From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says Yahweh of Armies. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
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From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says Yahweh of Armies. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’
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Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?
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From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside from Mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye say: 'Wherein shall we return?'
Cross-references (34)
Passages linked to Malachi 3:7 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Zechariah 1:3 Therefore tell them: Yahweh of Armies says: ‘Return to me,’ says Yahweh of Armies, ‘and I will return to you,’ says Yahweh of Armies.
- Romans 10:21 But about Israel he says, “All day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”
- James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded.
- Deuteronomy 31:20 For when I have brought them into the land which I swore to their fathers, flowing with milk and honey, and they have eaten and filled themselves, and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods, and serve them, and despise me, and break my covenant.
- Romans 10:3 For being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they didn’t subject themselves to the righteousness of God.
- Leviticus 26:40-42 “ ‘If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, in their trespass which they trespassed against me; and also that because they walked contrary to me, I also walked contrary to them, and brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, and they then accept the punishment of their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land.
- Nehemiah 9:28-30 But after they had rest, they did evil again before you; therefore you left them in the hands of their enemies, so that they had the dominion over them; yet when they returned, and cried to you, you heard from heaven; and many times you delivered them according to your mercies, and testified against them, that you might bring them again to your law. Yet they were arrogant, and didn’t listen to your commandments, but sinned against your ordinances (which if a man does, he shall live in them), turned their backs, stiffened their neck, and would not hear. Yet many years you put up with them, and testified against them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not listen. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands.
- Isaiah 55:6-7 Seek Yahweh while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to Yahweh, and he will have mercy on him, to our God, for he will freely pardon.
- Jeremiah 3:12-14 Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, ‘Return, you backsliding Israel,’ says Yahweh; ‘I will not look in anger on you; for I am merciful,’ says Yahweh. ‘I will not keep anger forever. Only acknowledge your iniquity, that you have transgressed against Yahweh your God, and have scattered your ways to the strangers under every green tree, and you have not obeyed my voice,’ says Yahweh.” “Return, backsliding children,” says Yahweh; “for I am a husband to you. I will take one of you from a city, and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.
- Hosea 14:1 Israel, return to Yahweh your God; for you have fallen because of your sin.
- Deuteronomy 4:29-31 But from there you shall seek Yahweh your God, and you shall find him when you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in oppression, and all these things have come on you, in the latter days you shall return to Yahweh your God and listen to his voice. For Yahweh your God is a merciful God. He will not fail you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which he swore to them.
- Jeremiah 3:22 Return, you backsliding children, and I will heal your backsliding. “Behold, we have come to you; for you are Yahweh our God.
- Luke 15:16 He wanted to fill his belly with the husks that the pigs ate, but no one gave him any.
- Deuteronomy 9:7-21 Remember, and don’t forget, how you provoked Yahweh your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you left the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against Yahweh. Also in Horeb you provoked Yahweh to wrath, and Yahweh was angry with you to destroy you. When I had gone up onto the mountain to receive the stone tablets, even the tablets of the covenant which Yahweh made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. Yahweh delivered to me the two stone tablets written with God’s finger. On them were all the words which Yahweh spoke with you on the mountain out of the middle of the fire in the day of the assembly. It came to pass at the end of forty days and forty nights that Yahweh gave me the two stone tablets, even the tablets of the covenant. Yahweh said to me, “Arise, get down quickly from here; for your people whom you have brought out of Egypt have corrupted themselves. They have quickly turned away from the way which I commanded them. They have made a molten image for themselves!” Furthermore Yahweh spoke to me, saying, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Leave me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under the sky; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.” So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire. The two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. I looked, and behold, you had sinned against Yahweh your God. You had made yourselves a molded calf. You had quickly turned away from the way which Yahweh had commanded you. I took hold of the two tablets, and threw them out of my two hands, and broke them before your eyes. I fell down before Yahweh, as at the first, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you sinned, in doing that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight, to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which Yahweh was angry against you to destroy you. But Yahweh listened to me that time also. Yahweh was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him. I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire, and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. I threw its dust into the brook that descended out of the mountain.
- Deuteronomy 30:1-4 It shall happen, when all these things have come on you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you shall call them to mind among all the nations where Yahweh your God has driven you, and return to Yahweh your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, that then Yahweh your God will release you from captivity, have compassion on you, and will return and gather you from all the peoples where Yahweh your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of the heavens, from there Yahweh your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you back.
- Nehemiah 9:26 “Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against you, cast your law behind their back, killed your prophets that testified against them to turn them again to you, and they committed awful blasphemies.
- Psalms 78:8-10 and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that didn’t make their hearts loyal, whose spirit was not steadfast with God. The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They didn’t keep God’s covenant, and refused to walk in his law.
- Isaiah 65:2 I have spread out my hands all day to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, after their own thoughts;
- Ezekiel 18:30-32 “Therefore I will judge you, house of Israel, everyone according to his ways,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Return, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, in which you have transgressed; and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit: for why will you die, house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Therefore turn yourselves, and live!
- Ezekiel 20:8 “ ‘ “But they rebelled against me, and would not listen to me. They didn’t all throw away the abominations of their eyes. They also didn’t forsake the idols of Egypt. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them, to accomplish my anger against them in the middle of the land of Egypt.
- Ezekiel 20:13 “ ‘ “But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness. They didn’t walk in my statutes, and they rejected my ordinances, which if a man keeps, he shall live in them. They greatly profaned my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them in the wilderness, to consume them.
- Ezekiel 20:21 “ ‘ “But the children rebelled against me. They didn’t walk in my statutes, and didn’t keep my ordinances to do them, which if a man does, he shall live in them. They profaned my Sabbaths. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them, to accomplish my anger against them in the wilderness.
- Ezekiel 20:28 For when I had brought them into the land which I swore to give to them, then they saw every high hill, and every thick tree, and they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering. There they also made their pleasant aroma, and there they poured out their drink offerings.
- Malachi 1:6 “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? Says Yahweh of Armies to you, priests, who despise my name. You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’
- Matthew 23:27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitened tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
- Luke 11:48-51 So you testify and consent to the works of your fathers. For they killed them, and you build their tombs. Therefore also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles; and some of them they will kill and persecute, that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.’ Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation.
- Deuteronomy 31:27-29 For I know your rebellion and your stiff neck. Behold, while I am yet alive with you today, you have been rebellious against Yahweh. How much more after my death? Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears, and call heaven and earth to witness against them. For I know that after my death you will utterly corrupt yourselves, and turn away from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will happen to you in the latter days, because you will do that which is evil in Yahweh’s sight, to provoke him to anger through the work of your hands.”
- 1 Kings 8:47-49 yet if they repent in the land where they are carried captive, and turn again, and make supplication to you in the land of those who carried them captive, saying, ‘We have sinned, and have done perversely; we have dealt wickedly;’ if they return to you with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city which you have chosen, and the house which I have built for your name; then hear their prayer and their supplication in heaven, your dwelling place, and maintain their cause;
- Nehemiah 1:8-9 “Remember, I beg you, the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you trespass, I will scatter you among the peoples; but if you return to me, and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts were in the uttermost part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and will bring them to the place that I have chosen, to cause my name to dwell there.’
- Nehemiah 9:16-17 “But they and our fathers behaved proudly, hardened their neck, didn’t listen to your commandments, and refused to obey. They weren’t mindful of your wonders that you did among them, but hardened their neck, and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage. But you are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness, and didn’t forsake them.
- Jeremiah 7:26 Yet they didn’t listen to me or incline their ear, but made their neck stiff. They did worse than their fathers.
- Malachi 3:13 “Your words have been stout against me,” says Yahweh. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against you?’
- Acts 7:51-52 “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do. Which of the prophets didn’t your fathers persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, of whom you have now become betrayers and murderers.
- Romans 7:9 I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain The Prophet expands more fully what he had referred…
The Prophet expands more fully what he had referred to — that it was a wonder that the Jews had not perished, because they had never ceased to provoke God against themselves. He then sets this fact before them more clearly, From the days of your fathers, he says, ye have turned aside from my statutes. He increases their condemnation by this circumstance — that they had not lately begun to depart from the right way, but had continued their contumacy for many ages, according to what the apostles, as well as the Prophets in various places, have testified:
“Ye uncircumcised in heart, ye have ceased not to resist the Holy Spirit like your fathers.” (Acts 7:51.)
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“Harden not your hearts as your fathers did; in the righteousness of your fathers walk not.” (Psalm 95:8.)
But I will not multiply proofs, which very often are to be met with, and must be well known.
We now understand the Prophet’s intention — that the Jews for many ages had been notorious for their impiety and wickedness, and that they had not been dealt with by God as they had deserved, because he had according to his ineffable goodness and forbearance suspended his rigour, so as not to visit them according to their demerits. It hence appears how unreasonable they were, not only in being morose and proud, but especially in being furious against God, when they accused him of tardiness, while yet he had proved himself to be really a God towards them by his continued forbearance.
The words, And ye have not kept them, are added for amplification; for he expresses more fully their contempt of his law, as though he had said, that they were not only transgressors, but had also with gross wilfulness so departed from the law as to regard it as nothing to tread God’s precepts under their feet.
He then exhorts then to repentance, and kindly addresses them, and declares that he would be propitious and reconcilable to them, if they repented. He has hitherto sharply reproved them, because their necks being hard they had need of such correction; for had the Prophet gently and kindly exhorted them, they would either have kicked or have set on him with their horns; be now mitigates his sharpness, not indeed with respect to all, but if there were any healable among the people he meant to try them; and hence he offers them reconciliation with God, as though he had said, “Though God has been in various ways wantonly offended by you, and though you have repudiated his favor, and have become wholly unworthy of being regarded by him, yet return, and he will meet you.”
We have said elsewhere that all exhortations would be in vain without a hope of pardon; for when God commands us to return to the right way, our hearts would never be touched, nay, they would on the contrary turn away, had we no hope that he would be reconciled to us. This course the Prophet now pursues, when in the person of God himself he promises pardon, provided the Jews repented.
God is said to return to us, when he ceases to demand the punishment of our sins, and when he lays aside the character of a judge, and makes himself known to us as a Father. We indeed know that God neither returns nor departs; for he who fills all places never moves here and there; and we also know that we exist and live in him, but he shows by outward evidences that he is alienated from us, and by the same he shows that he is propitious to us; for when he favors us with fruitful seasons, with peace and with other blessings, he is said to be near us; but when he lets loose the reins of his wrath, or exposes us to the assaults of Satan and to the wanton power of men, he is said to be far removed from us. But this is so well known that I need not dwell longer on the point.
The promise which the Prophet states serves to show, that God would manifest tokens of his paternal favor to the Jews, provided only they were submissive; but that it would be their own fault, if they did not find through his blessings that he was their Father. It would be on account of their sins, which, as Isaiah says, hinder the course of that beneficence to which he is of his own self inclined, (Isaiah 59:2.) And he bids them to return. Hence the Papists very foolishly conclude, that repentance is in the power of man’s free-will. But God requires what is above our strength; and yet there is no reason why we should complain that there is a too heavy burden laid on us; for he regards not what we can, or what our ability admits, but what we owe to him and what our duty requires. Though then no one can of his own self turn to God, he is not on this account excusable, because we must consider whence comes the defect; and how much soever, as I have already said, a man may pretend his own impotency, he cannot yet escape from being bound to God, though more is required of him than he of himself can perform. But this subject has often been discussed elsewhere. The import of what is said here is, — that men are not miserable through the unjust rigour of God, but always through their own sins.
