DONALD e.

POLASKI
The College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, Virginia
THIS PASSAGE CONTAINS THE MOST FAMILIAR MATERIAL from Malachi, a book that seldom
gets attention in Christian worship. Malachi 3:1-4 is read at the Feast of the Presentation of
the Lord, not exactly a high attendance event in the church year. These verses also appear
on the Second Sunday of Advent in Year C, and are heard frequently in that season because
of their use in Handel's Messiah. But in the First Baptist Church of Ozona-Palm Harbor,
where I grew up, Malachi meant one thing: tithing. Yet this passage covers a great deal of
ground: eschatological speculation, ethical admonition, specific instruction concerning
temple practice. What can we do with such varied messages? In my view, by attempting to
hold this passage together, we can learn something vital concerning the nature of God.
THE EXPECTATION: MALACHI 3: 1- 4
"The LORD whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple." This expectation
involves an audience, a crowd gathered for a performance. The audience both seeks the
Lord and delights in either the covenant or its messenger. But in the previous verse (2:17),
the audience has exhibited a strikingly different set of values:
You have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet you say, "How have we wearied him?" By saying,
"All who do evil are good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them." Or by asking,
"Where is the God of justice?"
Calling these people "cynics," Paul Redditt (Haggai, Zechariah, and Mafochi, NCB
[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995] 176) sees two different groups here. The group in 2:17
suffers under Malachia withering attack, while those in 3:1 are the pious community of a
later editor. I wonder whether this solution does justice to the final shape of the text.
Perhaps Malachi is sarcastically attacking the cynics' delight in the covenant, viewing their
pleas for justice as sure to receive a swift, ironic answer. Malachi may be kin to Oscar Wilde
here: "When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers" ("An Ideal Husband," act ii).
I think, however, that the question of the presence of the God of justice is well-raised
within the covenant community. Taken together, 2:17 and 3:1 suggest that the audience may
both weary God with pleas for justice and delight in the covenant. Indeed, to delight in the
covenant may at times mean lobbing stark questions in the deity's direction. But have they
rightly understood the covenant and God's relationship to the world?
Malachi 3:1-12
READING THE BIBLE TODAY Interpretation 417
This passage also mixes together blessing and curse. Malachi uses language characteris-
tic of Second Isaiah, echoing its powerful benedictions and doxologies. God's sending a
messenger to prepare the way reflects the cry to "prepare a way" (Isa 40:3). The sudden
appearance of God's messenger is matched by the sudden fall of Babylon (Isa 47:11) and
the fulfillment of the "former things" (Isa 48:3). And the delight of the people in the
covenant corresponds to God's delight in God's own teaching (Isa 42:21; 55:11).
But this text bends more toward judgment. Julia O'Brien (Priest and Lvite in Mafochi,
SBLDS 121 [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990] 73-75) finds in this passage a covenant lawsuit in
which the people stand accused by God. In this context of judgment, the covenant means
purification of the Lvites to ensure pure offerings. As David Petersen (Zechariah 9-14 and
Malachi, OTL [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995] 211) points out, this is not entire-
ly negative: "The change is, however, not total, as the similes themselves suggest. Silver is
present in the ore, sometimes even visible, and is there as precious metal. The same fabric is
there, whether dirty or clean." Still, judgment forms the ground against which the highlights
of blessing are to be seen.
The focus here is on offerings for the temple. It is, perhaps, a disturbing end to the sec-
tion. We are drawn down from the heights of the Advent proclamation of God's imminent
rule into the abyss of the stewardship campaign. The tuxedo-clad bass stands before the
choir and begins to recitewith harpsichord continuothe budget for the church's next
fiscal year. But, despite our protest, the purity of the offerings is essential to the covenant.
This emphasis recurs in the final section of the passage.
