Malaquias 2

Malaquias 2

Morgan explains that this passage... teaches us, that at the back of the declension of the people is the declension and corruption of the priest; that the people failed to have a right conception of God, because the priest ceased to give them the true conception. The whole company of the people have passed out of the high spiritual realm of past history, because the priest has tampered with—corrupted as the word is here—the very covenant of God. (The Spirit of the Age) Stumble (03782)(kashal) means to stagger or totter as of a man physically falling but used figuratively here to describe "falling into sin! The Lxx has an interesting Greek verb, astheneo, which means to be weak and in this context to cause to fail (cp astheneo in Ro 4:19) and it is used in Hosea 4:5 to describe those who "will stumble (kashal; astheneo) by day." MacKay - ‘Stumble’ usually refers to the result of being unsteady on one’s feet, but the prevalent Hebrew conception of life as a journey (‘walk’ in Mal 2:6 and ‘way’ earlier in this verse) led to the idea of failing to keep to, or progress along, the path of life. It was the aim of the wicked to ‘make someone fall’, literally, ‘cause them to stumble’ (Pr. 4:16), and the worthless idols of Jeremiah’s day had made the people ‘stumble in their ways’ (Jer. 18:15). The idiom lies behind the expression ‘cause to sin’, literally, ‘put an obstacle in someone’s way so as to cause them to stumble and fall into sin’, that is found in the New Testament (for instance Mt. 5:29–30). Jesus warns sternly about the dangers of leading others astray. ‘But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea’ (Mt. 18:6). Expositor's Bible Commentary - The priests were the custodians of learning, both the preservers and the pioneers of scholarship. But those who sought to drink at those wells found them either dry or poisoned. Instead of turning men into “the way,” the priests did the opposite; they turned men from it. Corrupted (07843)(shachath) means to decay, to go to ruin, to corrupt, to destroy. It was used of Israelites who worshiped the golden calf (Ex 32:7; Dt 9:12; 32:5, Hos 9:9) "The verb is used to denote the action(s) of the world (i.e., it is corrupt) and ultimately the reason for God’s flooding it (Gen. 6:11, 12 -first use in Scripture)." (Baker) The Lxx translates shachath with diaphtheiro which means to corrupt or decay utterly (through and through so to speak) always signifying a change for the worse. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi - Their unfaithful, sinful attitudes and actions did not abrogate the covenant, but did result in their forfeiture of their right to continue as God's intermediaries! Malachi's contemporary Nehemiah gives us an example of blatant corruption by the priests of the covenant of Levi... “Do we then hear about you that you have committed all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women?” 28 Even one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite, so I drove him away from me. 29 Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. (Neh 13:27-29) John