It follows, Ye have said, In what shall we return? It is an evidence of perverseness, when men answer that they see not that they have erred, and that hence conversion is to no purpose required of them; for this is the meaning of these words, Whereby shall we return? that is, “What dost thou require from us? for we are not conscious of any defection; we worship God as we ought: now if our duties are repudiated by him, we see not why he should so expressly blame us; let him show in what we have offended; for conversion to him is superfluous, until we be proved guilty of apostasy, or of those sins which God determines to punish in us.” To this the Prophet answers —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Read Zech. 1:3.
Read Zech. 1:3.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Mal 3:7 Even from the days of your fathers…
Mal 3:7 Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept [them]. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?
Ver. 7. Even from the days of your fathers, ye are gone away from mine ordinances] The more to magnify his own mercy (by a miracle, whereof they had hitherto subsisted, by an extraordinary prop of his love, and longsuffering), God sets forth here their utter unworthiness of any such free favour, by a double aggravation of their sins. First, their long continuance therein, so that their sins were grown inveterate and ingrained, and themselves aged and even crooked therein, so that they could hardly ever be set straight again.
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From the days of your fathers, &c.] q.d. Non hoc nuper facitis: nec semel ut erroris mereamini veniam: sed haereditariam habetis impietatem, &c., as Jerome paraphraseth this text. You are no young sinners; it is not yesterday, or a few days since, you transgressed against me; you are a seed of serpents, a race of rebels; you are as good at resisting the Holy Ghost as ever your fathers were, Act 7:51. Secondly, their pervicacy and stiffness: they would not yield or be evicted. But ye say, wherein shall we return as if they were righteous, and needed no repentance. Still they put God to his proofs, as Jer 2:35, and show themselves an unpersuadable and gainsaying people, Isa 65:2; and this had "been their manner from their youth," Jer 22:21, when they were in Egypt, they served idols there, Eze 16:26. In the wilderness they tempted God ten times, and hearkened not to his voice, Num 14:22. Under their judges, and then their kings, they vexed him, and he bore with them "till there was no remedy," 2Ch 36:16. After the captivity they do antiquum obtinere, and are found guilty here of various omissions and commissions, calling for "a just recompence of reward," Heb 2:2. All which notwithstanding, Deus redire eos sibi non perire desiderat (Chrysolog.). God soliciteth their return unto him here by a precept and a promise, two effectual arguments, if anything will work; and ratifieth all with his own authority, which is most authentic, in these words, "saith the Lord of hosts." A style often given to God, as elsewhere in Scripture, so especially in these three last prophecies to the people returned from Babylon, because they had many enemies, and therefore had need of all encouragement. For God is called the Lord of hosts, quod ille numine suo et nomine terreat terras, temperet tempera, exercitusque tam superiores quam inferiores gubernet, to show that he hath all power in his hand, and doth whatsoever he pleaseth in heaven and earth (Alsted). {See Trapp on "Mal 3:17"}, doctr. 1, and for the doctrine of returning to God (from whom we have deeply revolted) by repentance. {See Trapp on "Zec 1:3"}
But ye said, Wherein shall we return?] This was their pride, proceeding from ignorance; they were rich and righteous, as those Laodiceans Rev 3:17, not in truth, but in conceit, vainly puffed up by their carnal minds, drunk with self-dotage, as Luk 16:15. Hence they stand upon their slippers, and none must say, Black is their eye. Sin is in them as in its proper element, and therefore weighs not ( Elementum in suo loco non ponderat); till, by long trading in wickedness, they grow to that dead and dedolent disposition, Eph 4:14, their heart fat as grease, their conscience cauterized, 1Ti 4:2, that is, so benumbed, blotted, senseless, filthy, and gangrenous, that it must be seared with a hot iron; whereupon it grows so crusty and brawny, that though cut or pierced with the sword of the Spirit, it doth neither bleed nor feel; and though handfulls of hell fire be flung in the face of it, yet it starts not, stirs not; but is deprived of all even passive power, and so satanized, that there is no help for them.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Even from the days of your fathers: we need…
Even from the days of your fathers: we need not fix a particular time or age wherein this apostacy began; it is an old apostacy that is here charged on them, and they were notoriously guilty of it.
Ye are gone away; are turned away by the examples and by the corrupt doctrines of your fathers and false teachers; yea, you have voluntarily and of choice gone away.
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From mine ordinances; which either directed my worship, or your dealings one with another; so that you have sinned greatly by polluting my temple with your own additions or diminutions, with idolatry, or corrupt manner of performing my service; and you have sinned against one another by injustice, unfaithfulness, and cruelty, since you have gone away from my laws, which direct the way of righteousness and equity.
And have not kept them: it is a further asseveration, confirming the truth of the charge, and added to make them more sensible of their sin. Some tell us that this chargeth on them their sins against negative precepts, as the other charged them with sins against positive precepts; so the whole law was now, and had long been, broken by their fathers and themselves.
Return unto me; it is the only course you can take, repent ere it is too late, return whilst there is hope.
And I will return unto you; I will yet pardon, accept you, establish, and bless you; amend your ways and doings, and I will soon amend the state of your affairs.
But ye said, Wherein shall we return? as to other, so now to this advice, they return a proud, shameless, and self-justifying question; Wherein, or what is the evil from which we should return to thee? what is our sin?
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain We have here God's controversy with the men of…
We have here God's controversy with the men of that generation, for deserting his service and robbing him - wicked servants indeed, that not only run away from their Master, but run away with their Master's goods.
I. They had run away from their Master, and quitted the work he gave them to do (Mal 3:7): You have gone away from my ordinances and have not kept them. The ordinances of God's worship were the business which as servants they must mind, the talents which they must trade with, and the trust which was committed to them to keep; but they went away from them, grew weary of them, and withdrew their neck from that yoke; they deviated from the rule that God had prescribed to them, and betrayed the trust lodged with them. They had revolted from God, not only in worship, but in conversation; they had not kept his ordinances. This disobedience they were chargeable with, and had been guilty of, even from the days of their fathers; either as in the days of their fathers of old, who were sent into captivity for their disobedience, or, "Now, for some generations past, you have fallen off from what you were, when first you came back out of captivity." Ezra owns it in one particular instance: Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day, Ezr 9:7. Now observe, 1. What a gracious invitation God gives them to return and repent: "Return unto me, and to your duty, return to your service, return to your allegiance, return as a traveller that has missed his way, as a soldier that has run his colours, as a treacherous wife that has gone away from her husband; return, thou backsliding Israel, return to me; and then I will return unto you and be reconciled, will remove the judgments you are under and prevent those you fear." This had been of old the burden of the song (Zac 1:3), and is still. 2. What a peevish answer they return to this gracious invitation: "But you said with disdain, said it to the prophets that called you, said it to one another, said it to your own hearts, to stifle the convictions you were under; you said, Wherein shall we return?" Note, God takes notice what returns our hearts make to the calls of his word, what we say and what we think when we have heard a sermon, what answer we give to the message sent us. When God calls us to return, we should answer as those did Jer 3:22, Behold, we come. But not as these here, Wherein shall we return? (1.) They take it as an affront to be told of their faults, and called upon to amend them; they are ready to say, "What ado do these prophets make about returning and repenting; why are we disgraced and disturbed thus, our own consciences and our neighbours stirred up against us?" It is ill with those who thus count reproofs reproaches, and kick against the pricks. (2.) They are so ignorant of themselves, and of the strictness, extent, and spiritual nature, of the divine law, that they see nothing in themselves to be repented of, or reformed; they are pure in their own eyes, and think they need no repentance. (3.) They are so firmly resolved to go on in sin that they will find a thousand foolish frivolous excuses to shift off their repentance, and turn away the calls that are given them to repent. They seem to speak only as those that wanted something to say; it is a mere evasion, a banter upon the prophet, and a challenge to him to descend to particulars. Note, Many ruin their own souls by baffling the calls that are given them to repent of their sins.
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II. They had robbed their Master, and embezzled his goods. They had asked, "Wherein shall we return? What have we done amiss?" And he soon tells them. Observe, 1. The prophet's high charge exhibited, in God's name, against the people. They stand indicted for robbery, for sacrilege, the worst of robberies: You have robbed me. He expostulates with them upon it: Will a man be so daringly impudent as to rob God? Man, who is a weak creature, and cannot contend with God's power, will he think to rob him vi et armis - forcibly? Man, who lies open to God's knowledge, and cannot conceal himself from that, will he think to rob him clam et secreto - privily? Man, who depends upon God, and derives his all from him, will he rob him that is his benefactor? This is ungrateful, unjust, and unkind, indeed; and it is very unwise thus to provoke him from whom our judgment proceeds. Will a man do violence to God? so some read it. Will a man do violence to God? so some read it. Will a man stint or straiten him? so others read it. Robbing God is a heinous crime. 2. The people's high challenge in answer to that charge: But you say, Wherein have we robbed thee? They plead Not guilty, and put God upon the proof of it. Note, Robbing God is such a heinous crime that those who are guilty of it are not willing to own themselves guilty. They rob God, and know not what they do. They rob him of his honour, rob him of that which is devoted to him, to be employed in his service, rob him of themselves, rob him of sabbath-time, rob him of that which is given for the support of religion, and give him not his dues out of their estates; and yet they ask, Wherein have we robbed thee? 3. The plain proof of the charge, in answer to this challenge; it is in tithes and offerings. Out of these the priests and Levites had maintenance for themselves and their families; but they detained them, defrauded the priests of them, would not pay their tithes, or not in full, or not of the best; they brought not the offerings which God required, or brought the torn, and lame, and sick, which were not fit for use. They were all guilty of this sin, even the whole nation, as if they were in confederacy against God, and all combined to rob him of his dues and to stand by one another in it when they had done. For this they were cursed with a curse, Mal 3:9. God punished them with famine and scarcity, through unseasonable weather, or insects that ate up the fruits of the earth. God had thus punished them for neglecting to build the temple (Hag 1:10, Hag 1:11), and now for not maintaining the temple-service. Note, Those that deny God his part of their estates may justly expect a curse upon their own part of them: "You are cursed with a curse for robbing me, and yet you go on to do it." Note, It is a great aggravation of sin when men persist in it notwithstanding the rebukes of Providence which they are under for it. Nay, it should seem, because God had punished them with scarcity of bread, they made that a pretence for robbing him - that now, being impoverished, they could not afford to bring their tithes and offerings, but must save them, that they might have bread for their families. Note, It argues great perverseness in sin when men make those afflictions excuses for sin which are sent to part between them and their sins. When they had but little they should have done the more good with that little, and that would have been the way to make it more; but it is ill with the patient when that which should cure the disease serves only to palliate it, and prevent its being searched into. 4. An earnest exhortation to reform in this matter, with a promise that if they did the judgments they were under should be quickly removed. (1.) Let them take care to do their duty (Mal 3:10): Bring you all the tithes into the storehouse. They had brought some; but, like Ananias and Sapphira, had kept back part of the price, pretending they could not spare so much as was required, and necessity has no law; but even necessity must have this law, and it would redress the grievance of their necessity: "Bring in the full tithes to the utmost that the law requires, that there may be meat in God's house for those that serve at the altar, whether there be meat in your houses or no." Note, God must be served in the first place, and our quota must be contributed for the support of religion in the place where we live, that God's name may be sanctified, and his kingdom may come, and his will be done, even before we provide our daily bread; for the interests of our souls ought to be preferred before those of our bodies. (2.) Let them then trust God to provide for them and their comfort "Let God be first served, and then