Maleachi the Prophet in chapter 2
koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)
Visiting Professor
Kyungpook National University
Sangju Campus
Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College
Australia
1 June 2012

 

                 Maleachi received from God a commandment to the priests. The priest is to give honor to the Name of God. What this means is unfolded in the whole chapter. The priest should not permit the impermissible. What is explicitly excluded from worship or Christian life by God in His Word cannot be voted out or in by the majority or consensus of committees or authority of scholars or church leaders. The agnostic view of life is that the audience of life determines the person one should be. This is not biblical. Embracing everything is not biblical. All roads do not lead to heaven. If the priest does not honor God, He will send curses upon them. Allocated blessings from the Lord will be called to halt, to adjust, to change, to shrink and to disappear. Obedience is required since it says "listen". Listen and do, to be precise. To hear and not act is not acting at all. When one hears the Torah we are to act appropriately. The blessings will be cursed (Maleachi 2:2). In fact, it is already cursed (Maleachi 2:2). When Adam and Eve sinned, the earth was cursed.
                Maleachi 2:3 then explain one of the mysteries of the Bible which a New Testament Theologian can recognize clearly but which is missed by Jewish Theologians and Scholars. Verses 3 to 6 are relevant here. Only Adventists can fully understand the full impact of these verses properly. Christ was promised to Adam and Eve as Seed to come that will conquer the evil and Satan and rescue the sinners of all ages. That is the Messianic promises of the Old Testament which even Rabbis understood. But what the Rabbis did not understand and what the Orthodox and Protestant churches do not understand through the centuries either, is that Christ was the Antetype in the Heavenly Sanctuary of which the Tabernacle service again set up with Moses, existing of course in understanding since the Fall, was a Type. The type was just meant to exist until the Antetype came in 31 CE. The priestly system was to stop in the year of the death of the divine-human Christ who gave Himself as ransom for sinful humanity. The Lamb was slain forever. The Seed was rebuked because of the evil of all generations (Maleachi 2:3). A punishment will be to those who try to worship unworthy. Dung will be scattered upon their faces and He (the Seed) shall lift you unto Himself (Maleachi 2:3). "And He, when He shall be lifted up, shall draw all men unto Himself". Without Christ and without the Sanctuary Message of the book of Hebrews, which is an unpopular book among modern Christians, this cannot be understood properly. The covenant of the Lord (My covenant) is in the first place a covenant between the Trinity for the salvation of humanity in case of sin, before the Fall. It was the willingness of Jesus presented to die before the Fall of Man. A plan already existed. The sacrificial system of the Old Testament was just an enactment of what He was to accomplish from A to Z. It was temporarily. It is the ceremonial laws and legal system that had typical functions. Non-pig eating is not typical at all. 
                 Christ is saying to the priests of Maleachi's day that they should look back to the covenant that He had with Levi through Moses in 1448 BCE that the Levites would be the type of the Antetype (Messiah to come) and in similar vein the priests of Maleachi's day is the continuation of the Levites function as types for the Antetype (Jesus). The Seed (Maleachi 2:2) and He shall lift you to Himself (Maleachi 2:3) "My covenant was with Him" (Maleachi 2:5). God the Father gave to Jesus fearing and He feared His Father and because of His Name He was overawed. He respected his father. "True teaching was in His mouth, and injustice was not found on His lips. In peace and equity He went with Me, and He brought back many from iniquity" (Maleachi 2:6). Only New Testament readers and only Book of Hebrews readers and only Sanctuary Message believers and only Christological believers can understand these verses properly. Rabbis of the Middle Ages understood the phrase "My covenant was with him" as with the head of the tribe who occupied the office of the High Priest, Aaron, according to Redak. Very close but not close enough since it is the divine-human High Priest, Our High Priest in Heaven since 31 CE in the Holy and since 1844 (the 2300 evenings and mornings of Daniel 8:14) in the Most Holy. The cross was not the end of Christ's work. This is the Ante-type and has no reference to the Type on earth, so that Redak does not understand it correctly.
              The lips of the priests should guard knowledge. The priest must keep (shamar) the knowledge of God in the Word of God, Systematic Theology, Biblical Theology, Old Testament Theology, New Testament Theology, Archaeology, Biblical Ethics, Biblical Doctrines and everything in between and around. There is no space for Evolution in any of its forms. Whichever system starts or end through the Bible should be guarded by the priest, pastor or representative of God. The priesthood of believers. The representative of God is the "Messenger of the Lord of Hosts" (Maleachi 2:7). 
                The Type of Maleachi's day represented the Antetype wrongly. Maleachi 2:8ff. gives the sad news. "You have turned aside from the way". Skew people. Once one leaves the way of the Word of God, one is no longer straight. In fact, doing that makes many to stumble in the Torah. They corrupted the covenant of the Antetype (Christ as Lord of Hosts) with the Type (Levites). They show all kinds of faces in the Torah. In Maleachi 1 the priests wished still to be worshipping God but with corruption. Two-faced making it a psychopathic religion.
               Maleachi called upon the pastors and representative of God who is corrupt whether all has one Father who created us? (Maleachi 2:10). Why should we betray another brother since God made all of us. If we do that we profane the covenant made with the Forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and Joseph.
In the days of Maleachi Judah and Israel was sneaky but within religion. They were two-faced, with a double personality. One foot in and one foot out. They intermarried (Maleachi 2:11). When the typical priest does not follow the Antetypical One in Heaven, in actions and ceremonies and qualifications expected, then the typical priest or pastor or representative of the Word of God profanes the Holy One (Christ Our High Priest in Heaven). They loved and married and daughter of a foreign god. Jezebels. Yah[weh] ze [that is] bel [Baal].  
 Maleachi 2:12 explains that the person involves in these actions shall be cut off. Scissors are brought in. Even if the person is involved in religion or worship or evangelism, but if these actions are found, the person will be cut off.
                 Maleachi 2:13 saw also a second thing that God will do: God turns away. He does not accept the offerings, He does not take the tithes and offerings either. The reason is in the first part: the altar of the Lord is covered in the guilt of compromised religion, unforsaken sins, thus weeping, tears, sighing, there is no victory. Without victory God cannot accept the tears of worship since the sinner is not planning to stop the double life. 

