《The Biblical Illustrator – Malachi (Ch.0~4)》(A Compilation)
General Introduction
Over 34,000 pages in its original 56 volume printing, the Biblical Illustrator is a massive compilation of treatments on 10,000 passages of Scripture. It is arranged in commentary form for ease of use in personal study and devotion, as well as sermon preparation.
Most of the content of this commentary is illustrative in nature, and includes from hundreds of famous authors of the day such as Dwight L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, J. C. Ryle, Charles Hodge, Alexander MacLaren, Adam Clark, Matthew Henry, and many more. The collection also includes lesser known authors published in periodicles and smaller publications popular in that ara. Unlike modern publishers, Exell was apparently not under any pressure to consolidate the number of pages.
While this commentary is not known for its Greek or Hebrew exposition, the New Testament includes hundreds of references to, and explanations of, Greek words.
Joseph S. Exell edited and compiled the 56 volume Biblical Illustrator commentary. You will recognize him as the co-editor of the famous Pulpit Commentary (this commentary is even larger than the Pulpit Commentary). This remarkable work is the triumph of a life devoted to Biblical research and study. Assisted by a small army of students, the Exell draws on the rich stores of great minds since the beginning of New Testament times.
The Biblical Illustrator brings Scripture to life in a unique, illuminating way. While other commentaries explain a Bible passage doctrinally, this work illustrates the Bible with a collection of:
· illustrations
· outlines
· anecodtes
· history
· poems
· expositions
· geography
· sermons
· Bible backgrounds
· homiletics
for nearly every verse in the Bible. This massive commentary was originally intended for preachers needing help with sermon preperation (because who else in that day had time to wade through such a lengthy commentary?). But today, the Biblical Illustrator provides life application, illumination, inspiriation, doctrine, devotion, and practical content for all who teach, preach, and study the Bible.
00 Overview
MALACHI
INTRODUCTION
I. First of all, we are to look at the world in which this prophet’s lot was cast, the character of his contemporaries, the souls with which he had to deal. Let us suppose that more than ninety years, an entire century almost, have passed away since Haggai and Zechariah began to preach in Jerusalem to the captives who had returned from Babylon. Artaxerxes Longimanus sits now on the throne of Persia, and is the sovereign lord to whom the Hebrews in Judea pay allegiance and tribute. It is, we shall say, the year 425 b.c., for if that be not the exact date it cannot be very far removed from it. The second Temple has been finished long since. It was not in vain that Zechariah encouraged the restored exiles by visions and predictions to be up and doing. Haggai’s declarations that there was an intimate union between liberal giving to the Lord and external prosperity were uttered to good purpose. At the call of God’s ambassadors the people roused themselves from their unworthy and selfish lethargy. They built the sacred walls and courts and pinnacles with zeal and enthusiasm; before long the hill of Zion was crowned again with the sanctuary of Jehovah. There succeeded a brief season of spiritual life and earnestness and joy. The priests offered sacrifice anew, and made intercession for the citizens within the Holy House. But this genial summer was short-lived. The generation to which Haggai and Zechariah spoke with such effect, died out ere long; and their successors did not manifest their zealous devotion. They were remiss and negligent. The city which their fathers had begun to rebuild they left incomplete and half-ruinous; they took little delight in the Temple which their fathers had raised. They withheld from God those tithes and offerings which pertained to Him; and when they did bring animals for sacrifice on His altar, they were often the very poorest of the flock--sheep and lambs which they would have been utterly ashamed to present to their Persian governor. Their priests were men like themselves. They cared not how slovenly the Temple service might be. They came far short of realising the responsibilities of their office. They inflicted daily dishonour on the God whose servants they called themselves. Both priests and people intermarried freely with aliens, with those who were strangers to the commonwealth and the covenant, who were idolatrous in worship and sinful in life. Both were rapidly growing sceptical alike in thought and m speech, questioning many things which had hitherto been most surely believed, avowing their incredulity boldly and defiantly. It was a lamentable change. During these days of reaction and retrogression, two visitors came to Jerusalem from the Court of Persia--first one and then the other. They were Jews, full of patriotism, and anxious to see how it fared with their kinsfolk in the city of their fathers. The first of them was Ezra, the priest and the scribe. It was the midsummer of the year 459 when he arrived. He was prepared to find much that was disappointing; he knew the difficulties with which the Hebrew colonists had had to contend; and he did not expect to discover an ideal State or a Church without spot and stain. But the actual condition of affairs astonished and dismayed him--those unholy marriages with the heathen most of all. When he learned the full extent of the evil, “he tore his outer cloak from top to bottom; he tore his inner garment no less; he plucked off the long tresses of his sacerdotal locks, the long flakes of his sacerdotal heard; and thus, with dishevelled hair and half-clothed limbs, he sank on the ground, crouched like one thunderstruck, through the whole of a day.” £ Then, eager to usher in a better era, he devoted himself to the work of renovation; like the Baptist, he commanded all--the ministers of religion and the citizens as well--to repent of their sins; and his influence penetrated far and near. Fourteen years later, the second visitor came. This was Nehemiah, a young Jew of noble family, who had filled the high post of chamberlain to the Persian king. A deep and brooding anguish possessed him when he thought of the city of his ancestors in her desolation and shame. He bogged of his royal master permission to return to his native country with power to rectify the disorders which vexed him so keenly. The request was granted, and he started with escort and authority to accomplish the desire that lay near his heart. Through twelve summers and winters he remained in Judea and acted as its governor. One much-needed reform after another was carried through. The fortifications of the town were raised from their ruins. The nobles were rebuked for their iniquitous exactions. The Levites and the singers were bidden resume their duties in the sacred courts. The gates were closed against