Malachi 3:8

3:7-12 The men of that generation turned away from God, they had not kept his ordinances. God gives them a gracious call. But they said, Wherein shall we return? God notices what returns our hearts make to the calls of his word. It shows great perverseness in sin, when men make afflictions excuses for sin, which are sent to part between them and their sins. Here is an earnest exhortation to reform. God must be served in the first place; and the interest of our souls ought to be preferred before that of our bodies. Let them trust God to provide for their comfort. God has blessings ready for us, but through the weakness of our faith and the narrowness of our desires, we have not room to receive them. He who makes trial will find nothing is lost by honouring the Lord with his substance.

Will a {h} man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In {i} tithes and offerings. (h) There are none of the heathen so barbarous, that will defraud their gods of their honour, or deal deceitfully with them. (i) By which the service of God should have been maintained, and the priests and the poor relieved.

Malachi 3:8-9 . Will a man rob God — Grotius reads, “Would any one dare to rob his judges as ye have robbed me?” the word rendered God sometimes meaning judges or magistrates. Some others render the clause, Is it right that God should be robbed (or defrauded) by man? Here God gives them an answer to their question in the foregoing verse, Wherein shall we return; or, repent and amend? But ye have robbed me — Notwithstanding it is so unjust and presumptuous to defraud God, that men in general are afraid to do it, yet ye have done it. Do you ask, wherein you have robbed me? I answer, In tithes and offerings — By this seems to be meant the first-fruits of their ground and cattle, and other offerings which were allotted to the priests, Deuteronomy 18:4 , out of which revenue they were to provide the daily sacrifices, and also maintain the Levites, who attended upon the service in the temple. Ye are cursed with a curse — Are greatly cursed, or, you lie under a heavy curse, and are likely still to do so, for the curse shall continue upon you while you continue in this your sinful course. For ye have robbed me, even this whole nation — This has not been the crime of a few only, but ye have in general defrauded me, and evil shall come upon you for it. In a note on Romans 2:22 , where the apostle ranks sacrilege with idolatry, Grotius observes, “Non multum distat falsos deos colere et verum spoliare.” There is very little difference between adoring false gods and robbing the true God.

(8) Robbed me. —Because the tithes are said to be offered to Jehovah, and then He gives them to the Levites in place of an inheritance ( Numbers 18:24 ). In tithes and offerings.—See Notes on Exodus 23:19; Leviticus 27:30-33; Numbers 18:12; Numbers 18:21-24; Deuteronomy 18:4; Leviticus 3:1-17; Leviticus 7:11-21; Leviticus 7:28-36.

8 . ye have robbed ] Rather, rob ; lit. are robbing : it is still going on. tithes ] By the Law of Moses (1) “the tenth of all produce, as well as of flocks and cattle, belongs to Jehovah and must be offered to Him” ( Leviticus 27:30 ; Leviticus 27:32 ); and (2) this tenth is “assigned to the Levites as the reward of their services” ( Numbers 18:21 ; Numbers 18:24 ). Nehemiah in his day had to deal once and again with the evil here rebuked. Notwithstanding the “sure covenant” into which they had entered ( Nehemiah 9:38 with Nehemiah 10:32-39 ), he had occasion, on his return to Jerusalem after an absence of a few years, to reform them again in this very particular ( Nehemiah 13:10-14 ).

8. rob—literally, "cover": hence, defraud. Do ye call defrauding God no sin to be "returned" from (Mal 3:7)? Yet ye have done so to Me in respect to the tithes due to Me, namely, the tenth of all the remainder after the first-fruits were paid, which tenth was paid to the Levites for their support (Le 27:30-33): a tenth paid by the Levites to the priests (Nu 18:26-28): a second tenth paid by the people for the entertainment of the Levites, and their own families, at the tabernacle (De 12:18): another tithe every third year for the poor, &c. (De 14:28, 29). offerings—the first-fruits, not less than one-sixtieth part of the corn, wine, and oil (De 18:4; Ne 13:10, 12). 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 doubly God was defrauded, the priests not discharging aright their sacrificial duties, and robbing God of the services of the Levites, who were driven away by destitution [Grotius].

