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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Malachi 3:13 - 3:13
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The impatient murmuring of the nation. - Mal 3:13. “Your words do violence to me, saith Jehovah; and ye say, What do we converse against Thee? Mal 3:14. Ye say, It is vain to serve God; and what gain is it, that we have kept His guard, and have gone about in deep mourning before Jehovah of hosts? Mal 3:15. And now we call the proud blessed: not only have the doers of wickedness been built up, but they have also tempted God and have been saved.†After the Lord has disclosed to the people the cause of His withholding His blessing, He shows them still further, that their murmuring against Him is unjust, and that the coming day of judgment will bring to light the distinction between the wicked and those who fear God. חָזַק with עַל, to be strong over any one, does not mean to be harsh or burdensome, but to do violence to a person, to overpower him (cf. Exo 12:33; 2Sa 24:4, etc.). The niphal nidbar has a reciprocal meaning, to converse with one another (cf. Eze 33:30). The conversations which they carry on with one another take this direction, that it is useless to serve God, because the righteous have no advantage over sinners. For שָ×מַר מִשְ×מַרְתּוֹ see the comm. on Gen 26:5. HaÌ‚lakh qedoÌ„rannı̄th, to go about dirty or black, either with their faces and clothes unwashed, or wrapped in black mourning costume (saq), is a sign of mourning, here of fasting, as mourning for sin (cf. Psa 35:13-14; Psa 38:7; Job 30:28; 1 Maccabees 3:48). ×žÖ´×¤Ö°Ö¼× Öµ×™ יְהֹוָה, from awe of Jehovah. The fasting, and that in its external form, they bring into prominence as a special sign of their piety, as an act of penitence, through which they make reparation for certain sins against God, by which we are not to understand the fasting prescribed for the day of atonement, but voluntary fasting, which was regarded as a special sign of piety. What is reprehensible in the state of mind expressing itself in these words, is not so much the complaint that their piety brings them no gain (for such complaints were uttered even by believing souls in their hours of temptation; cf. Psa 73:13), as the delusion that their merely outward worship, which was bad enough according to what has already been affirmed, is the genuine worship which God must acknowledge and reward. This disposition to attribute worth to the opus operatum of fasting it attacked even by Isaiah, in Isa 58:1-14; but after the captivity it continued to increase, until it reached its culminating point in Pharisaism. How thoroughly different the persons speaking here are from the believing souls under temptation, who also appeal to their righteousness when calling upon God in their trouble, is especially clear from their further words in Mal 3:15. Because God does not reward their fasting with blessing and prosperity, they begin to call the proud sinners, who have happiness and success, blessed. וְעַתָּה is the particle of inference. The participle מְ×ַשְּ××¨Ö´×™× has the force of a futurum instans (cf. Ewald, §306, d), denoting what men prepare to do. ZeÌ„dı̄m, the haughty or proud, are the heathen, as in Isa 13:11, who are called עֹשֵׂי רִשְ×עָה in the following clause. The next two clauses are placed in a reciprocal relation to one another by gam ... gam (cf. Jer 12:16-17; Exo 1:21), and also, notwithstanding the fact that they have tempted God, are delivered when they fall into misfortune. BaÌ‚chan Elohim, to prove or test God, i.e., to call out His judgment through their wickedness.