Reflections on Malachi 2:10-12

10 Have we not all one Father?
Has not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously with one another
By profaning the covenant of the fathers?
11 Judah has dealt treacherously,
And an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem,
For Judah has profaned
The LORD’s holy institution which He loves:
He has married the daughter of a foreign god.
12 May the LORD cut off from the tents of Jacob
The man who does this, being awake and aware,^[a]
Yet who brings an offering to the LORD of hosts!


The Lord admonishes the priests and the Jews. He highlights the fact that they have profaned the covenant of their fathers, and have embraced deceit and treachery in their dealings with one another. They have sinned both in their relationship with God and their relationships with men.

God, in his sovereign grace, has earmarked the Jews as His chosen people, but they have become too presumptuous of His love and His grace towards them and have turned ungrateful. Their words and actions also show the vanity of man in assuming that he can do without God. They have also failed to seek God in the right way, that is, to seek him by keeping their covenant with Him and obeying His word.

The purity of God's covenant with them is also defiled by their marrying of foreign women who worship idols. Intermarriages were forbidden in the commandments delivered through Moses before the Jews went on to possess the Promised Land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey, in the book of Deuteronomy.


Deuteronomy 7:1-5

1 “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, 2 and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. 3 Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. 4 For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. 5 But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images,^[a] and burn their carved images with fire.


Moses goes on to explain the reasons for the commandments. The main reason is that God has set apart the Jews as a holy people consecrated to him and a royal priesthood set apart for Him and thus, He will not tolerate any defilement or pollution by them.


Deuteronomy 7:6-11

6 “For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. 7 The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; 8 but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 “Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.


In Malachi 2:12, the Lord hands out a stiff sentence to those who have gone against His commandments and defiled His covenant, while still bringing offerings before Him: They will be cut off, scrapped off and blotted out from His kingdom.

The covenant of God is not to be separated or viewed in isolation from His word. One keeps his covenant with God through obeying His word. Both are interlinked, and having one without fulfilling the other is to make a mockery of the love and grace of God.

Let us not be like the priests and Jews of Malachi's age, presuming in arrogance that God would close an eye and be appeased through their offerings when they have defiled the purity of their covenant with God through their words and actions.

Let us not take God for granted.



References:
1. Matthew Henry's Commentary of the Bible
http://www.ccel.org/h/henry/?show=worksBy

2. John Calvin's Commentary of the Bible
http://www.ccel.org/c/calvin/?show=worksBy

3. The Spirit-Filled Bible (NKJV)

4. Life Application Bible (NIV)