prove me herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, whether I will not open the windows of heaven." They said, "Let God give us our plenty again, as formerly, and try us whether we will not then bring him his tithes and offerings, as we did formerly." "No," says God, "do you first bring in all your tithes as they become due, and all the arrears of what is past, and try me, whether I will not then restore you your plenty." Note, Those that will deal with God must deal upon trust; and we may all venture to do so, for, though many have been losers for him, never any were losers by him in the end. It is fit that we should venture first, for his reward is with him, but his work is before him; we must first do the work which is our part, and then try him and trust him for the reward. Elijah put the widow of Zarephath into this method when he said (Kg1 17:13), "Make me a little cake first, and then prove me whether there shall not be enough afterwards for thee and thy son." That which discourages people from the expenses of charity is the weakness of their faith concerning the gains and advantages of charity; they cannot think that they shall get by it. But it is a reasonable demand that God here makes: "Prove me now; is any thing to be got by charity? Come and see;" Nothing venture, nothing win. Trust upon honour, "And you shall find," [1.] "That, whereas the heavens have been shut up, and there has been no rain, now God will open to you the windows of heaven, for in his hand the key of the clouds is, and you shall have seasonable rain." Or the expression is figurative; every good gift coming from above, thence God will plentifully pour out upon them the bounties of his providence. Very sudden plenty is expressed by opening the windows of heaven, Kg2 7:2. We find the windows of heaven opened, to pour down a deluge of wrath, in Noah's flood, Gen 7:11. But here they are opened to pour down blessings, to such a degree that there should not be room enough to receive them. So plentifully shall their ground bring forth that they shall be tempted to pull down their barns and build greater, for want of room, Luk 12:18. Or, as Dr. Pocock explains it, "I will pour out on you such a blessing as shall be not enough only, and such as shall be sufficient, but more and more than enough;" that is, a great addition. The oil that is multiplied shall not be stayed as long as there are vessels to receive it, Kg2 4:6. Note, God will not only be reconciled to sinners that repent and reform, but he will be a benefactor, a bountiful benefactor, to them. We are never straitened in him, but often straitened in our own bosoms. God has blessings ready to bestow upon us, but, through the weakness of our faith and narrowness of our desires, we have not room to receive them. [2.] That, whereas the fruits of their ground had been eaten up by locusts and caterpillars God would now remove that judgment (Mal 3:11): "I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and will check the progress of those destroying animals, that they shall no more destroy the products of the earth and the fruits of the trees." God has all creatures at his beck, can command them and remand them at his pleasure. Neither shall the vine cast her fruit before the time; it shall not be blasted or blown off. Or, as some read it, Neither shall the devourer make your vine barren, as the locusts did, Joe 1:7. [3.] That, whereas their neighbours had upbraided them with their scarcity, and they had lain under the reproach of famine, which was the more grievous because their country used to be boasted of for its plenty, now all nations shall call them blessed, shall speak honourably of them, and own them to be a happy people. [4.] That whereas their sin had made their land unpleasing to God (even their temple, and altars, and offerings were so, Mal 2:13), and whereas his judgments had made their land unpleasant to them, and very melancholy, "Now you shall be a delightsome land, your country shall be acceptable to God and comfortable to yourselves." Note, The reviving of religion in a land will make it indeed a delightsome land both to God and to all good people; he will say, It is my rest for ever; here will I dwell; and they will say the same, Isa 62:4; Deu 11:12. It should seem that this charge to bring in the tithes had its good effect, for we find (Neh 13:12) that all Judah did bring in their tithe into the treasuries, and, no doubt, they had the benefit of these promises, in the return of their plenty, immediately upon their return to their duty, that they might plainly discern for what cause the evil had been upon them (for when the cause was removed the evil was removed), and that they might see how perfectly reconciled God was to them upon their repentance, and how their transgression was remembered no more, for the curse was not only taken away, but turned into an abundant blessing.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Even from the days of your fathers ye are…
Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances,.... Here begins an enumeration of the sins of the Jews, which were the cause of their ruin; and here is first a general charge of apostasy from the statutes and ordinances of the law, which they made void by the traditions of the fathers; and therefore this word is used as referring to this evil, as well as to express their early, long, and continued departure from the ways of God; which as it was an aggravation of their sin, that they should have so long ago forsook the ordinances of God,
and have not kept them, but transgressed them by observing the traditions of men, Mat 15:3 so it is an instance of the patience and forbearance of God, that they were not as yet consumed; and of his grace and goodness, that he should address them as follows:
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Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts; this message was carried to them by John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, and by Christ himself, who both preached the doctrine of repentance to this people, Mat 3:2. The Targum is,
"return to my worship, and I will look in my word to do well unto you, saith the Lord of hosts;''
and such who returned, and believed in Christ, and submitted to his ordinances, it was well with them.
But ye said, Wherein shall we return? what have we to turn from, or repent of? what evils have we done, or can be charged on us? what need have we of repentance or conversion, or of such an exhortation to it? do not we keep the law, and all the rituals of it? this is the true language of the Pharisees in Christ's time, who, touching the righteousness of the law, were blameless in their own esteem, and were the ninety and nine just persons that needed not repentance, Luk 15:7.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain From mine ordinances - Which either directed my worship,…
From mine ordinances - Which either directed my worship, or your dealings one with another.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 7. Gone away from mine ordinances] Never acting…
Verse 7. Gone away from mine ordinances] Never acting according to their spirit and design.
Return unto me] There is still space to repent.
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Wherein shall we return?] Their consciences were seared, and they knew not that they were sinners.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Mal 3:7. Even from the days of your fathers,…
Mal 3:7. Even from the days of your fathers, &c. — Here the discourse is again addressed to the wicked, and from hence to the end of Mal 3:12 the people are reprehended for slighting the institutions of divine worship, and for withholding the legal tithes and oblations; are assured that they are under a curse for these violations of the law, and that an opposite conduct would bring on them the divine blessing. Ye are gone away from mine ordinances — Those which directed you respecting my worship, or your dealings one with another. Return unto me — Namely, by repentance, and amendment of life; and I will return to you — I will pardon and accept you, and bestow my blessings upon you. But ye said — Or, ye say, Wherein shall we return? — You persist to justify yourselves, and inquire what it is you are to repent of? as if your crimes were not most notorious and shameful. And your words, or at least your actions, show that you have no sense of, nor remorse for, your former sins, nor any purpose of forsaking them.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Even from the days of your fathers - Back…
Even from the days of your fathers - Back to those days and from them ye are gone away from My ordinances. “I am not changed from good; ye are not changed from evil. I am unchangeable in holiness; ye are unchangeable in perversity.”
Return unto Me - The beginning of our return is from the preventing grace of God. Jer 31:18; Lam 5:21, “turn Thou me, and I shall be turned, for Thou art the Lord my God,” is the voice of the soul to God, preparing for His grace; Psa 85:4, “turn us, O God of our salvation.” For, not in its own strength, but by His grace can the soul turn to God. “Turn thou to Me and I will return unto you,” is the Voice of God, acknowledging our free-will, and promising His favor, if we accept His grace in return.
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And ye say, Wherein shall we return? - Strange ignorance of the blinded soul, unconscious that God has aught against it! It is the Pharisaic spirit in the Gospel. It would own itself doubtless in general terms a sinner, but when called on, wholly to turn to God, as being wholly turned from Him, it asks, “In what? What would God have of me?” as if ready to do it.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain The People are rebuked for withholding the legal Tithes…
SECTION V
The People are rebuked for withholding the legal Tithes and Offerings
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3:7–12
7Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of Hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return? 8Will a man rob5 [defraud] God? Yet [ that, Köhler, Keil, Pressel], ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.6 [In tithe and heave offering.] 9Ye are cursed with a curse: for [yet] ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. 10Bring ye all the tithes7 [tithe] into the storehouse8 [treasury], that there may be meat [food, Vulgate cibus] in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not9 open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it10 [to superabundance]. 11And I will rebuke11 the devourer for your sakes,12 and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground;13 neither shall your vine cast her fruit14 before the time in the field, saith the Lord of Hosts. 12And all nations shall call15 you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of Hosts.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Mal_3:7. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of Hosts. After Jehovah had announced the coming judgment for the long-continued transgressions of the people, He adds a gracious promise, as in Zec_1:3 : “Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord, and I will return unto you.” In self-righteous delusion, supposing that they lack nothing, and need no repentance, they inquire, Wherein, in what particular, shall we return? The prophet thereupon shows them their sin. They do what no man should attempt. They try to defraud God in the tithe and heave-offering, either by not paying them at all, or not paying them as they should. The word קָבַע, which occurs besides only in Pro_22:3, where it is translated, spoil, means here, as the connection shows, defraud, overreach, cheat.
Mal_3:8. Will a man rob (or defraud) God? The Prophet appeals to their conscience for a decision as to the baseness of their conduct. But ye have robbed, or defrauded, me, or, That ye have robbed me. This is a reason of the previous question, since you have defrauded me.
In tithe and offering. This is a specification of the manner in which they had robbed God. In Neh_13:10 we find a striking coincidence with this verse. “I perceived, that the portions of the Levites had not been given them. Then brought all Judah the tithe of the corn, wine, and oil.”
The tithe, according to Lev_27:30, and Deu_14:22, was of the corn, wine, and oil, and of the firstlings of the flock and herd, for the maintenance of the Levites. The heave-offering—for that is here referred to—was the portion of the priests. “Ye shall give the heave-offering to the priests.” It was partly a free-will offering, and partly prescribed by the law. They withheld tithes, notwithstanding that God had already visited them with severe punishment, which aggravated their guilt. They had been cursed, as we learn from the following verses, with failure of the harvest and famine. This curse corresponded to their sin. As they had refused to give God his due withholding the tithes and offerings, so had He withheld from them the products of the field.
Mal_3:9. Ye are cursed with a curse. The position of the noun before the verb is here highly emphatic. Yet me ye defraud. It is not necessary to regard the ו as causal.
Mal_3:10. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse. The prophet now enlarges upon the mode of recovering the divine favor. Israel should not, as before, keep back a part of the tithes, but should pay the whole without defrauding Jehovah, that there might be food for the priests and Levites. Notwithstanding Jehovah was angry with the priests, yet He cannot suffer the people to withhold the tithe.
Storehouse. This same word is translated, Neh_13:12, treasuries. We find in 2Ch_31:11, mention of chambers in the Temple, into which they were to bring the tithes. In Neh_10:38, the Levites were to bring the tithe to the chambers, into the treasure-house.
Prove me now herewith. The object of the proof of Jehovah was not, whether He would be faithful to his promise, for this was not the subject under discussion, but whether He was a holy and righteous God, for this had been called in question by them. They were now to put Him to the test, and learn by the result of the experiment, in what relation He stood to them, and also learn, that as He had manifested Himself as a holy God in his severity, so He would also do so in his goodness, and the abundance of the blessings conferred upon those who keep his commandments.
If I will not open the windows of heaven. This is to be regarded as an indirect question, whether I will not. Open the windows. We read of the windows of heaven in Gen_7:11, 2Ki_7:2. The copious blessing is here compared to rain coming down from heaven.
