Top of Page
Page Style
O priests, this decree is for you: 2 If you do not listen, and if you do not set your heart to honour My name,” says the Lord of Hosts, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you do not take it to heart.
3 “Behold, I will rebuke your descendants, and I will spread dung on your faces—the dung of your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. 4 Then you will know that I have sent you this decree, so that My covenant with Levi may continue,” says the Lord of Hosts. 5 “My covenant with him was a covenant of life and peace, and I gave these to him; it required reverence, and he revered Me and stood in awe of My name. 6 True instruction was in his mouth, and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with Me in peace and uprightness, and he turned many away from sin.
7 “For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth—for he is a messenger of the Lord of Hosts. 8 But you have turned aside from the way, and you have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the Lord of Hosts. 9 “So I have made you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not kept My ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.”
10 Have we not all one Father? Did not God create us? Why then do we profane the covenant of our fathers by breaking faith with one another?
11 Judah has broken faith. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. Judah has profaned the Lord’s sanctuary, which He loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. 12 As for the man who does this, may the Lord cut off any of the descendants from the tents of Jacob, even if he brings an offering to the Lord of Hosts.
13 Another thing you do: You cover the Lord’s altar with tears, with weeping and wailing because He no longer respects your offerings or receives them gladly from your hands. 14 Yet you ask, “For what reason?” It is because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.
15 Has not the Lord made them one? They belong to Him in flesh and in spirit. And why one? God desires they have godly offspring. So guard yourselves carefully, and do not deal faithlessly with the wife of your youth.
16 “As for Me, I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel, “for it is a covering of injustice on a man’s garment,” says the Lord of Hosts.
So guard yourself in your spirit that you do not break faith.
17 You have wearied the Lord with your words.
Yet you ask, “How have we wearied Him?”
By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and He is pleased with them,” or, “Where is the God of justice?”