Welcome to Bible Fiber where we are encountering the textures and shades of the prophetic tapestry in a year-long study of the twelve minor prophets. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern.
This week we are reading Malachi’s second disputation which is unfortunately not marked off by chapter divisions. Normally, I prefer to keep it clean and do the reading challenge by order of chapters, but with Malachi it will be messier. It makes more sense to study the book one disputation at a time rather than chapter. The second disputation is the longest stretching from Malachi 1:6-2:9, so buckle up for this episode.
Malachi’s first disputation from last week reminded the people of their divine election going back to the days of Jacob and Esau. The point was that the misfortunes faced by the postexilic community were not because of God’s disengagement. Their lack of zeal was to blame. The people were not quick to repent like in Zechariah’s day (Zech. 1:6) or comply like in the days of Haggai (Hag. 1:14). A spiritual malaise had settled over the whole community, but this was particularly the case with the priesthood.
Malachi’s disputation against the priesthood is delivered via question and response, the prophet’s preferred teaching tool. God sets up his indictment of the priests by first establishing agreement with the people about the respect and honor that a son owes his father or a servant his master. Knowing everyone would agree with the terms of common earthly relationships, he asks, “A son honors his father and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is the honor due me? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me?” (1:6). The analogy highlights that if God is their heavenly father and master, how much more respect does he deserve than an earthly father or master?
Malachi accuses the priests of despising the name of the Lord (1:6). A major moment in the story of God extending himself to his chosen people is when God through the burning bush disclosed his name to Moses (Ex. 3:14). A whole extensive theology exists around God’s name. God’s name represents his whole identity, his character and essence. To disrespect the name of God is to reject him completely, as if the revealing of his name was of no consequence to the Jewish people.
In Malachi’s hypothetical dialogue, the priests are clueless as to how they offended God’s name. They ask, “how have we polluted it?” (1:6). God is specific in his reply. Their Temple offerings are unacceptable and have defiled his altar. According to biblical law, the priests could only sacrifice healthy animals without defect (Deut. 15:21, Lev. 1:3; 3:6; 22:25). All major offerings in the Temple were supposed to represent the first fruit of the community’s harvests or flocks. Only pure and clean sacrifices that were acceptable by the law could make atonement for the people. The priests of Malachi’s day lowered the standards of the sacrificial system on their own authority. They tolerated lame, blind, and sick animals as offerings and they did so in direct contradiction to the Mosaic law (1:8).
The disputation does not explain the motivation of the priests but it had to be either greed or convenience. Were they lowering the requirements on sacrifices out of lazy indifference, replacing the divinely revealed way with a more convenient way. Or were priests getting paid to accept defective animals as legitimate? The lame and blind animals were of no worth to their owners at the market, but they could still be adequate food for the priests who depended on the animal sacrifices for sustenance. Whether it was carelessness or corruption, the result is the same. The priests knew the Torah standards. They had them memorized. Their sin was not accidental; it was intentional (2:8).
God wants to terminate the whole sham operation of faulty offerings (1:7). He threatens to shut the Temple doors before allowing the sacrificial system to continue. God laments, “Oh, that someone among you would shut the Temple doors, so that you would not kindle fire on my altar in vain!” (1:10). The Temple doors most likely refers to the doors to the outdoor courtyard where the priests conducted sacrifices twice daily on the altar for burnt offerings.
According to the laws of Leviticus, certain annual offerings were obligatory on the whole community, but other offerings were voluntary. These were called freewill offerings (Num. 15:3). God reserves a special curse to the hypocrite who makes a freewill offering and knowingly tries to cheat the divine: “Cursed be the cheat who has a male in the flock and vows to give it and yet sacrifices to the Lord what is blemished” (1:14). In the case of this hypocrite, the priests are also implicated. They are the ones who decide the acceptability of the animal and they know the Mosaic regulations for freewill offerings. (Lev. 27:11-12). Freewill offerings are male sheep, goats, or bulls without blemish or deformity. A modern-day equivalent would be a Christian who makes a public commitment to a large tithe to their church and quietly underfunds the pledge.
Malachi, like other prophets, looks beyond his frustrations with his contemporaries to a future day when the whole earth will worship Yahweh and worship him purely. God says, “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name and a pure offering, for my name is great among the nations” (1:11). Where the elect failed, the nations will succeed.
No such universal recognition of Yahweh happened in Malachi’s day. There were also no mass conversions to Judaism in the lifetimes of Micah, Isaiah, or Zechariah, other prophets who made predictive statements about the nations. Visions of the nations accepting Yahweh were all visions of the age to come.
The job of the prophet was to deliver the message of the Lord to the intended audience. Since the priests were important leaders in the community, the intermediaries between God and the people, challenging the priestly class had to be difficult for anyone, even a prophet. Malachi must have been certain of the divine revelation given to him before he confronted the sole operators of the Temple sacrificial system. Most likely, his indictment was delivered in the Temple courts, the priestly domain where they made atonement for the people and issued blessings to the worshipers. As the prophet transitions from his message of indictment to the details of their punishment, he makes clear once again that the priests are the recipients of his address: “And now, O priests, this command is for you” (2:1).
Malachi does not single out the High Priest or distinguish between the Zadokites or Levites. His accusations are comprehensive, including all responsible for officiating in the Temple.
Traditionally, the priests are the ones to speak the Aaronic blessing over the people (Num. 6:22-27). Malachi rebukes them. If they do not listen and change their ways, God will put their blessings under a curse (2:2), meaning he will nullify the blessings they pronounce which renders them impotent as priests.