And pour out upon you a blessing till there is not sufficiency of room. The word דָי means, sufficiency, and room is to be understood, as in Zec_10:10 : “and place shall not be found for them,” where place is to be supplied, as here room. בְּלִי negatives the idea of the noun as in Isa_5:14. The interpretation, forever, adopted by Wordsworth: “Till there be not enough, till my abundance is exhausted; and since this can never be, therefore it means, forever,” is strained and unnatural. The Septuagint has translated it: “Until there should be enough.”
Mal_3:11. And I will rebuke the devourer. This verse describes in detail what blessings Jehovah’s coming will bring with it. Jehovah will take away everything which would injure the fruits. The devourer, that is, the locust, shall no more ravage the land. The corn and wine shall flourish. The grapes shall not fall before they ripen.
Mal_3:12. And all nations shall call you blessed. The consequence of Jehovah’s blessing will be, that the land will be an object of pleasure to every one. We find similar language in Zec_8:13 : “As ye were a curse among the heathen, so shall ye he a blessing.”
DOCTRINAL AND PRACTICAL
From Matt. Henry: On Return unto me (Mal_3:7). What a gracious invitation God gives them to return and repent! Return unto me, and to your duty, return to your service, return to your allegiance, return as a traveller that has missed his way, as a soldier that has run from his colors, as a treacherous wife that has gone away from her husband; return, thou backsliding Israel, return to me; and then I will return unto you, and be, reconciled, will remove the judgments you are under and prevent those you fear. What a peevish answer they return to this gracious invitation! Wherein shall we return. Note: God takes notice what returns our hearts make to the calls of his Word, what we say, and what we think when we have heard a sermon; what answer we give to the message sent us. When God calls us to return we should answer, as they did (Jer_3:22): Behold, we come, but not as these here, Wherein shall we return? They take it as an affront to be told of their faults, and called upon to amend them; they are ready to say, What ado do these prophets make about returning and repenting. They are so ignorant of themselves, and of the strictness, extent, and spiritual nature of the divine law, that they see nothing in themselves to be repented of; they are pure in their own eyes, and think they need no repentance. Many ruin their souls by baffling the calls to repentance.
HOMILETICAL
Pressel: On Mal_3:10. Prove me now herewith. The condescending goodness of God gives not only to the godly, but sometimes even to the ungodly, opportunity and even a challenge to prove his truth and almightiness; and it is the duty of a minister of God now, as it was then of the Prophet Malachi, not only to point both classes to it, but even to offer to them this proving of God, confident as Elijah was against Ahab, and as Isaiah was against Ahaz, that God will not forsake his servants, but will by the event put to shame all unbelief.
On Mal_3:13. We are very apt to complain of God’s providences, when extraordinary afflictions and troubles put men out of patience, or when we read or hear of extraordinary accidents, but where a heart stands firm in the fear and love of God, what the Apostle John says: “His, seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin,” is true of it.
On Mal_3:10-12. How much depends upon our giving ourselves wholly as an offering to the Lord ! The offerings which the Lord now requires are our own hearts, and all that comes from them. But if the Lord was so strict in tithes, how much more so is He with our hearts ! Dost thou wish the full blessing of God, then be exact in whatever is thy duty. What is our duty? Whatever God requires of us, whether great or little, whether his service or an every-day life. How can he who is not strict in his duty hope, or even pray for the full blessing of God?
On Mal_3:14-15. The vain service of God, He serves God in vain who serves Him only outwardly. He who serves Him from the heart has never served Him in vain. God is not man. It sometimes is the case with men that an outward service only receives an unmerited reward, or that he who serves another from the heart does not receive his due reward, for men can be deceived; but this can never be the case with God, for He is omniscient and faithful. All things are under God’s providence. The contrary seems to be the case in the history of the world and in daily experience, and men without conscience lose thereby their faith; but this is only so in appearance, for the inward testimony of the heart and eternity will make plain the most difficult and frowning providences, and sometimes in this world, God’s holy and righteous government is clearly manifested.
Footnotes:
[5]Mal_3:8.—קָבַע, found only in Pro_22:3 : to cheat, defraud. The Fut. is used here in the sense of: dare a man rob God.
[6]Mal_3:8.—תְּרוּמָה. The heave-offering.
[7]Mal_3:10.—The whole tithe.
[8]Mal_3:10.—אוֹצָר, storehouse, or treasury; Neh_13:12.
[9]Mal_3:10.—אִמ־לֹא, not an oath, whether not.
[10]Mal_3:10.—דִי means need, lack.
[11]Mal_3:10.—בּלִ negatives the idea—beyond sufficiency.
[12]Mal_3:11.—גָעַר, to rebuke. In Mal_2:3, it is translated, corrupt. לָבֶם, dative of use, profit.
[13]Mal_3:11.—The LXX. read, אשְׁחִית, I will destory.
[14]Mal_3:11.—תְּשַׁכֵּל, miscarry, applied to the vine.
[15]Mal_3:11.—יַשְׁחִת. The future is here used contingently, to denote a probable future occurrence. See Nordbeimer, 933, 1.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Reproof for the non-payment of tithes and offerings, which…
Reproof for the non-payment of tithes and offerings, which is the cause of their national calamities, and promise of prosperity on their paying them.
from . . . days of your fathers--Ye live as your fathers did when they brought on themselves the Babylonian captivity, and ye wish to follow in their steps. This shows that nothing but God's unchanging long-suffering had prevented their being long ago "consumed" (Mal 3:6).
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Return unto me--in penitence.
I will return unto you--in blessings.
Wherein, &c.-- (Mal 3:16). The same insensibility to their guilt continues: they speak in the tone of injured innocence, as if God calumniated them.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain Ch. Mal_3:7 to Mal_4:3. Renewed Rebukes, Threatenings and Promises
Ch. Mal_3:7 to Mal_4:3. Renewed Rebukes, Threatenings and Promises
Ch. Mal_3:7-12. Rebuke in the matter of Tithes and Offerings
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7. Even from the days of your fathers] Omit even, with R.V. The connection with Mal_3:6 is well given by Pusey: “Back to those days and from them, ye are gone away from My ordinances. ‘I am not changed from good; ye are not changed from evil. I am unchangeable in holiness; ye are unchangeable in perversity.’ ”
gone away] Rather, turned aside, R.V., as the same word is translated elsewhere, e.g. Deu_17:20; Deu_28:14; Jos_23:6; and with the metaphor completed, turned aside from the way, Exo_32:8; Deu_9:12.
Return unto me] Comp. Zec_1:3, where the word (turn, A.V.) is the same.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (7) Even from . . . fathers.—Throughout the whole…
(7) Even from . . . fathers.—Throughout the whole course of their history they had been a people (Exo_32:9, &c.); and now, when exhorted to repent, they ask in feigned innocence:—
Wherein shall we return? . . . Return unto me . . . unto you.—Comp. Zec_1:3.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 7-12. God indeed is faithful to his promises,…
Vers. 7-12. God indeed is faithful to his promises, but the peoples own conduct has occasioned the withholding of favours: they have been shamefully negligent in the matter of tithes and offerings; let them amend their practice, and they shall be blessed.
Ye are gone away (have turned aside) from mine ordinances. Disobedience was no new offence; they had always from early days been persistent in wickedness; and if the performance of God"s sure promise was delayed, this was because they had not fulfilled the conditions on which rested its accomplishment. Return: unto me, and I will return unto you. (Zec_1:3, where see note) Man must cooperate with God"s preventing grace, and then God gives him further grace unto repentance and amendment. Here, if the people followed the preaching of the prophets and obeyed the promptings of the Holy Spirit, God promises to bless and save them. Wherein shall we return? Here is the Pharisaical spirit, as in Mal_1:6, etc. They do not acknowledge their offence; they consider that they are righteous and need no repentance.
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Vers. 7-10. The sin of robbing God.
The special form of sin which is hare denounced (robbing God of tithes and offerings) is only one manifestation of a sin which is older than the law of tithes, and which survives in all nations to the present day. Observe
I THE NATURE OF THIS SIN. It is an ancient and an inveterate sin. The secret of it is alienation of heart from God (ver. 7). It is due to God, our Creator, Benefactor, Redeemer, that we make his will the law of our life, and therefore that we present ourselves a living sacrifice, according to the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. If we fail to do so, it must be either because we do not acknowledge the claims which God makes on us, or, acknowledging them, we yet deliberately withhold them. In the first case, we give the lie to God; in the second, we rob God. (Terrible alternative for every neglecter of God and Christ.) If it is robbery to withhold our hearts, ourselves, from God, it must be also to withhold anything from him. For what is there of which we can say, "This is not God"s property; it is no part of his estate; we can do what we like with this"? It required no law of tithes to assert God"s proprietorship and our stewardship. Cain robbed God when he withheld the offering which God would have accepted, or the spirit of dependence and faith without which even the right offering could not have been received. The withholding of a right spirit from God paves the way for other acts of robbery. The principle of tithes precedes and survives the law of tithes. (Pro_3:9, 10 11:24, 25 2Co_8:12 2Co_9:6-8, etc.) The precept, "Render unto God the things that are God"s," applies to things as spiritual as souls and as material as silver. If we are not proprietors but stewards, our one duty in regard to every talent we are entrusted with should be, "How will the Divine Proprietor wish me to use it?" If through selfishness or criminal carelessness we use it in a way which does not bring to God the honour that be has a right to expect, we are guilty of robbing God. "Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his Name.
II IT IS A SIN WINCH MEN ARE HARD TO BE CONVICTED OF.
1. In ver. 7 we find a reproof and an appeal which should awaken great searchings of heart: "Lord, is it I?". (Lam_3:40, Lam_3:41) But we may be so self-righteous or ignorant as to evade such general appeals as quite irrelevant. So the net must be drawn tighter; the indictment must be made more definite.
2. So the charge of robbing God is suggested. "Will a man rob God?" The very aversion we feel at the thought of being robbed (for we would rather give away or throw away our property than be cheated of it) should prompt the inquiry, "Is it possible that I may be robbing God?" e.g. of the reverence and godly fear due to the Almighty, as though we could disregard him and dare him to do his worst. Or of the gratitude and dependence he deserves as our Father, our Redeemer, as though we could to a considerable extent dispense with him during life, and then "make it up" at the last. Whose conscience could not convince him that in these or other ways he had been often guilty of robbing God? Yet so hard are men to be convinced of the sin, that to God"s question and his direct charge there comes the glib reply, "Wherein have we robbed thee?
3. Thus God is compelled to lay his finger on one most glaring act of robbery: "In tithes and offerings." Some of the offerings were less rigidly regulated by law than tithes, as is the case with the offerings of Christians for the kingdom of Christ and the claims of benevolence. But we may be guilty of robbing God "in offerings.
(1) By grudging giving. If we do not "freely give," we withhold from God the right spirit, without which gifts cannot be acceptable. We act as if, though God had a right to demand our money, he had no right to expect the cheerful acknowledgment, "Of thine own have we given thee". (1Ch_29:14 Mat_10:8 2Co_9:7)
(2) By scanty giving. For there is an amount, some proportion of all we are entrusted with, which it is "meet" to give. To "withhold more than is meet" is to rob God. If a man gives not "according to that he hath," but as though God had entrusted him with much less, his offerings are not accepted by God. A steward of God (as every one is) is bound conscientiously to consider what proportion of all he receives he should set apart for giving to religious and benevolent objects, so that he may honour the Lord "with the first-fruits of all his increase." The Jewish laws of tithes and offering may aid him in the estimate. No rule can be laid down for one another, but the Christian steward may fairly start with the presumption that the scale of liberality has not been lowered in the kingdom of Christ, with all its privileges and motives so far in advance of the Jewish theocracy. Lest we should be guilty of robbing God, we should purpose in our heart to devote so much and no less, as God may prosper us. The cheerful, systematic dedication of a liberal proportion of our property to the service of God will preserve us from robbing God. We shall give not as small a proportion as we dare to offer, but as large a proportion as love and conscience in council will justify. Special circumstances may call for special sacrifices; but we shall form, as a first charge on our income, a sacred fund set apart for offerings to God. The experience of those who act on these Divine principles of giving may assure all that they will thus realize, as probably they may never have done before, the truth of our Lord"s words, "It is more blessed to give than to receive.
