1. The situation in Judah at the time when Malachi prophesied was one of depression and discontent. The expectations which earlier prophets had aroused had not been fulfilled. The restoration from Babylon had brought with it none of the ideal glories promised by the Second Isaiah; bad harvests increased the disappointment, hence many among the people began to doubt the Divine justice. Jehovah, they argued, could no longer be the Holy God, for He was heedless of His people's necessity, and permitted sin to continue unpunished; to what purpose, therefore, should they concern themselves with His service? A spirit of religious indifference and moral laxity began thus to prevail among the people. The same temper appeared even among the priests: they performed their offices perfunctorily; they expressed by their actions, if not by their words, their contempt for the service in which they were engaged.
2. One particular fashion in which the people's wounded pride showed itself was the custom of marriage, which even the best families contracted with the half-heathen “people of the land.” Across Judah there were scattered the descendants of those Jews whom Nebuchadnezzar had not deemed worth removing to Babylon. Whether regarded from a social or from a religious point of view, their fathers had been the dregs of the old community. Their own religion, cut off as they were from the main body of Israel and scattered among the old heathen shrines of the land, must have deteriorated still further; but in all probability they had secured for themselves the best portions of the vacant soil, and now enjoyed a comfort and a stability of welfare far beyond that which was yet attainable by the majority of the returned exiles. More numerous than these dregs of ancient Jewry were the very mixed race of Samaritans. They possessed a rich land, which they had cultivated long enough for many of their families to be settled in comparative wealth. With all these half-pagan Jews and Samaritans, the families of the true Israel, as they regarded themselves, did not hesitate to form alliances, for in the precarious position of the colony such alliances were the surest way both to wealth and to political influence. How much the Jews were mastered by their desire for them is seen from the fact that, when the relatives of their half-heathen brides made it a condition of the marriages that they should first put away their old wives, they readily did so. Divorce became very frequent, and great suffering was inflicted on the native Jewish women.
3. There had also been a sad scarcity of rain, and this had been followed by famine. The locust, too, was devastating the crops, and the vine dropped its fruit untimely. The ruling classes were rapacious. The central authority was so weak that the unjust, if bold enough, succeeded, and the yielding were impoverished. The people suffered so severely that many lost faith in God's justice, and said: “It is vain to serve God”; “They that work wickedness are built up.” More than this, there was disunion in the home. There were some, probably the sons, who thought the new theocratic régime a huge failure. Such were their calamities that they sceptically asked, “What profit is it that we have kept his charge?” The fathers, in many cases, clung tenaciously to Mosaism; but even the saintliest of them thought very seriously about the dark outlook. They often met to strengthen each other's faith, being deeply concerned for the honour of God's name, and distressed at the way in which God's character was lightly spoken of, nay, even profaned.
If Christian people met together and talked to one another as gravely and earnestly about the things for which they were going to ask God, or the matters they intended to lay before Him for His guidance and leadership, as they talk about matters they propose to lay before some political leader, or the programme of some new enterprise which they desire to issue to the world, surely there would be a most amazing extension of our experiences of the power of prayer. It is, of course, a great thing to use the words that have for many generations expressed the outgoing of the heart of humanity; but such well-known words are bound to become empty of their meaning unless, before being used to God at all, they are from time to time considered by the company that is about to utter them. Our common prayer, that is to say, needs time for meditation and deliberation, and opportunity for discussion. It ought to be the final result of high and earnest resolve, deliberately come to by the community, if we want it to have the place and power that the teachings of the Lord and of the writers of the New Testament give to it. What a difference the common confession of sin would have in a group of people who had really opened their hearts to one another, and felt something of the tragedy of individual failure, and also of that other tragedy of the failure of the common Christian life in their midst! And the great thanksgivings, how joyful they would be, and what a vision of the triumphs of the power and goodness of God they would bring with them, if we did but take the simple advice to “count our blessings, and name them one by one” together, before we unitedly turned to God to praise Him!1 [Note: W. Bradfield, Personality and Fellowship (1914), 199.]