Verse 8. - Will a man rob God? The prophet shows the people how they have departed from God, in not keeping even the outward observances of religion. The word translated "rob," defraud, found also in Proverbs 22:23 , etc., is rendered in the Septuagint, πτερνιεῖ , "trip up," "supplant;" Vulgate, si affliget homo Deum , or, as St. Jerome first translated, "si affiget homo Deum," and referred the words to the crucifixion of our Lord. In tithes and offerings. These were due to the Lord, and therefore in withholding them they were defrauding not man but God. (For tithe, see Leviticus 27:30 , etc.; Numbers 18:21 . See the complaint of Nehemiah, Nehemiah 13:10-12 .) The "offering" meant is the heave offering, the breast and shoulder of the peace offering, which were the priests' portion ( Exodus 29:27 ; Leviticus 7:14, 32-34 ; comp. Nehemiah 10:37-39 ). Malachi 3:8

Will a man rob God? among the many deviations from God’s law (which they do not, because they will not, see) the prophet chargeth them with this kind of sacrilegious theft; they had detained his tithes, shortened him in that portion which he had reserved to himself and for his service, which is, as our version expresseth it, a robbing of God. And as the words lie in the original, they do, by arguing from the less to the greater, aggravate this sin; as they may be read, Will a man rob a great man , or, a judge ? for the word used will bear these notions. Or, Will a man rob the gods ? i.e. do not heathens abhor the foulness of such a fault, and fear the punishment of sacrilege, and therefore would not rob their idols? as another prophet asked once the question, Have any of the nations changed their gods, which yet are no gods? Jeremiah 2:11 ; so now, Have the nations robbed their gods? Yet ye have robbed me ; but blush, ye shameless priests and Jews, you have robbed not a great man, but the great God; not judges, but the Judge of judges; not an idol, but the living God! How great is your crime! Wherein have we robbed thee? a question just like those Malachi 1:7 2:17 3:7 , which see. In tithes: the people robbed God not paying the full tenth, which God appointed should be paid to him.

The priests robbed God in tithes, while they took too much, or it may be all, for their own particular and family use, and did not distribute them to all that by God’s law had a right to a proportion of them. And offerings ; either first-fruits, or other oblations and gifts, which were appointed to be brought to the temple for the service of God; in all which the people and priests had given him less than his due. Will a man rob God? among the many deviations from God’s law (which they do not, because they will not, see) the prophet chargeth them with this kind of sacrilegious theft; they had detained his tithes, shortened him in that portion which he had reserved to himself and for his service, which is, as our version expresseth it, a robbing of God. And as the words lie in the original, they do, by arguing from the less to the greater, aggravate this sin; as they may be read, Will a man rob a great man , or, a judge ? for the word used will bear these notions. Or, Will a man rob the gods ? i.e. do not heathens abhor the foulness of such a fault, and fear the punishment of sacrilege, and therefore would not rob their idols? as another prophet asked once the question, Have any of the nations changed their gods, which yet are no gods? Jeremiah 2:11 ; so now, Have the nations robbed their gods?

Malachi THE LAST WORD OF PROPHECYMalachi 3:1 - Malachi 3:12 . Deep obscurity surrounds the person of this last of the prophets. It is questioned whether Malachi is a proper name at all. It is the Hebrew word rendered in Malachi 3:1 of our passage ‘My messenger,’ and this has led many authorities to contend that the prophecy is in fact anonymous, the name being only a designation of office. Whether this is so or not, the name, if it is a name, is all that we know about him. The tenor of his prophecy shows that he lived after the restoration of the Temple and its worship, and the sins which he castigates are substantially those with which Ezra and Nehemiah had to fight. One ancient Jewish authority asserts that he was Ezra; but the statement has no confirmation, and if it had been correct, we should not have expected that such an author would have been anonymous. This dim figure, then, is the last of the mighty line of prophets, and gives strong utterance to the ‘hope of Israel’! One clear voice, coming from we scarcely know whose lips, proclaims for the last time, ‘He comes! He comes!’ and then all is silence for four hundred years. Modern critics, indeed, hold that the bulk of the Psalter is of later date; but that contention has much to do before it can be regarded as established. The first point worthy of notice in this passage, then, is the concentration, in this last prophetic utterance, of that element of forward-looking expectancy which marked all the earlier revelation