III IT IS A SIN WHICH SHUTS THE WINDOWS OF HEAVEN. The excuse which is generally urged for that parsimonious giving which is a robbery of God is, "I can"t afford it." This may arise from a criminal ignorance of the claims of God and our relations to him, or from a feeble faith on the part of those who yet acknowledge themselves to be his stewards. The guilt of the former has been exposed; the fear of the latter is here met by God"s own challenge, "Prove me now herewith;" "Have faith in God;" "Honour the Lord with thy substance;" "Seek first the kingdom of God;" and then see if God is not faithful to all his promises in regard to both temporal and spiritual blessings. Men may complain of hard times, and may want prosperity to precede liberality. "No," says God to these suffering Jews and to scanty Christian givers who may be in adversity, "honour me first by obedience and cheerful trust, and see if prosperous times will not come then." Illust.: widow; (1Ki_17:13) poor Macedonians. (2Co_8:1-4) Bad times may be the result of past unfaithfulness on the part of God"s servants. You may be reaping sparingly because you have sown sparingly. Try the opposite plan. Now the windows of heaven are closed against ourselves by our own sins. God will open those windows as soon as we honour, obey, and trust. He can surpass our hopes and thoughts. (Eph_3:20) His spiritual blessings will only be limited by our capacity for receiving them. Illust.: 2Ki_4:6 2Ki_13:18, 2Ki_13:19. And with these best of blessings all temporal blessings that will be good for us will be added, (ver. 11; Mat_6:33) and showers of blessing on our hearts and homes will descend through the windows of heaven once closed on God"s dishonest servants, now opened to his faithful stewards.
A twofold return.
"Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts." And Zechariah has a similar expression, (Zec_1:3) "Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts." The direction to turn from the evil way is very familiar in the books of the prophets, and should be read in the light of their work as social and moral reformers. Some evil custom is indicated, which the people were turned to, and this the prophets anxiously endeavoured to get them turned from. This turning is the root idea of the terra "conversion," which should always be associated with conviction, or the sense of sin, and contrition, or sorrow for sin. Then properly comes conversion, or turning from sin. This is met by the remission of sin, and acceptance as free from sin. The word "conversion" is generally used for the whole process, but this use is apt to produce confusion of ideas. Special significance may properly attach to the turning from sin, because it is the recognized sign and expression of sincerity and earnestness. If a man gives up things he loves that are evil, there is good evidence that he is sincere. Reference in this passage is to the national loyalty to the Mosaic ordinances. By it the national piety could be tested. But they were manifestly turned from anything like a loving, hearty, spiritual obedience of those ordinances, such as God could approve and accept. Consequently his favour and blessing were manifestly turned from them.
I MAN CANNOT RETURN TO GOD UNTIL GOD RETURNS TO HIM. While God holds aloof from the sinner, that sinner may feel remorse and misery. "His bones may wax old through his roaring all the day long;" but he will feel no penitence, no element of hope can enter into his distress. The first move always comes from God. Zacchaeus does not know that he is really seeking Jesus, until he discovers that Jesus is seeking him. Our Lord put this truth into his familiar expression, "No man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him." It is the testimony of universal experience that God is always beforehand with us. And, rightly viewed, this shows us to be without excuse if we keep on in sin.
II GOD CANNOT RETURN TO MAN UNTIL MAN RETURNS TO HIM. This puts the truth in paradoxical form; and yet it is precisely the statement of the text. God speaks. But he says he will not turn till man does. God is first in opening negotiation, and yet he says he must come second. Explain that God cannot do his gracious work in the man until the man is in that right moral state represented by penitence and turning to God. R.T.
Vers. 7-12. A Divine complaint and a Divine invitation.
"Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances," etc. In these words we have two things a Divine complaint and a Divine invitation; and both are addressed to sinners. Notice
I A DIVINE COMPLAINT AGAINST SINNERS. The complaint involves three charges.
1. The charge of apostasy. "Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances." Your fathers who brought on themselves the Babylonian captivity departed from my ordinances, and you are doing what they did. All sin is an apostasy, a departure from God"s "ordinances" both moral and positive. "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the Fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water". (Jer_2:13) Like the prodigal son, we have all gone away from our Father into the "far country" of practical atheism and sin.
2. The charge of dishonesty. "Will a man rob God? Yet he have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings." Their dishonesty consisted in withholding from him his claims. Thus they robbed or defrauded him. "Ye have robbed me." "Ye have done so to me in respect to the tithes due to me; viz. the tenth of all the remainder after the first-fruits were paid, which tenth was paid to the Levites for their support, (Lev_27:30-33) a tenth paid by the Levites to the priests, (Num_18:26-28) a second tenth paid by the people for the entertainment of the Levites and their own families at the tabernacle; (Deu_12:18) another tithe every third year for the poor, etc. (Deu_14:28, Deu_14:29) Offerings. "Not less than one-sixth part of corn, wine, and oil. (Deu_18:4) The priests had this perquisite; also the tenth of the tithes which were the Levites" perquisite. But they appropriated all the tithes, robbing the Levites of their due nine-tenths; as they did also, according to Josephus, before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. Thus doubtless was God defrauded the priests not discharging aright their sacrificial duties, and robbing God of the services of the Levites who were driven away by destitution" (Fausset). Thus men rob God now; they keep back what belongs to him. They cannot take anything from him, and thus make him poorer, as in the case of man robbing man, but they can rob him by appropriating to their own use that which he demands, by acting like Ananias and Sapphira.
3. The charge of insensibility. "Ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee?" They had lost all sense of their obligation in relation to these tithes, and become utterly indifferent to the Divine claims. "Wherein have we robbed thee?" As if they did not know their fraud on God. Thus men go on keeping from God what is his due without any sense of wrong. Sinful habits blind and deaden a man"s conscience to his momentous duties.
II A DIVINE INVITATION TO SINNERS. Here is an invitation to return:
1. To Divine friendship. "Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts." Return to me by rendering to me my dues, and working lovingly and loyally in my service. "Return to me this has been God"s voice to sinners in all ages; this was the invitation of Christ: "Come unto me," etc. The return is in a sense mutual. God says, "I will return unto you." This does not, of course, mean that God compromises, changes; but it expresses his readiness to receive them, as the father of the prodigal was ready to receive his lost son. He waits to be gracious.
2. To honest service. "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house; Nehemiah calls the "storehouse" (Neh_13:5) a great chamber where they laid the meat offerings, the frankincense, and the vessels. To put this to its proper use is what Jehovah would have them to do, and he promises, if they accede:
(1) To give them good in abundance. "Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." From heaven all good comes. Sometimes the windows seem so closed up that blessings descend not to some men. When God says, "I will open you the windows," it means good shall come pouring down, in abundance.
(2) To give them good in connection with the produce of the earth. "And I will rebuke the devourer perhaps the locusts for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field." Their vines should produce fruit in the season.
(3) To give them good in the affections of men. "And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts;" "Happy art thou, O Israel, who is like unto thee, O people, saved by the Lord, the Shield of thy help, and who is the Sword of thy excellency? And thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee, and thou shalt tread upon their high places". (Deu_33:29)
CONCLUSION. Learn:
1. That a man is a bad man who withholds from God his due. What are God"s dues? All we have and are. "All souls are his." And if we render not up to him our souls our all we are bad.
2. A bad man becomes good by surrendering his all to God. By bringing his all into the storehouse of God, devoting all to the Divine service.
3. The more good a man has in himself, the more good he has from the universe. If his whole soul is filled with supreme love and reverence for right and God, all the heavens outside of him will "open their windows" and rain blessings on him. Religious liberality is of all profitable investments the most profitable. And the converse. The niggard is "cursed with a curse." The man who robs and defrauds God robs and defrauds himself. As the fabled eagle who robbed the altar set fire to her nest with the burning coals that adhered to the stolen flesh she bore away, so the soul that defrauds God of his claims will set itself in flames. D.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Ye are gone away from Mine ordinances.
Mal_3:7
Ye are gone away from Mine ordinances.
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Misused religious privileges
In proportion to the value and the importance of our privileges, is apt to be our negligence, our carelessness, in improving them. In religion, in morals, in everything concerning man, it is in the season of calm, and amid the quietude of apparent prosperity, that the foot is readiest to slip. It is melancholy to think how little value men in general set on the ordinances of a pure religion. The temporal benefits that are so profusely conferred on us by our Maker have each and all of them a measure of alloy mixed up with them, so as to modify and qualify their sweetness. Religion is the solitary one of His gifts that may be characterised as sweet unmixed; and yet it is the one to which, by a great majority of our race, the least value is attached. The text deals with a class of persons who, enjoying the privileges of religion, derived no advantage from them; and it intimates that the loss originated in a fault of their own.
I. Evils that are calculated to render the ministrations of the Gospel profitless.
1. Irregular attendance on those ministrations. In theory we admit that the worship of God is the most important business of life. Because it is a preparation for eternity; it is labour in the interest and for the well-being of an immortal soul, and our homage is a debt, a sacred, serious, solemn debt we owe to the Divinity. Then zeal, regularity, precise punctuality in that service, are of all things most important. Your services, it is true, have nothing of merit about them; but it is also true that if you refuse them you need not expect the blessing of God.
2. Love to the world, and a propensity to worldly thoughts. Who does not know that, even while apparently engaged in the most sacred services, the world, and the things of the world, occasionally pass over and darken our spiritual perceptions? Who is there who has never mourned this and deplored it? This tendency to carnal thoughts in the midst of religious-seeming services is one of the most serious obstacles that stand in the way of our improvement from a preached Gospel.
3. The pride of intellect, and a carping taste for literary criticism. It were passing strange, indeed, if the music of soft words, the grace of polished sentences, and all the blandishments of composition were excluded from the pulpit, while on any other stage they are deemed needful to success. But there is peril in it. It may lay a powerful temptation in the way of mens souls. It leads to a sacrificing of substance for shadow. Men nowadays must have the Gospel preached to them in their own particular fashion, or they will not listen to the preaching of the Gospel at all. Remember, I beseech you, that the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and that the wisdom of God is stronger than men.
4. The want of solemnity and reverence in the sanctuary. How little we think, in general, of the society in which we are, or the nature of Divine service, when we come up to the temple of the Lord.
5. The want of a spirit of prayer. The effect to be produced is altogether dependent on Almighty power. Then how obvious it is that all our attendances on these ordinances should be preluded by prayer! We know that of ourselves we cannot profit. We know that God has told us how His blessing is to be obtained. Shall not, then, the footstool of His throne be approached by us? Shall we not ask that Divine strength may be perfected in our weakness? (W. Craig.)
Return unto Me, and I will return unto you.
Gods charge and call to a backsliding people
Three things contained in these words, which well suit our times.
