Malachi 1:12

1:12 “But you are profaning it by saying that the table of the Lord is common and its offerings ¹  despicable.

Malachi 1:1

Introduction and God’s Election of Israel

1:1 What follows is divine revelation. ²  The word of the Lord came to Israel through Malachi: ³ 

Malachi 2:15-17

2:15 No one who has even a small portion of the Spirit in him does this. ⁴  What did our ancestor ⁵  do when seeking a child from God? Be attentive, then, to your own spirit, for one should not be disloyal to the wife he took in his youth. ⁶  2:16 “I hate divorce,” ⁷  says the Lord God of Israel, “and the one who is guilty of violence,” ⁸  says the Lord who rules over all. “Pay attention to your conscience, and do not be unfaithful.”

Resistance to the Lord through Self-deceit

2:17 You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?” Because you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the Lord’s opinion, ⁹  and he delights in them,” or “Where is the God of justice?”

Ezekiel 41:22

41:22 The altar was of wood, 5¼ feet ¹⁰  high, with its length 3½ feet; ¹¹  its corners, its length, ¹²  and its walls were of wood. He said to me, “This is the table that is before the Lord.”

Ezekiel 41:1

The Inner Temple

41:1 Then he brought me to the outer sanctuary, and measured the jambs; the jambs were 10½ feet ¹³  wide on each side.

Colossians 1:21

Paul’s Goal in Ministry

1:21 And you were at one time strangers and enemies in your ¹⁴  minds ¹⁵  as expressed through ¹⁶  your evil deeds,

Colossians 1:21-22

Paul’s Goal in Ministry

1:21 And you were at one time strangers and enemies in your ¹⁷  minds ¹⁸  as expressed through ¹⁹  your evil deeds, 1:22 but now he has reconciled you ²⁰  by his physical body through death to present you holy, without blemish, and blameless before him –

Colossians 1:27

1:27 God wanted to make known to them the glorious ²¹  riches of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

[1:12]  ¹ tn Heb “fruit.” The following word “food” in the Hebrew text (אָכְלוֹ, ’okhlo) appears to be an explanatory gloss to clarify the meaning of the rare word נִיב (niv, “fruit”; see Isa 57:19 Qere; נוֹב, nov, “fruit,” in Kethib). Cf. ASV “the fruit thereof, even its food.” In this cultic context the reference is to the offerings on the altar.

[1:1]  ² tn Heb “The burden.” The Hebrew term III מַשָּׂא (massa’), usually translated “oracle” or “utterance” (BDB 672 s.v. מַשָּׂא), is a technical term in prophetic literature introducing a message from the Lord (see Zech 9:1; 12:1). Since it derives from a verb meaning “to carry,” its original nuance was that of a burdensome message, that is, one with ominous content. The grammatical structure here suggests that the term stands alone (so NAB, NRSV) and is not to be joined with what follows, “the burden [or “revelation”] of” (so KJV, NASB, ESV).

[1:1]  ³ tn Heb “The word of the Lord to Israel by the hand of Malachi.” There is some question as to whether מַלְאָכִי (mal’akhi) should be understood as a personal name (so almost all English versions) or as simply “my messenger” (the literal meaning of the Hebrew). Despite the fact that the word should be understood in the latter sense in 3:1 (where, however, it refers to a different person), to understand it that way here would result in the book being of anonymous authorship, a situation anomalous among all the prophetic literature of the OT.

[2:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “and not one has done, and a remnant of the spirit to him.” The very elliptical nature of the statement suggests it is proverbial. The present translation represents an attempt to clarify the meaning of the statement (cf. NASB).

[2:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “the one.” This is an oblique reference to Abraham who sought to obtain God’s blessing by circumventing God’s own plan for him by taking Hagar as wife (Gen 16:1-6). The result of this kind of intermarriage was, of course, disastrous (Gen 16:11-12).

[2:15]  ⁶ sn The wife he took in his youth probably refers to the first wife one married (cf. NCV “the wife you married when you were young”).

