Mal 2:10-17 | Clarke | STEP | Verse 10 Have we not all one Father? - From this to the prophet censures the marriages of Israelites with strange women, which the law had forbidden, . And also divorces, which seem to have been multiplied for the purpose of contracting these prohibited marriages. - Newcome. Why do we deal treacherously - Gain the affections of the daughter of a brother Jew, and then profane the covenant of marriage, held sacred among our fathers, by putting away this same wife and daughter! How wicked, cruel, and inhuman!

Malachi 2:10-17

Verse 10

Have we not all one Father? - From this to Mal 2:16 the prophet censures the marriages of Israelites with strange women, which the law had forbidden, Deu 7:3. And also divorces, which seem to have been multiplied for the purpose of contracting these prohibited marriages. - Newcome.

Why do we deal treacherously - Gain the affections of the daughter of a brother Jew, and then profane the covenant of marriage, held sacred among our fathers, by putting away this same wife and daughter! How wicked, cruel, and inhuman! Verse 11

Daughter of a strange god - Of a man who worships an idol. Verse 12

The master and the scholar - He who teachers such doctrine, and he who follows this teaching, the Lord will cut off both the one and the other. Verse 13

Covering the altar of the Lord with tears - Of the poor women who, being divorced by cruel husbands, come to the priests, and make an appeal to God at the altar; and ye do not speak against this glaring injustice. Verse 14

Ye say, Wherefore? - Is the Lord angry with us? Because ye have been witness of the contract made between the parties; and when the lawless husband divorced his wife, the wife of his youth, his companion, and the unite of his covenant, ye did not execute on him the discipline of the law. They kept their wives till they had passed their youth, and then put them away, that they might get young ones in their place. Verse 15

And did not he make one? - One of each kind, Adam and Eve. Yet had he the residue of the Spirit, he could have made millions of pairs, and inspired them all with living souls. Then wherefore one? He made one pair from whom all the rest might proceed, that he might have a holy offspring; that children being a marked property of one man and one woman, proper care might be taken that they should be brought up in the discipline of the Lord. Perhaps the holy or godly seed, זרע אלהים zera Elohim, a seed of God, may refer to the Messiah. God would have the whole human race to spring from one pair, that Christ, springing from the same family, might in his sufferings taste death for every man; because he had that nature that was common to the whole human race. Had there been several heads of families in the beginning, Jesus must have been incarnated from each of those heads, else his death could have availed for those only who belonged to the family of which he was incarnated.

Take heed to your spirit - Scrutinize the motives which induce you to put away your wives. Verse 16

For the Lord - hateth putting away - He abominates all such divorces, and him that makes them.

Covereth violence with his garment - And he also notes those who frame idle excuses to cover the violence they have done to the wives of their youth, by putting them away, and taking others in their place, whom they now happen to like better, when their own wives have been worn down in domestic services. Verse 17

Ye have wearied the Lord - He has borne with you so long, and has been provoked so often, that he will bear it no longer. It is not fit that he should.

Every one that doeth evil - Ye say that it is right in the sight of the Lord to put away a wife, because she has no longer found favor in the sight of her husband. And because it has not been signally punished hitherto, ye blaspheme and cry out, "Where is the God of judgment?" Were he such as he is represented, would he not speak out? All these things show that this people were horribly corrupt. The priests were bad; the prophets were bad; the Levites were bad; and no wonder that the people were irreligious, profane, profligate, and cruel.