Malachi 1:8
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When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is it not wrong? And when you present the lame and sick ones, is it not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you or show you favor?” asks the LORD of Hosts.
Commentaries
Excerpts gathered from published commentaries to ground the reading.
God's Love, and the Contempt of His NameMalachi 1:1-2:9 The Lord has shown love to Israel (Mal 1:2-5), but Israel refuses Him the gratitude which is due, since the priests despise His name by offering bad sacrifices, and thereby cherish the delusion that God cannot do without the sacrifices (Mal 1:6-14). The people are therefore punished with adversity, and the priesthood with desecration (Mal 2:1-9).
Open source ↗Thus prophet is sent first to convince and then to comfort, first to discover sin and to reprove for that and then to promise the coming of him who shall take away sin. And this method the blessed Spirit takes in dealing with souls, Joh 16:8. He first opens the wound and then applies the healing balm. God had provided (and one would think effectually) for the engaging of Israel to himself by providences and ordinances; but it seems, by the complaints here made of them, that they received the grace of God in both these in vain. I. They were very ungrateful to God for his favours to them, and rendered not again according to the benefit they received (Mal 1:1-5). II. They were very careless and remiss in the observance of his institutions; the priests especially were so, who were in a particular manner charged with them (Mal 1:6-14). And what shall we say of those whom neither providences nor ordinances work upon, and who affront God in those very things wherein they should honour him?
Open source ↗1:8 The governor was Persia’s appointed overseer of the province of Judah. The juxtaposition of my altar (1:7) and your governor (1:8) reveals a confusion of loyalties among the Levitical priests. • says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies: This phrase is known as the messenger formula in prophetic speech and signifies that God’s authority stands behind the prophet’s message.
Open source ↗Cross-references
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But if an animal has a defect, is lame or blind, or has any serious flaw, you must not sacrifice it to the LORD your God.
Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to Me, and though they eat the meat, the LORD does not accept them. Now He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins: They will return to Egypt.
This is what the LORD says about this people: “Truly they love to wander; they have not restrained their feet. So the LORD does not accept them; He will now remember their guilt and call their sins to account.”
May He remember all your gifts and look favorably on your burnt offerings. Selah
So now, take seven bulls and seven rams, go to My servant Job, and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. Then My servant Job will pray for you, for I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. For you have not spoken accurately about Me, as My servant Job has.”
“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would no longer kindle useless fires on My altar! I take no pleasure in you,” says the LORD of Hosts, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.