Section V Where Is the God of Judgment?
Malachi 2:17—3:5
In this section Malachi turns from the sinners of his people to those who weary the Lord with their complaint that sin is successful. They worded it, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them”; and again, “Where is the God of justice?” (Berk.) They have lost faith in God. Therefore He will send His messenger to prepare for the coming day of judgment. Then there will be a purification of the priestly order and a full exposure and condemnation of sinners of every kind. For the Lord is unalterably opposed to sin, and the sinners of Judah must perish. It is uncertain whether this section closes with v. 5 or 6; the latter goes equally well with it or the following section. We shall follow The Berkeley Version and Moffatt in closing it with v. 5.
A. THE COMPLAINT OF THE PEOPLE, 2:17
Ye have wearied the Lord with your words, the prophet charges (17). This is no novel idea. In Isaiah the Lord complains, “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them” (1:14). And again, “Thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities” (Isa. 43:24). In like manner St. Paul says, “Grieve not the holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30). Yet ye say, Wherein have we wearied him? The prophet answers, When ye say, Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delighteth in them; or, Where is the God of judgment? (17) Jerome comments appropriately:
The people, when returned from Babylon, seeing all the nations around, and the Babylonians themselves, serving idols but abounding in wealth, strong in body, possessing all which is accounted good in this world, and themselves, who had the knowledge of God, overwhelmed with want, hunger, servitude, is scandalized and says, “There is no providence in human things; all things are borne along by blind chance, and not governed by the judgment of God; nay rather, things evil please Him, things good displease Him; or if God does discriminate all things, where is His equitable and just judgment?” 1
B. THE ANSWER OF THE WORD, 3:1-5
The last question, “Where is the God of judgment?” provides the lead for a divine pronouncement, Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom you delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts (1). “Evil as the present may seem, God is coming soon to correct its inequities.”2
Two events are here predicted: (1) the coming of the Lord's messenger to prepare the way for God; (2) the coming of the Lord himself, called particularly the messenger (angel) of the covenant.
1. The Coming of the Forerunner (3: lA)
The thought here is that of Isa. 40:3-5; 52:7; 57:14. The first of these prophecies is quoted along with our passage in the second Gospel, as being fulfilled by John the Baptist (Mark 1:2-3).
Douglas Rawlinson Jones has given the Christian interpretation of this prophecy: “The point here is that, though the contemporary priests are men-pleasers, the Lord will send a true messenger to prepare for his coming in judgment. Very soon this figure was understood to be a prophet, a veritable Elijah (4:5). Once the visitation of the Temple was seen to have been made by Jesus, then in all respects John the Baptist could be recognized as the one who fulfilled the promise of the herald.”3
2. The Coming of the Lord (3: lb-5)
The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple. This teaches us that judgment begins at the house of the Lord (Ezek. 9:6; I Pet. 4:17). The Lord is not the sacred name Yahweh, nor is it Adonai, the form which is usually substituted for it in reading.4 The word here is the rare ha-Adon (the literal equivalent of “the Lord “), which is occasionally prefixed to Yahweh as in Exod. 23:17; Isa. 1:24. On the Day of Pentecost, Simon Peter declared, “God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). The earliest Christian confession was the words, “Jesus is Lord” (cf. I Cor. 12:3; Phil. 2:11). The Christian conviction is that Jesus is God, not God the Father but God the Son: “God was in Christ” (II Cor. 5:19). Jesus Christ was no mere man among men, no angel masquerading as a man, no secondary divinity created in eternity, but God the Almighty, the only God who is, come down to us as Jesus of Nazareth. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). This we believe Malachi is foretelling.
Even the messenger of the covenant. J. M. Powis Smith notes: “This ‘messenger’ can hardly be identical with the forerunner, viz. ‘my messenger,’ at the opening [of the] verse; for his coming is here made simultaneous with that of 'the Lord,’ who can hardly be other than Yahweh himself, and the coming of ‘my messenger’ is explicitly announced as preceding that of Yahweh.”5 T. T. Perowne has given a defintive treatment of this title of our Lord.
