Malachi 2:10-16
WE have seen, in what has been before us in this book God dishonored; and this not by heathen, but by those who stood in a position of privileged relationship with Him, who professed to be, by birth and by religious observance, His people. When God is not given that place in heart and conscience which is rightly His, other evils are sure to follow. Some of them are mentioned in verses 10 to 16.
The first is a selfish disregard of the rights of one’s fellowmen. “Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously” (or more exactly, and in each case in this chapter, “unfaithfully”), “every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?” See Nehemiah 5:1-13, which shows that man in our own times is of the same fibre as twenty-four centuries ago. The ten commandments set forth duty to God and duty to man, but the children of Israel neglected the one as they did the other. Selfishness is deeply rooted in the human heart, and where God is not known, no higher principles may be expected to govern.
Verses 11 and 12 deal with a different character of sin: the intermarriage of the (professed) people of God and the world. (See Ezra 9 and 10, Nehemiah 6:17, 18; 13:23-28). The sanctuary of Jehovah which He loved, was profaned by the marriage of Jews to idolaters.
How can a true believer be united in marriage with an unbeliever? Alas! it is done even in the time in which we live, but 2 Cor. 6:14-16 is thereby violated, to God dishonor and the saint’s abiding loss. Verses 13-10 bring out a third sin against God and man: divorce. Does not verse 13 tell in perfect truth of what follows in the train of this great evil: “ ... ... tears, with weeping, and with sighing”? Broken homes, children without proper parental care and affection—these are the current and immediate fruits of despising God’s ordinance for the human family (Genesis 2:24), It should never be found among the children of God, where His Word is known. The Jews made the most trivial grounds sufficient for divorcing their wives, trying to find sanction for the allowance of their own evil hearts, in Deuteronomy 24:1.
For the Christian all is settled by the Lord’s words in Matthew 5 and 19, which precisely and effectively limit the divine sanction of divorce to one cause only. Apart from that ground, the divorced wife (or husband) is still in God’s reckoning, married to the former partner, as our verses in Malachi 2 indeed show: “the wife of thy youth against whom thou hast dealt unfaithfully, yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.”
The early part of verse 15 is a little difficult in the English translation. The subject is the nature and purpose of marriage as given under God’s ordination: husband and wife are “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The Holy Spirit is referred to in the second sentence, —the Spirit of God; but in the latter part of the verse it is “your spirit”—the spirit of man, as in verse 16.
The marginal reading for verse 16 is unwarranted. The best translation is believed to be, “(for I hate putting away, saith Jehovah the God of Israel); and he covereth with violence his garment, saith Jehovah of hosts, etc.” (N. T.), —the latter referring to the unlovely ways of the natural man when angered. See Eph. 5:25 for a lovely contrast.
Verse 17 will come before us in our consideration of chapter 3.