[2:16]  ⁷ tc The verb שָׂנֵא (sane’) appears to be a third person form, “he hates,” which makes little sense in the context, unless one emends the following word to a third person verb as well. Then one might translate, “he [who] hates [his wife] [and] divorces her…is guilty of violence.” A similar translation is advocated by M. A. Shields, “Syncretism and Divorce in Malachi 2,10-16,” ZAW 111 (1999): 81-85. However, it is possible that the first person pronoun אָנֹכִי (’anokhi, “I”) has accidentally dropped from the text after כִּי (ki). If one restores the pronoun, the form שָׂנֵא can be taken as a participle and the text translated, “for I hate” (so NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT).

[2:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “him who covers his garment with violence” (similar ASV, NRSV). Here “garment” is a metaphor for appearance and “violence” a metonymy of effect for cause. God views divorce as an act of violence against the victim.

[2:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “in the eyes of the Lord.”

[41:22]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “three cubits” (i.e., 1.575 meters).

[41:22]  ¹¹ tn Heb “two cubits” (i.e., 1.05 meters).

[41:22]  ¹² tc So the Masoretic text. The LXX reads “base.”

[41:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “six cubits” (i.e., 3.15 meters).

[1:21]  ¹⁴ tn The article τῇ (th) has been translated as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[1:21]  ¹⁵ tn Although διανοία (dianoia) is singular in Greek, the previous plural noun ἐχθρούς (ecqrous) indicates that all those from Colossae are in view here.

[1:21]  ¹⁶ tn The dative ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις τοῖς πονηροῖς (en toi" ergoi" toi" ponhroi") is taken as means, indicating the avenue through which hostility in the mind is revealed and made known.

[1:21]  ¹⁷ tn The article τῇ (th) has been translated as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).

[1:21]  ¹⁸ tn Although διανοία (dianoia) is singular in Greek, the previous plural noun ἐχθρούς (ecqrous) indicates that all those from Colossae are in view here.

[1:21]  ¹⁹ tn The dative ἐν τοῖς ἔργοις τοῖς πονηροῖς (en toi" ergoi" toi" ponhroi") is taken as means, indicating the avenue through which hostility in the mind is revealed and made known.

[1:22]  ²⁰ tc Some of the better representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts have a passive verb here instead of the active ἀποκατήλλαξεν (apokathllaxen, “he has reconciled”): ἀποκατηλλάγητε (apokathllaghte) in (Ì⁴⁶) B, ἀποκατήλλακται [sic] (apokathllaktai) in 33, and ἀποκαταλλαγέντες (apokatallagente") in D* F G. Yet the active verb is strongly supported by א A C D² Ψ 048 075 [0278] 1739 1881 Ï lat sy. Internally, the passive creates an anacoluthon in that it looks back to the accusative ὑμᾶς (Juma", “you”) of v. 21 and leaves the following παραστῆσαι (parasthsai) dangling (“you were reconciled…to present you”). The passive reading is certainly the harder reading. As such, it may well explain the rise of the other readings. At the same time, it is possible that the passive was produced by scribes who wanted some symmetry between the ποτε (pote, “at one time”) of v. 21 and the νυνὶ δέ (nuni de, “but now”) of v. 22: Since a passive periphrastic participle is used in v. 21, there may have a temptation to produce a corresponding passive form in v. 22, handling the ὑμᾶς of v. 21 by way of constructio ad sensum. Since παραστῆσαι occurs ten words later, it may not have been considered in this scribal modification. Further, the Western reading (ἀποκαταλλαγέντες) hardly seems to have arisen from ἀποκατηλλάγητε (contra TCGNT 555). As difficult as this decision is, the preferred reading is the active form because it is superior externally and seems to explain the rise of all forms of the passive readings.

[1:27]  ²¹ tn The genitive noun τῆς δόξης (ths doxhs) is an attributive genitive and has therefore been translated as “glorious riches.”