Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Malachi 2:17 - 2:17
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Ye; ye priests and people, slight in your religion toward God. Unfaithful in your covenant with your wives.
Have wearied the Lord (after the manner of man this is spoken of God) with your words; your perverse reasonings, or impious quarrellings against God, among which, one most ungodly and atheistical does come to be remarked on.
When ye say; when your discourse and reasoning is managed to the overthrow (if it were possible) of all morality and goodness.
Every one, not one excepted by these illogical atheists,
that doeth evil is good; that is a wicked man, and doth wickedness, (as you prophets preach to us,) is misrepresented by you; such are good men, and what they do is good. Thus they call evil good: woe then to them!
In the sight of the Lord; in the account and judgment of God.
And he delighteth in them; as appears (say these atheists) by his prospering of them: did he not delight in them, would he so enrich and prosper them? Or,
Where is the God of judgment? or if they be evil, and their ways, designs, and doings be evil, and punishable, where is that God of judgment? or why doth he delay execution of his displeasure against such men and ways? I am apt to think that the irreligious sentiments of the priests, their superficial managing of the solemn worship of God, their adulteries, and multiplying of wives, hitherto unpunished, had brought them either to think there was no such thing as moral goodness or moral viciousness in men’s actions; or that if there were, since no punishment was laid on the vicious, nor any encouragement or present reward bestowed on the virtuous, that God did not, nor ever would, concern himself to judge it; and so by an undue way of arguing, had concluded themselves into atheism, the very height of wickedness. That this is likely enough, our age confirms, in which unpunished enormities are atheists’ arguments against God and his providence; and unless he damn them, they will not believe the being of a God. But such must remember, they shall know and believe it at last, if not too late.