               The sinner asked: Why? Maleachi 2:14 explains that the person dealt badly with the wife of his youth. She is his companion and wife of his covenant but he mistreated her. The family love is very important for God.
                As argument, Maleachi asked in Maleachi 2:15 "Now did He not make one and the rest of the spirit to Him?" In the wedding, Christ made man and wife one and the rest of the spirit of both man and woman to be wrapped up with the Holy Spirit in Him. Linked all together. What does such a representative of the Word of God seek from the Seed (Jesus) of God? Such a person should guard his/her spirit, that the spirit should not deal double-faced with the wife of his youth. God does not like enstrangement and divorce.
                In Maleachi 2:16 God says that if one party hates and sends away, it means that injustice shall cover his/her clothes. Wedded people should watch their spirit and do not deal treacherously.
                The Middle Age Rabbis played around with the verse in this way dealing with the problem of divorce in religious society: "Our Sages differ concerning it in tractate Gittin (90b). Some of them say: If you hate her, send her away with a bill of divorcement, so that she can marry someone else" says Rashi. Redak added that "it is better that you divorce her than keep her while you hate her in your heart. This is grave treachery". Both aspects are unbiblical. Enstrangement and divorce is not envisioned in God's plan for the family. It lies in the domain of sin and sinful results as well as that of Satan. Re-union, remarriage, reconciliation, forgiveness, embracing is part of the fabric of God in relationships. Anything to the contrary is outside His plan in His Word. 
               The people wearied the Lord with their words but ask: with what? (Maleachi 2:17). They said like Augustine: Let me be more sinful so that grace can abound more. "Every evildoer is good in the Lord's sight, and He desires them". Cheap grace. They also ask, where is the Judgment? They are judgment deniers.