Malachi is big on covenant language, all of which are rooted in the blessings and curses detailed in the exhortations of Moses in Deuteronomy 28-29. It is always important to remember that the prophets did not create a new theology. They reinforce the established theology revealed to Moses. Violating the covenant has consequences, but covenant regulations always offer the adherents a choice: if you do x, you will be cursed with y or if you do x, you will be blessed with y.
Malachi warns the priests that if they do not listen to God and bring glory to his name, he will rebuke their offspring and spread dung on their faces (2:3). No doubt hyperbole is the currency of the prophets, but this punishment seems excessively grotesque. Malachi’s warning is meant to target the two most important aspects of the priesthood that qualify them for the position: their lineage and their purity.
Since the time of Aaron, the tribe of Levi was tasked with officiating Temple sacrifices. When God says, “indeed, I have already cursed them” (2:2), he may be calling back to his past punishment of corrupt priests. For example, God ended the line of Eli because of his evil sons Hophni and Phinehas. The young priests were guilty of laying with the women who came to Shiloh to worship and they greedily helped themselves to the offerings for food without bothering to sacrifice them on the Lord’s altar (1 Sam. 2). God allowed Eli’s sons to be killed at the hands of the Philistines and Eli died hearing the news. In case Malachi’s audience had forgot, God was subtly reminding them that he can make good on his threat to end one generation of priests and start with a new one.
Priests had to keep a high standard of ritual purity in order to do the work of Temple sacrifices. Dung spread on their faces certainly disqualified them from ritual purity. Malachi uses the word peresh which is translated as dung or entrails. According to its usage in the Bible, peresh includes the animal’s intestines and the waste inside the stomach. Because Malachi clarifies the “dung of your offerings,” we know that he means the animal waste that accumulated from the process of animal sacrifice at the Temple. The law dictated that the entrails of the animal be removed before sacrificing it on the altar (Lev. 4:11-12). Priests later transported the waste from the Temple area and burned it outside the holy space (Ex. 29:14). God’s warning was that he was going to disqualify the priests and do so in the most humiliating way possible. This is a classic example of a punishment that fits the crime. The priests defiled the Lord’s table with their inappropriate sacrifices (1:7) and in return God was going to defile them.
In the next verse, God invokes his covenant with Levi calling it a “covenant of life and well-being” (2:5). The granting of life and peace was intended as the reward for the priests’ proper service to God. However, their lackadaisical approach to their privileged vocation threatened to cancel the “covenant of Levi” (2:4). You are not alone if you are wondering what is the covenant of Levi and where is that in the Bible? In fact, the Bible does not describe a formal covenant with Levi. The formal covenants are the Abrahamic covenant, Mosaic covenant and Davidic covenant.
Malachi’s “covenant with Levi” is most likely pointing to one or two episodes in the Torah that set the tribe of Levi apart and gave them a special role in the community. Neither of those have anything to do with the actual Levi, the son of Jacob, who Genesis does not present in a positive light. The first episode was when the people built a golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai, the Levites were the only ones to take a stand with Moses against idol worship (Ex. 32:26-29). From that day forward, the sons of Levi were anointed as the “perpetual priesthood throughout all their generations” (Ex. 40:15).
Another moment that was firmly imprinted in the national conscious was the blessing of Moses on the Tribe of Levi (Deut. 33:11). Before Moses died, Moses appointed the Levites, his own tribe, as teachers of the law which included making judicial decisions for the community using the Thummim and Urim (Deut. 33:11).
The covenant of Levi may also be a callback to the covenant of “perpetual priesthood” that God made with Aaron’s grandson Phinehas who stabbed an Israelite man and Midianite woman in the act. The zeal Phinehas possessed for God’s law singlehandedly turned back the wrath of God while they were camping in the wilderness before entering the promise land (Num. 25:13). The priesthood of Malachi’s day made a stark contrast to the zeal of Phinehas. They resented their responsibilities and did not care to represent Yahweh’s message or will.
Malachi goes on to describe the covenant faithfulness of either an ideal priesthood or a historic priesthood from some time in Israel’s classical period (2:5-7). Malachi demonstrates a higher view of the priesthood than any of the other prophets. He describes the exemplary priesthood as offering “true instruction,” walking with God in “integrity and uprightness” (2:6).
Malachi gives the profile of a truly righteous priest, in contrast to the present priesthood. The passage says, “For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts” (2:7). The priests were appointed to be the communicators of the law (Deut. 31:9-13) and covenant enforcers. Instead, they were being covenant violators and their lack of faith was contagious in the community. The priests lowered the standards for themselves and therefore the community lowered their standard of obedience as well. The priests were meant to be a spiritual role model, but like Ezekiel pointed out they could also be a “stumbling block” (Ezek. 44:12).
The priests failed in their two main responsibilities. They did not make atonement for the people through their sacrifices, and they did not teach the people the law. God says, as a result, he will make the priests “despised and humbled before all the people” (2:9). The Hebrew word, bazah, means to despise or disdain. Bazah is used as a bookend word in the last curse pronouncement in the section (2:9) and it is also used three times at the beginning of the disputation when God accuses the priests of despising his name by polluting his altar (1:6-7). Because the priests have despised God’s name, he will see to it that the people grow to despise the priests.
As Christians, we believe it was ultimately the sacrifice of God, not of humans, that atoned for the sins of the nations. No priest was qualified for the task of submitting the sacrifice of God’s son. Jesus played both roles in the final atonement. He was the “great high priest” who Hebrews says empathized with our weaknesses because he too had to endure and overcome every earthly temptation (Heb. 4:15). Yet, Jesus was also the last sacrifice, the truly perfect and unblemished offering of atonement. Hebrews says, “it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:9).
Join me next week for the third disputation in Malachi which covers Malachi 2:10 to 2:16. We will see that the problem is not only with the priests. The people of the postexilic community have their own faith deficiencies.
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Shabbat Shalom