Reading: Malachi 1-2, Psalm 63

I am a fan of really long, well written stories. Usually these take the form of long books, and occasionally of really long book series. I really enjoy the payoff of a complicated story line that has threads left throughout and which get pulled together at unexpected and important moments as the story approaches it’s climax. It is one of the reasons I loved comic books in the peak era of team-ups, when seemingly small details from one title ended up having an impact in the larger story going on across the entire comic universe. I greatly enjoyed the Marvel movie and television era for the same reason.

Often these kinds of stories will have a character who pops up occasionally and gives a recap of past events, just to make sure the reader gets what is going on. Sometimes this is heavy handed and annoying, but it can be done well. Probably the most epic and gutsy example is in The Lord of the Rings, in which a chapter titled “The Council of Elrond” manages to inform us that the tome we are reading is just the final chapter of a story that started thousands of years before, and then manages to catches us up halfway decently. Quite the audacious storyteller, Tolkien.

Anyway. In the Story the Bible is telling, the book of Malachi serves as a kind of preamble to a humongous catch up scene known as the book of Chronicles. While our current Bibles generally place Chronicles back next to Kings, leaving Malachi as the last book, that was not the original ordering, and I think we have lost something for that. By looking at the message of Malachi, we will see that Chronicles is a recap of the entire story so far, and is full of glowing references to both the history of Israel and the words of the prophets. Rather than a dull rehash of the information in Samuel and Kings, Chronicles is a fascinating commentary on how the faithful remnant of God’s people saw matters right up to the time of Jesus.

All that and I have barely mentioned Malachi. Ok, Malachi. This guy, like the prophets before him, had done his homework and was ready to let his fellow returned exiles have it. The name Malachi is really just my messenger, and could easily have been an anonymous way of writing. My hunch is that, due to the content of the book and that it is nearly all first person messages from God, this was not a given name. His book outlines charges God is bringing against Israel. Their actions show that they have rejected God as their father, king, and God. Their question back, How have we despised your name? betrays a lack of awareness. God has to list off how they have distorted or ignored the ways in which they were to be the one people who brought the knowledge of God to a fallen and broken world.

Malachi goes deep on a couple of subjects in the first two chapter. First, the distortion of the whole sacrificial system. The tabernacle was supposed to indicate how difficult and dangerous it was to be in the presence of God in this world of human independence. It was also supposed to show that God was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to be with humans. The way the exiles are treating it is akin to a vending machine or a system of taxes. They bring sick, wounded, and broken animals for sacrifice… and even then they bring them grudgingly and complain this is such a weariness. Then, when they have sacrificed their worst possessions, they complain that God has not come through on his part of the deal.

Meanwhile, as we heard about in Nehemiah, they are dumping their wives for foreign women and taking on the worship of their gods. Note that I do not believe this is a teaching on divorce per se, though it does contain the famous line I hate divorce straight from God’s mouth. This is in context of covenant breaking and covenant making. God is very upset with two things: the devaluing of the marriage covenant by his own people, and the making of new marriage covenants with people who do not worship him. Unfortunately, the people do not listen to Malachi. He tells them at the close of chapter 2 that their words have wearied God. They fail to take the hint, and continue to argue how have we wearied him? Israel continues to live up to its name: he who struggles with God and man has struggled right up to the end of the Hebrew Scriptures.