Malachi 2:11-15

2:11 Judah has become disloyal, and unspeakable sins have been committed in Israel and Jerusalem.¹ For Judah has profaned² the holy things that the Lord loves and has turned to a foreign god!³ 2:12 May the Lord cut off from the community⁴ of Jacob every last person who does this,⁵ as well as the person who presents improper offerings to the Lord who rules over all!

2:13 You also do this: You cover the altar of the Lord with tears⁶ as you weep and groan, because he no longer pays any attention to the offering nor accepts it favorably from you. 2:14 Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young,⁷ to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law.⁸ 2:15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this.⁹ What did our ancestor¹⁰ do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth.¹¹

¹map For location see Map5-B1; Map6-F3; Map7-E2; Map8-F2; Map10-B3; JP1-F4; JP2-F4; JP3-F4; JP4-F4.

²tn Or perhaps “secularized”; cf. NIV “desecrated”; TEV, NLT “defiled”; CEV “disgraced.”

³tn Heb “has married the daughter of a foreign god.” Marriage is used here as a metaphor to describe Judah’s idolatry, that is, her unfaithfulness to the Lord and “remarriage” to pagan gods. But spiritual intermarriage found expression in literal, physical marriage as well, as vv. 14-16 indicate.

⁴tn Heb “tents,” used figuratively for the community here (cf. NCV, TEV); NLT “the nation of Israel.”

⁵tc Heb “every man who does this, him who is awake and him who answers.” For “answers” the LXX suggests an underlying Hebrew text of עָנָה (’anah, “to be humbled”), and then the whole phrase is modified slightly: “until he is humbled.” This requires also that the MT עֵר (’er, “awake”) be read as עֵד (’ed, “until”; here the LXX reads ἕως, Jews). The reading of the LXX is most likely an alteration to correct what is arguably a difficult text.

tn Heb “every man who does this, him who is awake and him who answers.” The idea seems to be a merism expressing totality, that is, everybody from the awakener to the awakened, thus “every last person who does this” (NLT similar); NIV “whoever he may be.”

⁶sn You cover the altar of the Lord with tears. These tears are the false tears of hypocrisy, not genuine tears of repentance. The people weep because the Lord will not hear them, not because of their sin.

⁷tn Heb “the Lord is a witness between you and [between] the wife of your youth.”

⁸sn Though there is no explicit reference to marriage vows in the OT (but see Job 7:13; Prov 2:17; Ezek 16:8), the term law (Heb “covenant”) here asserts that such vows or agreements must have existed. References to divorce documents (e.g., Deut 24:1-3; Jer 3:8) also presuppose the existence of marriage documents.

⁹tn Heb “and not one has done, and a remnant of the spirit to him.” The very elliptical nature of the statement suggests it is proverbial. The present translation represents an attempt to clarify the meaning of the statement (cf. NASB).

¹⁰tn Heb “the one.” This is an oblique reference to Abraham who sought to obtain God’s blessing by circumventing God’s own plan for him by taking Hagar as wife (Gen 16:1-6). The result of this kind of intermarriage was, of course, disastrous (Gen 16:11-12).

¹¹sn The wife he took in his youth probably refers to the first wife one married (cf. NCV “the wife you married when you were young”).