The idea of the messenger, which pervades this prophecy, culminates (as do the Old Testament ideas of the prophet, the priest and the king) in the Messiah, who is in the highest sense the Messenger of God to man. The Angel, or Messenger, whose presence in the Church was recognized from the beginning (Acts vii. 38; Exod. xxiii. 20, 21; Isaiah lxiii. 9, et al.), follows up these “prelud-ings of the Incarnation” by being “made flesh and dwelling among us.” The covenant, which was before the Law (Gal. iii. 17) and yet by virtue of its later introduction “a new covenant” (Jer. xxxi. 31-34; Heb. viii. 7-13), He comes, in fulfilment of promise and prophecy (Isaiah xlii. 6, Iv. 3), as its Messenger and Mediator (Heb. xii. 24), to inaugurate and ratify with His blood (Matt. xxvi. 28; Heb. xiii. 20); while He vindicates His claim to be “the God of judgment” whom they desired, by the work of discriminating justice which He performs (w. 2-5).6
a. The Lord shall purijy (3:2-4). There is a twofold object in the coming of the Lord: (1) To purify the priesthood and (2) to execute judgment upon sinners (3:5). In presenting this truth Malachi seems to blend the first and second comings of Christ. The First Coming, too, was a time of sifting and severance, according as those to whom He came did or did not receive Him. “For judgment I am come into this world, that they which see not might see; and that they which see might be made blind” (John 9:39). Again we read in the Fourth Gospel: “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already” (John 3:18). Every soul is in a state of grace or out of it, in God's favor or under His wrath, and “every one shall be salted with fire” (Mark 9:49), either the fire of the Holy Spirit baptism or the fire of Gehenna. Therefore we read here: But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers’ soap (2).
John the Baptist was most certainly echoing Malachi when he declared: “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matt. 3:11-12). “The power of fire, we know, is twofold,” John Calvin comments; “for it burns and it purifies; it burns what is corrupt but it purifies gold and silver from their dross. The prophet no doubt meant to include both.”7 As “God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), who must burn out the dross, either He must by His grace consume the sin within us or must consume us with it, in hell.
He is also like fullers' soap. A fuller was a bleacher of cloth. “In the Anglo-Saxon Gospels John the Baptist is called ‘The Fuller.’” 8 This idea is parallel to the idea of Refiner.
And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness (3). After the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost we read in Acts that “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7). “But more largely,” Pusey points out, “as Zion and Jerusalem are the titles for the Christian Church, and Israel who believed was the true Israel, so 'the sons of Levi’ are the true Levites, the Apostles and their successors in the Christian priesthood.”9 The purpose of this purging is that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Peter declares of believers: “Ye also … are built up … an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (I Pet. 2:5). The author of Hebrews says in the same vein: “For we have an altar. … By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually” (13: 10, 15). The most precious sacrifice we can offer the Lord is ourselves (Rom. 12:1).
Malachi continues, Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years (4). These days of old are the days before the degeneracy of Israel (cf. Isa. 1:25-27; Jer. 7:21-26; Hos. 2:15; 11:1).
In 1-3 we find “Malachi's Vision of the Messiah.” (1) The prophecy proclaimed, 1 (fulfilled in John the Baptist, Matt. 3:1-10; and in Jesus, the Messiah, Matt. 3:11-12; John 1:35-36); (2) Purity promised, 2; (3) Purging performed, 3 (G. B. Williamson).
b. The Lord shall judge (3:5). The RSV translates v. 5, “Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.” This is the answer to the question, “Where is the God of judgment?” (2:17). After the Temple has been cleansed and the house of God prepared for the Master, God will come and set right the injustices which make men doubt His goodness. Sorcerers will fall under His judgment. This is the only “religious” sin condemned. The others are social sins—adultery, false swearing, injustice, and inhumanity. Like the greatest of the prophets, Malachi regards sins against the social order as those with which God is most particularly concerned. He lays chief emphasis upon the wickedness of those who exploit the weak and helpless, those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right (5). Malachi was as deeply concerned about the morality of the people as he was about their worship.