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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Malachi 3:7 - 3:7
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After the Lord has announced to the murmuring people that He will suddenly draw near to judgment upon the wicked, He proceeds to explain the reason why He has hitherto withheld His blessing and His salvation. Mal 3:7. “From the days of your fathers ye have departed from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, saith Jehovah of hosts; and ye say, Wherein shall we return? Mal 3:8. Dare a man indeed defraud God, that ye have defrauded me? and ye say, In what have we defrauded Thee? In the tithes and the heave-offering. Mal 3:9. Ye are cursed with the curse, and yet ye defraud me, even the whole nation.” The reason why Israel waits in vain for the judgment and the salvation dawning with it, is not to be found in God, but in the people, in the fact, that from time immemorial they have transgressed the commandments of God (see Isa 43:27; Eze 2:3; Hos 10:9). And yet they regard themselves as righteous. They reply to the call to repentance by saying, בַּמֶּה נָשׁוּב, wherein, i.e., in what particular, shall we turn? The prophet thereupon shows them their sin: they do what no man should presume to attempt - they try to defraud God in the tithe and heave-offering, namely, by either not paying them at all, or not paying them as they should into the house of God. קָבַע, which only occurs here and at Pro 22:23, signifies to defraud, to overreach. הַמַּעֲשֵׂר וגתר is either an accusative of free subordination, or else we must supply the preposition ב from the question itself. On the tithe see Lev 27:30., Num 18:20., and Deu 14:22. (see also my Bibl. Ant. i. p. 337ff.); and on the heave-offering (terūmâh), the portion of his income lifted off from the rest, for the purposes of divine worship, see my Bibl. Ant. i. p. 245. And this they do, notwithstanding the fact that God has already visited them with severe punishment, viz., with the curse of barrenness and of the failure of the harvest. We may see from Mal 3:10-12, that the curse with which they were smitten consisted in this. וְאֹתִי is adversative: yet ye defraud me, and indeed the whole nation, and not merely certain individuals.