1. A charge or accusation brought by God against His professing people. All sin is going away from Gods ordinances, or a breach of His law. To omit known duties, God construes as a commission of known sins.
2. A solemn exhortation backed by an alluring motive. God promises mercy when He might execute judgment. Repentance is that which sets a creature right again, with his face towards God, so that all his desires and expectations are from Him. The motive is, Gods return unto us. God is said to return when He shows His face and favour, which sin has hid.
3. The peoples reply. Wherein shall we return? This was either in words--We are not conscious of guilt, show us wherein we have offended. Or it is the language of their hearts and lives.
I. Show where in we have gone away from God as a professing people and land.
1. We have gone away from His truth. As to the generality of professors in the land, they scarce know what are the foundations of the Gospel, or what are the pillars of the reformation.
2. We are gone away from His worship. Now families professing godliness are prayerless, and there is a weariness of ordinances.
3. We are gone away from our trust and confidence in God. This is a complaint every one may bring against himself.
4. We are gone away from God in conversation. Faith is nothing without fruit, nor Gospel truth without Gospel holiness. Are thy thoughts spiritual, thy speech savoury, thy mind and disposition heavenly, and thy outward behaviour without offence?
II. How must our return to him be?
1. With deep humiliation. Sense of sin will beget sorrow and shame for it. When God touches the heart, sin will become the greatest burden we ever felt.
2. With real reformation. Gods anger is increased by mock returns. It is one thing to confess sin with our mouths, and another thing to cast it out of our hearts.
3. It should be with an eye to the blood of Christ. No mercy is to be expected but through the satisfaction and intercession of our Lord Jesus Christ.
III. The blessing which is in Gods return to us. When God comes to a land or people, good comes with Him.
1. He comes with grace and pardon.
2. He comes with grace to sanctify and renew.
3. He comes with power and strength to save and deliver.
4. He comes with love to delight in them.
IV. Why will God return to us only in the way of our return to him? It does not suppose anything meritorious in the obedience of the creature; nor yet that the blessings of grace are suspended upon the condition of duty.
1. It is to justify His dispensations before men. Though duty be not the ground of our claim, it is the warrant of our expectation and our hope.
2. He will slay presumption and self-confidence in His own people.
V. In whom this vile frame mentioned in the text is found. This may serve by way of caution, and by way of trial. We speak as in the text when--
1. We rest in generals, in confessing sin before God. Sin is a sort of packhorse upon which every burden is laid.
2. This frame prevails where there is a transferring sin upon others. It is easy confessing other mens sins, but evangelical repentance begins at home.
3. Men speak thus when they con fess some sins, but not the sin which God aims at. We are all too partial with respect to ourselves.
4. To confess sin with a secret liking of it in the heart is a way of saying, Wherein shall I return? It argues little to confess sin if thou dost not part with it. Uses--
(1) Are we thus gone away from God, and shall we not admire Divine patience, that we are yet spared, both our persons and our land?
(2) Adore grace.
(3) See what is the special duty of this day. Return unto the Lord.
(4) Beware of a double heart this day, and all your life after. Seek peace and truth, but Christ as the foundation of both. (John Hill.)
Necessity of our returning to God
Whenever, in any respect, we have wandered away from the strait and narrow way which leadeth unto life our Father in heaven does not at once leave us to ourselves, but in His tender love and forbearance has recourse to various means whereby to bring us back to Himself. This is plainly the case with individual Christians; perhaps it is the condition of mankind universally. Our merciful Father offers checks and warnings when He sees any generally prevailing tendency to depart from Him. If, in any Christian Church, people have become self-confident, neglectful of ancient rules, scorning attention to moral duties, yet all the while exulting in unreal feelings and fancies, as tokens of the Divine favour--when such symptoms of corruption show themselves, it is a great mercy if our good God, by any chastisements, warns us of our danger, and of the necessity of returning to Him whilst yet we may. Jehovah sent this message of affectionate compassion to His ancient people, Return unto Me, and I will return unto you. And it was to be expected that they would gladly embrace so gracious an offer; that their only inquiry would be in what way they could best prove the sincerity of their repentance. But no such temper showed itself. Quite otherwise. They had done nothing to be ashamed of. They said,--why may we not go on as we are; what need is there of repentance or amendment? Jesus Christ pressed on all who would follow Him the necessity of self-denial, that is, of doing and suffering what is painful and unpleasant to us, out of love to Him. This we promised to do in our baptism. If we have not led the rest of our lives according to that beginning, then we should hear the voice of God saying to us, Return unto Me, and I will return unto you. Return unto Me in all self-abasement and self-denial, and I will return to you in those special gifts and graces which eminently mark the presence of Gods good Spirit. Whatever our condition in life may be, self-denial in matters of disposition and temper is so essential to the Christian character that, if we have neglected it, we have indeed urgent need to return to the Lord in this respect without delay. Any tendency to self will is an evidence that the heart is not right with God. In regard to the duty, or privilege, of prayer, we should ascertain for ourselves whether we have at all wandered away from the Lord, and so need to return to Him in true substantial amendment. There must be a real and hearty obedience, otherwise a return is no return. It is not a matter of profession or of feeling or of know ledge, but of absolute practice, of humble temper and humble practice. (Sermons by Contrib. to Tracts for the Times.)
Coming to God by love or by fear
Our life in this world is, in substance, a returning to God. When we were new-born we were set in the path that leads to eternal life, and bidden to keep in it, and so return to God. Few, if any, go straight onward; most of us are like wayward children, following the road for a while, then straying; anon recovering it, and then, with repentance, proceeding. So, all the life through, we are returning to God; lapsing here and there; erring and straying like lost sheep; finding the way back, we often wonder how; and so, as for our general direction, working a slow course toward final safety, through the temptations and dangers of the track by which we go. Often have Christians to check themselves, to deplore errors, and to retrace heedless steps; they must do this when they see or feel that they are out of the straight path. The text asks, Wherein shall we return? The question suggests some thought on motives which may act to lead men back to God. How shall they that are astray be brought home? If we grow lax, cold, and hard, how shall we be recovered? There are two great motives that can keep men near to God, and keep Gods name in honour in the world. These two are love and fear: the love of God for His mercy, the fear of God for His justice. Either of these may save a man; either may keep a race alive and strong. With the heart we lay fast hold on God as the Father and the Saviour. God calls Himself our Father; the word includes His act in giving us our being, His providence which keeps, upholds, and blesses us day by day. God, as Creator, Ruler, and Governor, asks of us our love. He reveals Himself as God our Saviour. The symbol of the mighty all-constraining love is, and must ever be, the Cross. So first the Lord draws us by love. There are, however, those in the world on whom these considerations have no effect. In that case there remains one, and but one, other motive to bring them to God; it is the lower motive of fear. Not mere fear of punishment, nor the fear of suffering. It is the fear of irreparable disaster, of everlasting loss. That men cannot face. That is the dread of dreads. But there are those in whom there is no such dread; they do not feel the love of God, they cannot be shaken by the fear of God. What other motive can you name when both these fail? There is no answer. Destroy the belief in the Almighty God as a Creator; with that vanishes the belief in Almighty God as a providence. And when that is done the basis on which love rests is gone also. Destroy the belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of the world, and with it vanish also the sense of sin, gratitude for deliverance from its effects, and the love that has filled the hearts of men as they meditated on the mercy of the Saviour, and the sweetness of the precious blood of Christ. Thus all ground for loving God is taken away. Cast out the belief in eternal death, in perpetual penalty, in irreparable doom, and fear must vanish. If there is no just God to requite me, whom is there to fear? What will men do when fallen so low? Let us consider. Can love and fear die out of the heart? Never. The love and fear of God can die; but love and fear of something will remain. Toward what shall these direct themselves? When man will no longer love God, he must come to loving himself; and when it comes to loving himself, his main fear is lest, in that self-love, he should be interfered with or balked. What would become of a world which had lost its own love and its fear, which neither loved the Redeemer nor feared the pains of hell? One may be pardoned for doubting whether such a world would be worth saving; and for questioning whether it could be saved. We therefore teach, as most necessary for these times, the love of God and the fear of God. (Morgan Dix.)
Encouragement for the erring
God comes to His people. His purpose is to refine, purify, and save; and to judge and witness against wrong-doing. Gods blessings are given conditionally. Observe--
I. The duty. Return unto me.
1. the words imply distance from God. The cause is sin. Sin deepens and widens the difference between God and man. Sin put away, God and man are one.
2. Return to a recognisation of neglected duty.
3. Return with a fixed purpose in all things to conform to Gods will.
II. The promise. I will return unto you.
1. Gods promises are many.
2. Gods promises are great.
3. Gods promises are precious.
4. Gods promises are encouraging. To the weak, afflicted, troubled, unfortunate; yea, to the erring and sinful.
III. The confirmation. Saith the Lord.
1. The authority. The Lord.
2. The confidence it inspires.
3. The action it should prompt. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)
The love-hunger in Gods heart
I. Jehovahs entreaty. Return unto Me. Sin is not only departure from righteousness, but from God. God is mans true sphere. Those who have lived in God may wander from Him. Their sad condition may furnish reasons for their return; but the most powerful is that God entreats them to do so. This should affect them deeply. For it manifests--
1. His condescending pity.
2. Forbearing grace.
3. Unchanging love.
4. Willingness to receive them again into His favour.
Mans departure from God grieves Him. In order that the wanderer may return he must--
(1) Reflect upon his waywardness, its folly and ingratitude.
(2) Yield to the Divine drawings which reach him through the Word and Spirit.
(3) Discover the cause of his wanderings, and put it away.
(4) Turn unto God with contrite confession and earnest prayer. The Divine Word to Him might have justly been Depart, not Return.
II. Jehovahs promise. I will return unto you. God delights to fill the consciousness of man with His presence. He reluctantly with draws Himself from the wanderer. In Gods return is all spiritual blessedness.
1. All wanderings are forgiven.
2. The soul is requickened into newness of life.
3. The evil effects of wandering are purged away.
4. The springs of a deep and immortal happiness are opened in the soul.
5. The spirit is conscious of possessing its true and eternal rest.
Gods return is dependent upon the wanderers return to Him. He cannot reveal Himself fully to those who depart from His ways. He may warn them, chastise them, and strive with them, but they cannot know what His presence is to the obedient heart. (W. Osborne Lilley.)
A last sermon
This text is an exhortation to repentance.
I. An accusation. Ye have gone away. They had gone off from Gods ordinances, and had not kept them. Law may be broken, either by omitting the good required or doing the evils for bidden. They had long continued in these sins; from the days of your fathers.
II. The exhortation. Return, etc. Notice the duty. Repentance toward God is necessary to set the creature right again, and put him in his proper place and posture.
III. The rejoinder of the people. Ye said, wherein shall we return? It is not a serious question, but a cavil. It suited the stout and stubborn genius of this people, who would not yield to anything that might infer their guilt. The exhortation was lost upon them, as if they needed no repentance or reformation. Doctrine--That a people who are apparently gone off from the ways of God are not easily brought to a sight and sense of the necessity of returning to Him. This point is true of mankind in general, of nations, and of particular persons. Men set up a false happiness in their carnal estate. There is something in us which is instead of Christ to us, when our affections take up with present things. The commonness and continuance of sin takes away the odiousness of it. Men many times return feignedly. A people professing repentance in the general, when it cometh to particulars, wince and start. That is but a notion of repentance, not a real exercise of it, when we profess to return to God, and know not wherein we should return. Exhort to two things--
(1) Take heed of the shifts wherewith men beguile themselves.
