God’s voice, which dominates Malachi’s book, is the voice of a loving father who pleads with His children.
When the people raise questions and make complaints, He is ready to dialogue with them. Most of the issues discussed by God and His people have to do with a few basic attitudes.
While all the Jews recognized God as Father and Creator in their worship, not all of them were living as if God was the Lord of their lives. Malachi takes marriage as an example to illustrate lack of faithfulness and commitment to one another. According to the Bible, marriage is a sacred institution established by God. The people of Israel were warned against marrying outside the faith, because by so doing they would compromise their commitments with the Lord and fall into idolatry. (See Josh. 23:12-13.)
God had intended that marriage should be a commitment for life. In Malachi’s time, however, many men were breaking the vows that they had made early in life with, as the prophet said, the “wife of your youth.” Seeing their wives grow older, the husbands would divorce them and marry younger and more attractive women. For this reason, God says, he hates divorce (Mal. 2:16). This strong statement reveals how serious God is about marriage commitments, which so often people take very lightly. The strict rules in the Bible about divorce show just how sacred marriage is.
Because divorce was legal in Israel (Deut. 24:1-4), some men did not hesitate to break their marriage vows. Toward the end of the Old Testament period, divorce appears to have become common, somewhat like many countries today. Yet, in the Bible marriage is consistently presented as a holy covenant before God (Gen. 2:24, Eph. 5:21-33).
Read Malachi 2:17. What warning should be taken from these words, especially in the context of the day’s lesson? Or even in general? How could we be in danger of harboring that same attitude, even subconsciously?