstrable performance in the Jerusalem temple was in vain. Yahweh saw through the hypocrisy and emotionalism; he detested the mixture of outward piety and inward depravity.

Prophets before Malachi also had emphasized God’s demand for justice and obedience over sacrifice. The prophet Micah rhetorically asked, “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?” He added, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:7-8). The emphasis of faithfulness over ritual is one of the most frequent themes in the prophetic books (Isa. 58:6-7).

Overlap with Ezra and Nehemiah

Remember that Malachi likely ministered right before Ezra and Nehemiah began their campaigns of reform in the restored community. Malachi’s complaints about the pervasiveness of intermarriage correlate exactly with the problems Ezra and Nehemiah faced (Ezra 9-10, Nehemiah 13:23-27). In this way, Ezra and Nehemiah confirm the historical backdrop to the problem of intermarriage in postexilic Judah.

Ezra first arrived in Jerusalem 80 years after the first wave of exiles had returned. Since the prophets Haggai and Zechariah never mentioned problems with intermarriage among the first wave of returnees, it must have been a trend that developed with the next generation. By Ezra’s time, heathen marriages had become rampant. Ezra plucked his hair out and tore his mantle when he understood the scale of the problem (Ezra 9:3). To him, marriages were evidence of widespread moral decline. Indeed, the leaders, priests, and officials had “led the way” in the marrying of foreign women (Ezra 9:2).

If idolatry had caused Israel’s and Judah’s punishment, why introduce it again? Facilitating their return from exile was God’s demonstration of a “brief moment of favor” (Ezra 9:8). Why would they risk foregoing on God’s continued favor?

Ezra did not invent the laws against intermarriage. God had forbidden marriage to pagans since the Hebrew people first entered the promised land (Ex. 34:16; Deut. 7:3; Lev. 21:14; Josh. 23:12), because this practice erased the line between the covenant people and the idolatrous, outside world. Perhaps the postexilic community thought the laws against intermarriage only applied to the early days of the conquest. However, little had changed in the spiritual beliefs of her neighbors by the fifth century BCE. The Midianites, Moabites, Philistines, and Egyptians were all still idol-worshiping polytheists.

After Malachi’s ministry, once Ezra had convinced the community that their actions would lead to divine punishment, the community eagerly repented. They wept alongside Ezra and confessed, “We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this” (Ezra 10:2). From Ezra’s perspective, the only solution to restore the community fabric was to dissolve every illegal marriage (Ezra 10:1-4). Only then could they remedy the polluting effects of idolatry.

By the time Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, 13 years after Ezra’s reforms, it seemed the intermarriage crisis was resolved. Nehemiah’s followers made an oath to prevent their children from marrying pagan outsiders (Neh. 10:30), but while he was away from Judah and checking in with imperial authorities in Susa, something had changed. While the cat was away, the mice intermarried.

The book doesn’t state the length of Nehemiah’s absence, but it was likely about a year. On his way to Jerusalem from Susa, Nehemiah was troubled by the number of Israelites in peripheral communities who had intermarried with locals. According to his report, he found that half of the Israelite children in the border towns did not even know Hebrew (Neh. 13:24). The peripheral communities were most at risk because they interfaced frequently with the neighboring Philistines, Moabites, and Ammonites. For them, Nehemiah feared total assimilation and the loss of their Jewish identity.

Nehemiah reminded the returnees of the example of King Solomon and his compliance with the cult practices of his many wives (1 Kings 11:1-8). The wise Solomon’s faith was not strong enough to withstand the corroding effects of union with unbelievers. God held Solomon accountable for the sin of pagan marriage, and he would certainly hold the remnant to account as well (Neh. 13:26). The Israelite men were transgressing in two ways: they were marrying pagan women, just as previous generations had done, but they were also divorcing their Israelite wives, giving preference to the foreign women.

Malachi accused the men of being unfaithful to the wives of their youth (2:14). “Wife of your youth” was another way of saying “first wife.” In ancient Israelite society, parents had often arranged marriages for their children. Unlike the illegal marriages to the pagan women, the marriage contracts made within the community had God as their witness (2:14). Having God as a witness to the marriage contract also placed God in the role of covenant enforcer. In his imperative command, God made clear which marriages he viewed as lawful: “do not let anyone be faithless to the wife of his youth” (2:15).