THE ACCOUNTING: MALACHI 3: 7b- 12
Here the language thickens beyond the mention of offerings in v. 4. The first section
spoke the language of Second Isaiah; this section speaks with the voice of Leviticus. And the
text raises questions that can only be answered there, if at all. In addition, we see here the
role that economics playspriests are securing their own existence in the face of a troubled
economy. All of this may tempt us to throw up our hands and fall back on Matthew: "Woe
to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have
neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith" (23:23). To do so,
however, is to enter Malachi's argument on the "anti-God" side. And to do so places us
under a curse (v. 9).
Yet the curse here becomes quickly blurred by the prospect of blessing. Malachi cleverly
deploys the language of judgment within the context of blessing. It is from the windows of
heaven that blessings will flow (v. 10). But these same windows were instruments in the
Deluge (Gen 7:11; 8:2; cf. Isa 24:18). Malachi refers to the locust (v. 11), an animal that
serves as the summation for all manner of judgment and misfortune in Joel 1-2. Rebuking
the locust is a blessing, but it brings destruction to mind. The best example of this mixture
of blessing and curse is in God's offer to be tested. Such testing is rare in the Old Testament,
and only here does it have a positive cast. The crowd in Malachi looks askance at such test-
418 Interpretation OCTOBER 2000
ing (3:15), while Psalm 95 speaks of the Israelites putting God to the test at Massah and
Meribah, hardly occasions for blessing!
Although it may strike us as odd, it is only over tithing that God offers to be tested, not
any other act of piety. This testing, insisted upon by God, points to the complicated nature
of obedience. Obedience to the covenant may seem straightforward: tithe because God tells
you to! Or obedience could simply be self-preservation writ large, as in a flyer I received
recently which claimed, based on Mai 3:10, that God would help me purchase a car, provid-
ing a handy list of cars for which I could ask. If you give, you will receive, and the amount
of your blessing depends only on how much you ask for (would anyone ask for Geo with
Jaguars available?). What prevents a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" understanding
of our covenant with God? An answer is found at the center of this passage.
THE CENTER: MALACHI 3: 5- 7a
The middle section of this passage is easy to skip over. The focus of the first and last
sections on offerings is lacking. But here we find answers to the questions raised in the
other sections. In the face of the audience's delight in the covenant, yet disappointment
with God's justice, this section proclaims that covenant means an unstinting demand for
justice. God is, as promised, drawing near for judgment. This judgment will fall on those
who violate familiar precepts of life in covenant, such as are found in the Decalogue (adul-
terers, false witnesses) and in Deuteronomy (oppressors of the widow, orphan, and alien).
Those who do not wish to live in covenant with God fail to reverence God. The job of the
covenant community is to reverence God and thus to oppose such conduct. The communi-
ty is to work for justice even as it may complain that the divine realm is not yet fully mani-
fest. The imminence of God's reign does not mean that justice is a question for later.
Also in this section, God claims to be immutable: God does not change. Because of
this, God's relationship to Jacob is stable. Despite the community's constant violation of
God's statutes, God has remained faithful, allowing them to survive. It is in this context of
immutability that God raises the question of the community's return. The community will
return to God when it ceases robbing God in regard to tithes and offerings.
The discussion of tithing and its attendant blessings is set in the context of God's faith-
ful devotion to an unfailing covenant. God's purposes are larger than temporary arrange-
ments for mutual benefit; there is no quid pro quo involved. These temporary arrange-
ments aim at securing our identities, our possessions, and our status in an unfixed world.
To understand the covenant with God as such is to miss the mark. God's unchanging pur-
poses are not designed for the rapid, effortless production of automobiles or, more to the
point, of justice. The lesser covenants are not worthy of delight and cannot produce true
delight. We know that no one will abide the day of the Lord's advent, that none of these
covenants will survive. So we give, not to secure our existence or the existence of a congre-
gation, but as a token of a relationship that our disobedient stinginess cannot finally
destroy. And it is this relationship which finds expression in both Advent and Pledge
Sunday.
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