(2) Inquire wherein you should return. Find out the provoking sin. To do so you will need much searching and self-communing. Seek for information from God. And carefully observe your own ways. (T. Manton, D. D.)
A Divine complaint and a Divine invitation
I. A Divine complaint against sinners. Three charges. Apostasy. Dishonesty. Insensibility.
II. A Divine invitation to sinners. An invitation to return--
1. To Divine friendship.
2. To honest service.
Bring all the tithes into the storehouse. If they accede, God promises--
(1) To give them good in abundance.
(2) To give them good in connection with the produce of the earth.
(3) To give them good in the affections of men.
Learn--
1. A man is a bad man who withholds from God His due.
2. A bad man becomes good by surrendering his all to God.
3. The more good a man has in himself, the more good he has from the universe. (Homilist.)
.
Will a man rob God?--
Robbery of God
The ordinance of God has been that men should have certain things, on certain conditions, belonging to them severally, as their own. But there has always been a mighty propensity to break through this great law. We do not at all wonder at the laws in respect to property among men. But here in the text is another kind of robbery, which does sound strangely; of which many may be guilty, and little think of it. Rob God,--who could ever think of a thing so monstrous? Yet it can be. In the next words the assertion is made, Ye have robbed Me. All here on earth belongs to God. It is in the midst of things belonging to Him that we are conversant, living and acting. If all belongs to God, then comes in the liability to commit robbery against Him. It may be, that there shall be no general habitual sense and acknowledgment of His sovereign claims; no feeling that all does so belong. This is the comprehensive spirit and principle of the wrong toward Him, and will go into many special forms; this state of mind is a general refusal to acknowledge His law. It is taking, as it were, the whole ground at once from God, and assuming a licence for every particular act and kind of robbery. Robbing God is also permitting anything to have stronger power over us than His will. There should be conscientious care to form a right honest judgment of what is due, of what belongs to God. This guilt is incurred by misapplying to other uses what is due to God. A few plain particulars may be specified of what we cannot withhold from God without this guilt. One is, a very considerable proportion of thought concerning Him. Fear, of the deepest, most solemn kind, is due to God. We have, naturally, an awe of power. There are other tributes due, corresponding to what we may call the more attractive and gracious attributes. Will a man refuse the gentler affection,--love, gratitude, humble reliance? But we have to look further, at the full breadth of the declared law of God: the comprehensive sum of His commands; a grand scheme of the dictates of the Divine will, placed peremptorily before us, and abiding there as permanently as our view of the purpose of the earth or the starry sky. Each and every precept tells of something we may refuse Him, namely, the obedience; and a temptation stands close by each. Some seem to rob God of nearly all. And with so determined a will, that there would seem but to need more precepts for them to extend their injustice. Others think they must render something, but that a partial tribute, and a small one, may suffice. Many appear to think that if they do not rob men, there needs not much care about what is specially and directly due to God. It is not for His own sake that God requires our homage, service, and obedience. It is for our sakes. Thus it will come to be found, that in robbing God, men iniquitously and fatally rob themselves. Name one thing specially as due to God--the duty of promoting the cause of God in the world. If each professed servant of God, and follower of Christ, could be supposed to be asked, Will you have your individual part set before you? he must be a bold man, who should instantly, and free from all apprehension, say, Yes, I am sure of what it will testify. (John Foster.)
Robbery of God
It is possible, and the sin has been perpetrated. God says to these Jews, Ye have robbed Me. In their case it referred to the withholding of the tithes and offerings for the support of the temple worship. This does not appertain to us; but it is not the only way in which the sin can be committed. Robbery means taking either by fraud or violence that which belongs to another, and appropriating it to our own use.
I. Apply this charge of robbing God to a large portion of mankind, generally considered. To a pious mind, it is an affecting and melancholy thing to consider what a conspiracy seems ever going on to shut God out of His own world, to deprive Him of His rights in the homage which is due to Him from His creatures. Atheism robs Him of the glory of His existence; Deism, of the glory of His revelation; Paganism, of the glory of His spirituality and perfections; Mohammedanism, of His exclusive manifestation of Himself through the person and work of His own Son, in regard to the purposes of His grace to our world; Judaism, of the glory of His relationship to His only-begotten and well-beloved Son. So that we see, on a very large scale, Gods rational creation continually robbing Him of His glory. If we come from systems to men, we shall see that the same felony is continually going on against Him, as the God of nature, providence, and redemption. Is not man-worship one of the most striking characteristics of the age in which we live? Looking abroad upon society, we see a felony continually going on, in robbing God of His glory, and not giving Him the honour that in all these things is due unto His name. In the sphere of religion, what robbery of God there is in taking from Him His Sabbaths--taking them from religion, and giving them to pleasure and business. Socinianism deprives Him of the glory of the Divinity of His Son. Popery corrupts every thing in religion--raising up a rival to God in the pope, a rival to the Bible in tradition, a rival to the Saviour in priests, a rival to the Cross in the crucifix.
II. Apply this charge of robbing god to particular classes.
1. It lies against the man who is living without personal, decided, spiritual religion, whose heart is not yet converted to God. The man who is living without religion, that man is committing a wholesale robbery upon God. He robs God of himself. He belongs to God. His body does, and he takes it from Him, for sensuality, for vice, or for worldliness. He is robbing God of the soul, with all its faculties. The intellect belongs to God; and yet, though thousands of thoughts are streaming off from that mans mind day after day, none of these go to God. He is robbing God of his will, of his affections, etc. An unconverted man robs God of his time. The same remark may be made as to influence; as to property. It is Gods world we live in, His ground we tread upon, His sun that shines upon us, His rain that falls upon us, His creatures that support us, His wool and cotton that clothe us; and we have no right to use any of His creatures but in a way that, while it does us good, shall at the same time glorify God.
III. Apply this subject to professing christians. Can they stand altogether exempt from the accusation? Ought not their life to be a whole burnt offering to God? A Christian ought to be a partaker of that religion which brings out a holy morality in all the stations, occupations, and circumstances in which he is placed. Are we then living for God or for ourselves? Are there no pulpit robbers of God? None who, ins:cad of seeking Gods glory, are seeking their own? From the very nature of the ministerial office, self is the idol that we are in danger of lifting up, if not in the place of God, yet side by side with Him. What duty arising out of this subject shall I prescribe? Restitution. Yield yourselves unto God. (John Angel James.)
Is it probable? Is it possible? Can he be so disingenuous? What! rob a Father, a Friend, a Benefactor! Can he be so daring? To rob a Being so high and sacred; and whose glory so enhances the offence! Can he be so irrational, so desperate? Yet, says God, Ye have robbed Me. And the charge falls on those who are to be found in the house of God. Who has not robbed God of property? Our wealth is not our own. We are only stewards. It always looks suspicious when a gentlemans steward becomes very rich, and dies affluent. Substance is entrusted to its occupiers, for certain purposes plainly laid down in the Scripture. Do you discharge those claims? How much do some unjustly expend; in table-luxuries, in costly dress, in magnificent furniture? Who has not robbed God of time? The Sabbath. Our youth-time, so often squandered away in vanity, folly, and vice. All our moments and opportunities are His: and He commands us to redeem the time. Who has not robbed God of the heart? The fear, the confidence, the gratitude, the attachment of the heart, we have transferred from the Creator, God over all, blessed for evermore. And may not the same be said of our talents--whether learning, or the powers of conversation, or the retentiveness of memory, or our influence over others? Let us not affect to deny the charge; but let us repair to the footstool of mercy, and cry, If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquity, O Lord, who shall stand? (William Jay.)
Robbers
There are many more robbers than the police know about. Men might be surprised to know that a robber, sometimes, is concealed in their own breast. How wicked to rob a man who has done us a kindness; but how much more so to rob a God who loves us with everlasting love! As robbers of God, consider--
I. Atheists. Such imagine there is no Creating-God; or if there be a God, that nobody can discover anything about Him; and that there is no God-revealed religion. In a picture gallery in London, I was shown a grand painting of a womans face, and asking the name of the artist, my friend replied, Though it is a valuable picture, the artists name is unknown. I show you a picture, the frame is made of earth, and the picture is called life. See the carving of Divine genius in the frame, and behold the lines of everlasting love in the picture! Can you say that no intelligent mind ever conceived and no skilful hand ever formed the leaf, the fruit, the rose of that picture? Some atheists admit there is a Mind above that which is human, yet they say that the God-mind has no personal sympathy with men. Many people live as if there were no God. Is it not fashionable to do so? Would you be glad if there were no God? Think, Gods happiness is to bless you, and yet you rob Him of that joy.
II. Deists. One who thinks there is a supreme God, but will not believe that He revealed Himself in Christ Jesus. Deist, I ask you to behold God through Jesus. Do not rob Jesus of His loving influence, which is meant to bless your own heart. Can you find any other man who ever taught the world a better truth, or one who loved men more than Jesus did? (William Birch.)
Robbing God
It is a fearful crime to rob God, and yet it is done every day, and done by His professed friends as well as by His open enemies. God is robbed whenever His requirements are disregarded, whenever His rights are resisted, whenever the demands and interests of His kingdom are neglected. Consider wherein God is robbed by His people.
1. In the matter of affection. My son, give Me thy heart. That is the supreme offering.
2. In the matter of consecration. God will have the whole heart, life, gifts, or none.
3. In the matter of service. Gods claim is absolute upon your time, influence, prayers, efforts, gifts, means, even in their potentiality.
4. In the matter of gratitude.
5. In tithes and offerings. (J. M. Sherwood.)
Living by theft
This is a kind of theft which is very common. It does not affect the credit of those who are guilty of it. It is practised by all unsaved persons, more or less. Indeed, this is one of the principal means by which Satan keeps Christless persons at their ease. It is most common amongst those of the unsaved who are respectable, moral, and, after their own fashion, religious people. Satan teaches them to live by theft. He gets them to appropriate to themselves promises and hopes which do not belong to them: and by means of this stolen property, he succeeds in keeping them at their ease until he has ruined them for ever. (A. J. Gordon.)
Robbing God
The story about old Stradivarius, the famous violin-maker, is suggestive. He said that if his hand slackened in its work of making violins he would rob God, and leave a blank instead of good violins. He said that even God would not make Antonios violins without Antonio. The truth has a wide application. It may be applied to every life, and to every piece of work that any of us do. One is engaged in a factory, one in a machine-shop, one in an office, one on a farm, one is at school. One man is a physician, another is a lawyer, another a merchant, another a mechanic, another a minister. Whatever our work is, we cannot be faithful to God unless we do it as well as we can. To slur is to do Gods work badly. To neglect is to rob God.
Robbing God
We do well to ask ourselves at this time how far the words of God by Malachi apply, to our case: Ye are cursed with a curse; for ye have robbed Me.. . . Wherein? In tithes and offerings. When we compare the millions upon millions lavished upon vain display, costly feasts, extravagant dress, palatial dwellings, frivolous or debasing amusements, and worse, on gambling, drinking, and unhallowed lusts, with the shabby pittance doled out for the Gospel at home and abroad, and then ask ourselves how this must look in Gods sight, is it any wonder that we are visited with hard times? I tremble for my country (said Thomas Jefferson) when I remember that God is just. Nine hundred million dollars spent in one year for intoxicating liquors; five and a half millions for missions (not church-support) at home and abroad--that is, one hundred and sixty-four to one. The nine hundred millions are not only squandered--they would better be cast into the sea than used as they now are to ruin the souls and bodies of men, to destroy families, and to plague the State. (F. H. Harling.)