the merchants who came with their laden asses on the Sabbath day. It seemed as if, through the efforts of these two--the aged scribe, full of passionate love for the ancient law, and the young noble, who was both soldier and statesman--a revival of a genuine and permanent kind had indeed been brought about. But the morning which had opened so clear and fair was destined to be overclouded soon. Nehemiah went back for a short time to the court of Artaxerxes. He was not long absent; but during the brief interval, when the strong hand of the ruler was withdrawn, the Jews reverted to their old misdemeanours and sins; “all his fences and their whole array” were blown to the ground. When he returned, matters were even worse than they had been on his first arrival. Within the family of the high priest himself an odious alliance with the heathen had been contracted; one of the young men of his house had taken to wife the daughter of Sanballat, the very ringleader of the enemies of Judah. The Temple service had fallen again into dishonour and neglect; God’s tithes were once more being denied Him; the Sabbath traffic which had been so sternly forbidden was prosecuted as vigorously and as unblushingly as ever. It was a sad relapse. This was the time in which Malachi was called to carry “the burden of the Word of the Lord.” We may believe that his solemn threats and condemnations rang through the streets of Jerusalem during that short absence of Nehemiah at the Persian Court. But before we glance at what he had to say to his erring countrymen, there is a question which confronts us of a fundamental sort: Was there any Malachi at all--any person who actually bore this name, and who was known by it among his fellow-citizens? The question has more than once been answered in the negative. “No,” it has been said, “there was no prophet called Malachi. For the Word simply means ‘the messenger of God’; and beyond doubt it was a kind of epithet, a kind of official title, by which one of the servants of Jehovah in that time chose to designate himself. Perhaps it was the venerable scribe Ezra; £ or perhaps it was Nehemiah, the Tirshatha himself; or perhaps--who knows?--it was one of the angels of light come down from the heavenly places in the form of a man, to do God’s will and to proclaim His grave and heavy warnings. You may search as carefully as you please the lists which are given in the historical books of those who, for one reason or another, were notable in the Jerusalem of the day; and you will find no Malachi among them. Evidently there was none. The name indicates the work done by him who bore it; it is not a personal designation at all.” That has been the opinion of not a few both in older and more recent times. But we may at once set it aside. Malachi, like that greater preacher of a future age to whom he pointed his contemporaries forward, may be only a “voice” to us; of his career and history we know absolutely nothing; but he was unquestionably a real person, and this was his proper name. It is not the habit of the prophets to prefix descriptive titles to their books, or to speak of themselves only by the office which they held, or to write under some nom de plume. Each of them tells us plainly and frankly his ordinary name by which he was greeted in the street and the market and the home. And Malachi, we may be certain, is no exception to the rule. He was distinct from Ezra and Nehemiah, less famous than they, but not a whir loss solicitous about the glory of God and the reformation of Jerusalem. Unconsciously lie paints for us, I think, a picture of himself in his book, when he speaks of the little companies of God-fearing Jews who were in the habit of meeting together in that wicked time to converse one with another about what was holy and spiritual, and so to keep their own souls aglow when all around them was cold and frozen and dead; if we could have entered the upper room where these few disciples assembled, we should certainly have found Malachi among them. These were his surroundings, then; this was the world to which he proclaimed the sorrow and indignation of the Lord, which were his own sorrow and indignation too.
II. But let us turn now to consider the prophet’s message to the men of his day. Living when “the world was very evil,” what had he to say to it? He sets out with the declaration that the conduct of Judah was without excuse. If God had been a hard taskmaster--if He had shown Himself strict to mark iniquity, and unmindful of loyal service when it was given Him--there might have been some justification for the ingratitude of Jerusalem. But it was not so. God had dealt with the Jews in sovereign and marvellous love. No doubt they questioned His compassion and grace. Where could be the Divine mercy towards them, they asked, when they were a people scattered and peeled, few in number, and held in contempt? The answer was a convincing one. Let them look across the borders of Judah, east and south to the blue mountains that rose beyond the Dead Sea--to Edom, a nation near of kin to themselves, sprung from Esau as they were sprung from Jacob. They might be poor and despised; but the condition of Edom was tenfold sadder and more hopeless. Its rock-hewn cities were desolate. Jackals and scorpions made them their home. No proud and warlike people dwelt in them any more. And what was the reason of the difference? Why should brother-races, starting from the same mother’s knee, be separated by so wide a gulf, the one utterly destroyed, the other spared and blessed? The sole cause was the love of God. Jacob He had loved; Esau He had hated--and that was why Jerusalem survived, whilst Petra was waste and lonely, its pride abased, its glory departed. Freely and spontaneously--patiently and fervently--God had loved the Jewish people, and therefore the sons of Jacob were not consumed as the sons of Esau had been (Malachi 1:1-5). Having thus reminded the children of Israel how unreasonable and thankless their conduct was in rewarding God evil for His good, disobedience and neglect in return for His loving-kindness and tender mercy, Malachi brings against his nation an indictment which has three counts in it. First, he reproves the priests for their scandalous negligence in the management of the Temple worship. The sacrifices which they offered at the altar were despicable and worthless. They seemed to imagine that any animal was good enough for God--the lame or the blind that had become useless for work, the maimed or the torn, the beast that was dying of disease and could not be presented for sale in the market, that which had been stolen, and which they would have been afraid to sell. They grudged the best of their possessions to Him who had given them all. They dishonoured God openly in the sight of man. Would that there were someone to shut the doors, he exclaimed, that this profane and fruitless worship might be carried on no longer! He takes no pleasure in those who do not come with alacrity to His house.