4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in days gone by, and as in past years.
Now when Solomon's prayers were ended, fire came down from heaven, burning up all the offerings; and the house was full of the glory of the Lord. And the priests were not able to go into the house of the Lord, for the Lord's house was full of the glory of the Lord. And all the children of Israel were looking on when the fire came down, and the glory of the Lord was on the house; and they went down on their knees, with their faces to the earth, worshipping and praising the Lord, and saying, He is good; for his mercy is unchanging for ever.
This Hezekiah did through all Judah; he did what was good and right and true before the Lord his God. And for everything he undertook, in connection with the work of the house of God and his law and orders, he got directions from God and did it with serious purpose; and things went well for him.
On that day all the bells of the horses will be holy to the Lord, and the pots in the Lord's house will be like the basins before the altar. And every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah will be holy to the Lord of armies: and all those who make offerings will come and take them for boiling their offerings: in that day there will be no more traders in the house of the Lord of armies.
For seven days they are to make offerings to take away sin from the altar and to make it clean; so they are to make it holy. And when these days have come to an end, then on the eighth day and after, the priests will make your burned offerings on the altar and your peace-offerings; and I will take pleasure in you, says the Lord.
For in my holy mountain, in the high mountain of Israel, says the Lord, there all the children of Israel, all of them, will be my servants in the land; there I will take pleasure in them, and there I will be worshipped with your offerings and the first-fruits of the things you give, and with all your holy things. I will take pleasure in you as in a sweet smell, when I take you out from the peoples and get you together from the countries where you have been sent in flight; and I will make myself holy in you before the eyes of the nations.
So the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said, Again will these words be used in the land of Judah and in its towns, when I have let their fate be changed: May the blessing of the Lord be on you, O resting-place of righteousness, O holy mountain. And Judah and all its towns will be living there together; the farmers and those who go about with flocks.
The Lord has said, See, I am changing the fate of the tents of Jacob, and I will have pity on his houses; the town will be put up on its hill, and the great houses will be living-places again. And from them will go out praise and the sound of laughing: and I will make them great in number, and they will not become less; and I will give them glory, and they will not be small. And their children will be as they were in the old days, and the meeting of the people will have its place before me, and I will send punishment on all who are cruel to them.
Go and say in the ears of Jerusalem, The Lord says, I still keep the memory of your kind heart when you were young, and your love when you became my bride; how you went after me in the waste of sand, in an unplanted land. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first-fruits of his increase: all who made attacks on him were judged as wrongdoers, evil came on them, says the Lord.
So the children of Israel who were present in Jerusalem kept the feast of unleavened bread for seven days with great joy: and the Levites and the priests gave praise to the Lord day by day, making melody to the Lord with loud instruments. And Hezekiah said kind words to the Levites who were expert in the ordering of the worship of the Lord: so they kept the feast for seven days, offering peace-offerings and praising the Lord, the God of their fathers. And by the desire of all the people, the feast went on for another seven days, and they kept the seven days with joy. For Hezekiah, king of Judah, gave to the people for offerings, a thousand oxen and seven thousand sheep; and the rulers gave a thousand oxen and ten thousand sheep; and a great number of priests made themselves holy. And all the people of Judah, with the priests and the Levites, and those who had come from Israel, and men from other lands who had come from Israel or who were living in Judah, were glad with great joy. So there was great joy in Jerusalem: for nothing like this had been seen in Jerusalem from the time of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel. Then the priests and the Levites gave the people a blessing: and the voice of their prayer went up to the holy place of God in heaven.
Then Hezekiah made answer and said, Now that you have given yourselves to the Lord, come near and take offerings and praise-offerings into the house of the Lord. So all the people took in offerings and praise-offerings: and those whose hearts were moved, took in burned offerings. The number of burned offerings which the people took in was seventy oxen, a hundred male sheep, and two hundred lambs: all these were for burned offerings to the Lord. And the holy things were six hundred oxen and three thousand sheep. There were not enough priests for the work of cutting up all the burned offerings; so their brothers the Levites gave them help till the work was done and the priests had made themselves holy: for the Levites were more upright in heart to make themselves holy than the priests. And there was a great amount of burned offerings, with the fat of the peace-offerings and the drink offerings for every burned offering. So the work of the Lord's house was put in order. And Hezekiah and all the people were full of joy, because God had made the people ready: for the thing was done suddenly.
Then Solomon made burned offerings to the Lord on the altar of the Lord which he had put up in front of the covered way, Offering every day what had been ordered by Moses, on the Sabbaths and at the new moon and at the regular feasts three times a year, that is at the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of weeks, and the feast of tents. And he gave the divisions of the priests their places for their work, as ordered by his father David, and to the Levites he gave their work of praise and waiting on the priests, to do what was needed day by day; and he gave the door-keepers their places in turn at every door; for so David, the man of God, had given orders.
And on the twenty-third day of the seventh month, he sent the people away to their tents, full of joy and glad in their hearts, because of all the good which the Lord had done to David and to Solomon and to Israel his people. So Solomon came to the end of building the house of the Lord and the king's house; and everything which it was in his mind to make in the house of the Lord and for himself had been well done. Now the Lord came to Solomon in a vision by night, and said to him, I have given ear to your prayer, and have taken this place for myself as a house where offerings are to be made.
And David said to all the people, Now give praise to the Lord your God. And all the people gave praise to the Lord, the God of their fathers, with bent heads worshipping the Lord and the king. And they made offerings to the Lord, and gave burned offerings to the Lord, on the day after, a thousand oxen, a thousand sheep, and a thousand lambs, with their drink offerings, and a great wealth of offerings for all Israel. And with great joy they made a feast before the Lord that day. And they made Solomon, the son of David, king a second time, putting the holy oil on him to make him holy to the Lord as ruler, and on Zadok as priest.
Then they took in the ark of God and put it inside the tent which David had put up for it; and they made offerings, burned offerings and peace-offerings before God. And when David had come to an end of making the burned offerings and peace-offerings, he gave the people a blessing in the name of the Lord. And he gave to everyone, every man and woman of Israel, a cake of bread, some meat, and a cake of dry grapes.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Malachi 3
Commentary on Malachi 3 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 3
In this chapter we have,
Mal 3:1-6
The first words of this chapter seem a direct answer to the profane atheistical demand of the scoffers of those days which closed the foregoing chapter: Where is the God of judgment? To which it is readily answered, "Here he is; he is just at the door; the long-expected Messiah is ready to appear; and he says, For judgment have I come into this world, for that judgment which you have so impudently bid defiance to.' One of the rabbin says that the meaning of this is, That God will raise up a righteous King, to set things in order, even the king Messiah. And the beginning of the gospel of Christ is expressly said to be the accomplishment of this promise, with which the Old Testament concludes, Mk. 1:1, 2. So that by this the two Testaments are, as it were, tacked together, and made to answer one another. Now here we have,
Mal 3:7-12
We have here God's controversy with the men of that generation, for deserting his service and robbing him-wicked servants indeed, that not only run away from their Master, but run away with their Master's goods.
Mal 3:13-18
Among the people of the Jews at this time, though they all enjoyed the same privileges and advantages, there were men of very different characters (as ever were, and ever will be, in the world and in the church), like Jeremiah's figs, some very good and others very bad, some that plainly appeared to be the children of God and others that as plainly discovered themselves to be the children of the wicked one. There are tares and wheat in the same field, chaff and corn in the same floor; and here we have an account of both.