Mal 2
1
And now, O priests, this commandment is to you.
2
If you will not hearken, and if you will not lay it to heart, to give glory to my
name, says the Lord Almighty, then I will send forth the curse upon you, and I will
bring a curse upon your blessing: yea, I will curse it, and I will scatter your blessing,
and it shall not exist among you, because you lay not this to heart.
3
Behold, Gr. separate the shoulder from you I turn my back upon you, and I will scatter dung upon your faces, the dung of your
feasts, and I will carry you away at the same time.
4
And you shall know that I have sent this commandment to you, that my covenant might
be with the sons of Levi, says the Lord Almighty.
5
My covenant of life and peace was with him, and I gave Or, power, or, charge to fear me, etc. it him whom he might reverently
fear me, and that he might be See 2 Co 8:20 awe-struck at my name.
6
The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked
before me directing his way in peace, and he turned many from unrighteousness.
7
For the priest’s lips Gr. shall should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger
of the Lord Almighty.
8
But you have turned aside from the way, and caused many to fail in following the law:
you have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord Almighty.
9
And I have made you despised and cast out among all the people, because you have not
kept my ways, but have Gr. accepted persons been partial in the law.
10
Have you not all one father? Did not one God create you? why have you forsaken every
man his brother, to profane the covenant of your fathers?
11
Juda has been forsaken, and an abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem;
for Juda has profaned the holy things of the Lord, which he delighted in, and has
gone after other gods.
12
The Lord will utterly destroy the man that does these things, until he be even cast
down from out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and from among them that offer sacrifice
to the Lord Almighty.
13
And these things which I hated, you did: you covered with tears the altar of the Lord,
and with weeping and groaning because of troubles: is it meet for me to have respect
to your sacrifice, or to receive anything from your hands as welcome?
14
Yet you said, Wherefore? Because the Lord has borne witness between you and the wife
of your youth, whom you has forsaken, and yet she was your partner, and the wife of
your covenant.
15
And did he not do well? and there was the residue of his spirit. But you said, What
does God seek but a seed? But take you heed to your spirit, and forsake not the wife
of your youth.
16
But if you should hate your wife and put her away, says the Lord God of Israel, then
ungodliness shall cover your thoughts, says the Lord Almighty: therefore take you
heed to your spirit, and forsake them not,
17
you that have provoked God with your words. But you said, Wherein have we provoked
him? In that you say, Every one that does evil is a pleasing object in the sight of
the Lord, and he takes pleasure in such; Or, and, Where, etc. and where is the God of justice?