The great robbery
Well, there can be no doubt that man will do some very daring deeds. What magnificent things he is capable of l He may not be much to look at, he may not fill a large space in the landscape; but out of his heart and soul what deeds of heroism may come! what feats of daring!--achievements that thrill the whole world and move the heart of heaven! It is a precious heritage that we have in human biography. Man, however, does not always employ his daring soul in the right way. What is the most daring thing ever done? Why, surely it is here--in that a man will rob God. And it is not true courage that leads him to do that; it is foolhardiness, with emphasis on the first syllable of the word. It is the coward who robs God, for he knows not what he is doing. But let us look at the question in a larger sense, and see how we may be guilty of this terrible crime. All robbery of God proceeds from our failure to acknowledge the one great fact of Gods sovereignty. The earth is the Lords, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. It is He that hath made us: we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. In theory we acknowledge all this; but how about its practical bearing on our everyday life? Have we a reverent and beautiful sense of Gods ownership, leading to the hallowing of all our thoughts, deeds, and possessions? Do we ever talk about having money of our own, forgetting that every mite of it is Gods? We even go so far as to say that we will be master in our own house, forgetting that the house is not ours, and that One is our Master, even Christ. What we need, then, nowadays is a clearer sense of Gods sovereignty. We shall not tread so haughtily and boar ourselves so proudly, we shall not be so careless and irreverent in our lives, when we realise vividly the authority and presence of the Lord of all. What a terrible charge the psalmist brings against certain people!--God is not in all their thoughts. Unless we are to rob God of His right, He must be in all our thoughts, the great moral Force in all our work and duty, keeping us in fine integrity and honour. In pleasure He must be the spring of all our joys, the life of our delights, and then we shall take no harm whatever pleasure we engage in. And in sorrow He must be our first and only thought; then grief and fear and care shall fly as clouds before the midday sun. Will a man rob God? Yes, unless he have the fear of God continually before him. The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes. That is the message of every transgression ever committed. If men had the fear of God before their eyes they would never sin against Him. An article in one of the papers a while ago spoke of the degeneracy of wills. In the olden time a man began, his will thus: In the name of God, Amen. But now we begin abruptly: This is the last will and testament. It is not simply that we are short of time, and cannot afford the roundabout phrases of a bygone day; it is that we have not the sense of reverence in the measure that we ought to have it--we do not live with the holy dread and mighty awe of the great old saints. Will a man rob God? Yes, if he withhold his love, gratitude, and obedience from Him. These great affections of the heart were bestowed upon us that they might be given to some worthy object. Are they just to be spent upon a few inferior objects around us, and to be denied to One in whom is all perfect excellence, goodness, and beauty? Does not the love of God to us call loudly for our love in return? Does not all the mercy of the past lay irresistible claim to our fervent gratitude? Does not every precept of Gods law require our obedience? If we do not give it, shall we not be robbing with the basest, boldest robbery Him to whom our more than all is due? The man who robs God steals from himself. God needs nothing of ours to make Him any richer; it is simply for our own sakes that He makes the great demand. Give your little all, and the return shall be in full measure, pressed down, and running over. Withhold, and you stand to gain nothing and to lose all. (W. A. L. Taylor, B. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Malachi
THE LAST WORD OF PROPHECY
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A DIALOGUE WITH GOD
Mal 3:7.
In previous sermons we have considered God’s indictment of man’s sin met by man’s plea of ‘not guilty,’ and God’s threatenings brushed aside by man’s question. Here we have the climax of self-revealing and patient love in God’s wooing voice to draw the wanderer back, met by man’s refusing answer. These three divine utterances taken together cover the whole ground of His speech to us; and, alas! these three human utterances but too truly represent for the most part our answers to Him.
I. God’s invitation to His wandering child.
The gracious invitation of our text presupposes a state of departure. The child who is tenderly recalled has first gone away. There has been a breach of love. Dependence has been unwelcome, and cast off with the vain hope of a larger freedom in the far-off land; and this is the true charge against us. It is not so much individual acts of sin but the going away in heart and spirit from our Father God which describes the inmost essence of our true condition, and is itself the source of all our acts of sin. Conscience confirms the description. We know that we have departed from Him in mind, having wasted our thoughts on many things and not having had Him in the multitude of them in us. We have departed from Him in heart, having squandered our love and dissipated our desires on many objects, and sought in the multiplicity of many pearls-some of them only paste-a substitute for the all-sufficient simplicity of the One of great price. We have departed from Him in will, having reared up puny inclinations and fleeting passions against His calm and eternal purpose, and so bringing about the shock of a collision as destructive to us as when a torpedo-boat crashes in the dark against a battleship, and, cut in two, sinks.
The gracious invitation of our text follows, ‘I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’ Threatenings, and the execution of these in acts of judgment, are no indication of a change in the loving heart of God; and because it is the same, however we have sinned against it and departed from it, there is ever an invitation and a welcome. We may depart from Him, but He never departs from us. Nor does He wait for us to originate the movement of return, but He invites us back. By all His words in His threatenings and in His commandments, as in the acts of His providence, we can hear His call to return. The fathers of our flesh never cease to long for their prodigal child’s return; and their patient persistence of hope is but brief and broken when contrasted with the infinite long-suffering of the Father of spirits. We have heard of a mother who for long empty years has nightly set a candle in her cottage window to guide her wandering boy back to her heart; and God has bade us think more loftily of the unchangeableness of His love than that of a woman who may forget, that she should not have compassion upon the son of her womb.
II. Man’s answer to God’s invitation.
It is a refusal which is half-veiled and none the less real. There is no unwillingness to obey professed, but it is concealed under a mask of desiring a little more light as to how a return is to be accomplished. There are not many of us who are rooted enough in evil as to be able to blurt out a curt ‘I will not’ in answer to His call. Conscience often bars the way to such a plain and unmannerly reply; but there are many who try to cheat God, and who do to some extent cheat themselves, by professing ignorance of the way which would lead them to His heart. Some of us have learned only too well to raise questions about the method of salvation instead of accepting it, and to dabble in theology instead of making sure work of return. Some of us would fain substitute a host of isolated actions, or apparent moral or religious observance, for the return of will and heart to God; and all who in their consciences answer God’s call by saying, ‘Wherein shall we return?’ with such a meaning are playing tricks with themselves, and trying to hoodwink God.
But the question of our text has often a nobler origin, and comes from the depths of a troubled heart. Not seldom does God’s loving invitation rouse the dormant conscience to the sense of sin. The man, lying broken at the foot of the cliff down which he has fallen, and seeing the brightness of God far above, has his heart racked with the question: How am I, with lame limbs, to struggle back to the heights above? ‘How shall man be just with God?’ All the religions of the world, with their offerings and penances and weary toils, are vain attempts to make a way back to the God from whom men have wandered, and that question, ‘Wherein shall we return?’ is really the meaning of the world’s vain seeking and profitless effort.
God has answered man’s question; for Christ is at once the way back to God, and the motive which draws us to walk in it. He draws us back by the magnetism of His love and sacrifice. We return to God when we cling to Jesus. He is the highest, the tenderest utterance of the divine voice; and when we yield to His invitation to Himself we return to God. He calls to each of us, ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.’ What can we reply but, ‘I come; let me never wander from Thee’?
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain Rebuke for Defrauding The Lord
Rebuke for Defrauding The Lord
CHAPTER 3:7-15
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Another rebuke is administered. They were alway a stiff-necked people, never obedient to His ordinances. His gracious call to return unto Him, and the promise that He will return unto them is answered by “Wherein shall we return?” They had robbed God of what was His right. The tithes and offerings which He demanded in the law covenant had been withheld. On account of it the blessing was lacking and curse was upon the nation. Then follows a command to bring all the tithes into the storehouse, the challenge to prove Him, the assurance of abundant blessing. It is strange that even those who have a good knowledge of truth, the dispensations and the heavenly position of a Christian, should fall back upon this verse and claim that it is binding and should be practiced among believers. For a system like Seventh Day Adventism, a system which has perverted the gospel of grace, which denies God’s oath-bound covenants with Israel, which claims to be the true Israel, the system to which applies the term “the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews and are not; ” for such a cult to make this command a binding law is not surprising. But well taught believers should never look upon this passage as in any way in force today. True Christian giving, like everything else in the life and service of a true believer, must be done, not by law but through grace, under the direction of the Holy Spirit. Nowhere in the New Testament is there anything said about tithing. A believer must be a cheerful giver, giving as the Lord has prospered him, communicating to others, doing good, remembering the poor, ministering in temporal things to those who minister in spiritual things; but all this giving must be under the direction of the Spirit of God.
The day will come when His earthly people will minister to the wants of the Lord’s house (a Jewish term), so that there will be an abundant supply for sacrifices. That will be in the future day of their restoration, when the devourer will be rebuked (Mal 3:11). It is at that time, when the millennium has come, that all nations will call them blessed, when they shall be a delightsome land Isa 62:4. This has never been since it was written by the pen of Malachi.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The People Rebuked
The People Rebuked
v. 7. Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from Mine ordinances and have not kept them, this being the reason why He has withheld the fullness of His blessing and salvation from them. Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts, His appeal being made in all Sincerity, since He wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. But ye said, still blind toward their transgressions, Wherein shall we return? They did not realize that the real service of Jehovah must be a growth from within, from a heart which lives in His fear. Therefore the prophet asks, in turn, in order to arouse them to a consciousness of the true meaning of worship,
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v. 8. Will a man rob God, defraud Him? Is not the very idea preposterous and revolting?. Yet ye have robbed Me, actually trying to defraud Jehovah of the service which He rightly expected. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed Thee? And the answer is, In tithes and offerings, for these the people had deliberately withheld, thus making a mockery of their worship of Jehovah.
v. 9. Ye are cursed with a curse, as a consequence of such behavior; for ye have robbed Me, even this whole nation, for the practice rebuked was general among the people. Therefore He admonishes them with great solemnity:
v. 10. Bring ye all the tithes, the entire tithes, not only a part, into the storehouse, not keeping back a part, as heretofore, that there may be meat in Mine house, as food for His servants, Num 18:24; and prove Me now herewith, to find out whether He is not still the same righteous and holy God as of old, salth the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, in plentiful harvests, that there shall not be room enough to receive it, their prosperity being practically limitless.
v. 11. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, not permitting the locusts to devour the crops, to ravage the land, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground, all the ordinary field-crops; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts, that is, the grapes would not fall before they had matured.
v. 12. And all nations shall call you blessed, praising them for the obvious blessings which they enjoyed as a gift of Jehovah; for ye shall be a delightsome land, an object of pleasure, saith the Lord of hosts. Even today the Lord often rewards a life sincerely led in agreement with His Word with outward gifts of His goodness.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 3:7 In the context of covenant relationship, return expresses…
3:7 In the context of covenant relationship, return expresses a change of loyalty on the part of Israel or God. Typically, the term is understood as repentance, a complete change of direction back to God or a total reorientation toward the Lord. The imperative verb conveys urgency and demands an immediate response from the audience. The indictment of insincere worship builds on similar charges in the second disputation (see 1:6-14), just as God’s promise to “open the windows of heaven” (3:10) affirms his power as “a great king” (see 1:14).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.