Divorces

What motivated Israelite men to divorce their wives and marry pagan women? The Bible does not explain the reasoning behind the wave of divorces. In earlier times, a man would have added wives without divorcing his first wife. Solomon had 700 wives (1 Kings 11:3). Divorcing their first wife was not a requirement for men to remarry in a polygamous society. Perhaps though, by the Persian period, polygamy was recognized as a less-than-ideal family structure. The Hebrew scriptures never forbid polygamy, but over time the society naturally transitioned to monogamy. Historians cannot pinpoint exactly when that transition happened. Perhaps the pagan wives desired to be the primary wife. Often in the polygamous family unit, the first wife was the preferred wife. The foreign wives or their parents may have demanded that the Israelite men divorce their first wife.

Some historians theorize that intermarriages were motivated by financial concerns in the postexilic community. Upon returning from Babylon, many exiles discovered their family lands had been taken. Some neighboring peoples had suffered less under the hands of the Babylonian armies. Therefore, they had kept their lands, jobs, and businesses, while the Judahite exiles had lost everything. Mixed unions may have been the surest way for the returnees to regain land.

Malachi firmly stated that God “hates” divorce (2:16). God hated divorces that conveniently disposed of the first wife in favor of the new pagan wife. Yet God allowed Ezra to push divorce as the only solution to purge the remnant of idolatrous marriages. Those intermarriages lacked God’s recognition. Our modern equivalent to the concept of Ezra’s call for mass divorce would be an annulment—the canceling of a marriage that was never lawful in God’s eyes.

At the end of the disputation, God declared his hatred for the “covering [of] one’s garment with violence” (2:16). Two meanings can be derived from this declaration. In biblical times, covering a woman with your garment was a figurative expression for entering a marriage contract. The story of Boaz and Ruth used the same language (Ruth 3:9). The NIV, following this logic, translates the line: “does violence to the one he should protect,” with “the one” being the wife. God hated when Israelite men did harm to the wife they were supposed to protect.

However, the wording about a garment being covered “with violence” might connect to Malachi’s earlier depiction of Israelite men offering hypocritical sacrifices in the temple, weeping and groaning at the altar (2:13). Despite their active rebellion against the covenant, the transgressors went to the temple to display their offerings and sacrifices. Malachi envisioned their garments bloodied from the act of exaggerated pagan rituals surrounding their animal sacrifice. Because God desired obedience and individual morality, he refused their offerings.

Interestingly, Malachi possessed a higher view of marriage than the law or the preexilic prophets. Malachi understood the controversial nature of his message. He regularly reminded his audience that “Yahweh, God of armies” and “Yahweh, God of Israel” was the authority giving voice to his oracle. Mosaic law allowed for divorce, even though it regulated the manner of divorce (Deut. 24:1-4).

Jesus on marriage

Jesus further advanced Malachi’s exalted view of marriage. He reminded Jews in the Roman period that God hated divorce. On matters of the covenant, Jesus spoke to the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. For this reason, his critics believed him to be lax on the observance of the Sabbath, Kashrut (dietary laws), and ritual purity. Marriage is one of the few topics Jesus interpreted more strictly than the Torah (Matt. 5:31-32). When the Pharisees challenged Jesus with a question about divorce, he retorted that the laws of Moses only allowed for divorce because hard-heartedness had entered the community (Matt. 19:8). In God’s perfect plan for the world, male and female became one flesh as a divine institution. Jesus said, “what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Matt. 19:6).

Because we live in a broken world, both the Old Testament and the New Testament lay out qualifiers for divorce and provide regulations for ending the marriage contract. However, in an ideal, healed, and redeemed world, Malachi and Jesus both gave every indication that marriage is an area of our lives that we should hold as sacred. If you are fortunate enough to have a godly and uplifting marriage in this life, you are standing on holy ground.

If marriage has been a source of pain in your life, as I know it has been for many of my God-fearing friends, I am sorry. You are a victim to broken promises, just like the first wives in the restored community of Israel. Hold onto the promise that Jesus will return and make all things new (Rev. 21:5).