Godly Offspring: Trashed by God’s People
Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? Judah has been faithless, and abomination has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the Lord, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. May the Lord cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this, who brings an offering to the Lord of hosts! And this second thing you do. You cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and groaning because he no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”
Malachi 2:10-16
The prophet expands the circle of blame here from the priests to the men of the people in general. Although we should not miss his use of words such as “profane” (חָלַל),1 which he uses twice, and “sanctuary” (קֹדֶשׁ)—the very same word translated as “holy” when an adjective, so this is the substantival “holy thing”—which are words that still echo the life of pure religion.
This will teach us two things: the first is that in this expanded circle, the priestly circle is still at the blazing center in a very concrete way. That ‘partiality in your instruction’ (v. 9) may very well refer to their practical instruction on marriage, or the lack thereof in calling to account men who left their wives.2 Secondly, of the people who come in to where the priest serves, and bring their sacrifices, it seems that the hypocrisy of the priests was contagious— ‘the man who does this, who brings an offering to the LORD of hosts!’ (v. 12b) What man who does this? Any man who does this and something else. Any man who feigns religion in here, but whose morality out there contradicts it.
It is worth remembering that place where the Apostle James says:
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (Jas. 1:27).
Religion cares for people. Whether in the Old Testament or the New—whether in the ancient nation of Israel or in the church through the ages—morality is an extension of religion; morality is an expression of religion; morality is evidence of religion. So it is in the particular case of marriage. Love and marriage may “go together like a horse and carriage” in the song, but here we find that for that very reason, religion and marriage go together. How so?
Doctrine. Since God made Christian marriage to expand a Christian people, intermarriage with unbelievers and divorce are worse than we think.
Divided marriages multiply apostasy.
Divorce cuts off the godly line.
Divided marriages multiply apostasy.
There is a triple-layered opening rebuke here. To ask, ‘Have we not all one Father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?’ (v. 10)—this presents three layers of fathers: (i.) God the Father—the Father of the whole people who made the covenant—(ii.) the aforementioned Patriarchs as the original recipients were “our fathers”; and (iii.) the fathers who are in the dock in this prosecution by the prophet Malachi. These are the present audience. These are the unfaithful. So the questions are meant to highlight the radical disproportion between the perfect Father and the idealized fathers, on the one hand, versus these false fathers, on the other. That will be important for understanding the sin here, because, at first glance, the sin seems to be of husbands against wives or of men against the people for taking wives. What we will see is that, without minimizing those dimensions of the sin, these are specifically fatherly sins.
The other crucial words are these: ‘For Judah has profaned the sanctuary of the LORD, which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god’ (v. 11b). I read the whole contrast that begins in the sanctuary because, remember, those of the “house” of God together as a church, have their homes sanctified (cf. 1 Cor. 7:14). Paul even calls each Christian’s own body “God’s temple” (1 Cor. 3:16). So, do you think that only the whole assembly is a temple of the Lord and your individual body is a temple of the Lord, but that this sanctity of locations somehow skips over the Christian’s house on the road between the assembly and the soul?
Let us focus especially on the wrongdoing. What is this abomination? What profanes the holy place of the home? He ‘has married the daughter of a foreign god’ (v. 11b). The old covenant people were repeatedly warned of this:
You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods (Deut. 7:3-4).
Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst … and you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after their gods and make your sons whore after their gods (Ex. 34:12, 16).
But like so many other moral law truths that we hear were “just Old Testament,” not so! Paul gives the same principle in a general way in the New Testament:
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God (2 Cor. 6:14-16).
Notice the zealous imprecation aimed at such a man: ‘May the LORD cut off from the tents of Jacob any descendant of the man who does this’ (v. 12a). This is what we call an imprecation: a prayer that God would judge His enemies, often in the language of calling down a curse. The way the statement ends informs us of the root motive that it profanes God and pollutes the whole assembly, but we should not miss that this is treated as a righteous imprecation: יַכְרֵ֨ת. This Hebrew word that is used for God’s action in enacting a covenant (כָּרַת) is the way that He ends it for the man who cuts off his wife. This is a “cutting off” of their apostate line, so that if he will not have the mother of that line, he will not have that line or any other. Other Scripture would teach us that there is also a natural principle involved.
In our Psalm 33:12 sermon a few months back, we saw that religion—rightly ordered souls to God—perpetuates a people. The first way that religion perpetuates a people is that religion unifies marriages. Two rightly ordered souls toward God unifies a marriage. Religion is one heart toward God, so the two who are one flesh in marriage being one toward God do not waste time and other resources pulling that one flesh between Christ and Baal, or weighing that one flesh down between heaven and hell. Consequently and conversely, apostasy into false religion splits a people at the seed level, weighs a people down from expanding, divides the fighting forces of a people who will never decisively choose to face an enemy over having empathy for it. It was Jesus who said, “no … house divided against itself will stand” (Mat. 12:25), and so no marriage that is half-faithful, half-apostate can long endure in a state of equilibrium. The lower more feverish passion will win out.
A demon-worshiper—by which I mean not necessarily someone possessed, but simply help captive (e.g., Jn. 8:34; 2 Cor. 10:4; 2 Pet. 2:19)—will, on average, apply more zealous force toward their idolatry than a redeemed sinner will apply toward Christ. A Christian on their best day is a war zone of flesh versus spirit (e.g., Gal. 5:16-17), whereas the unregenerate is all flesh and no spirit. As Yeats put it in his poem: “the best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” Thus the snare has more weight downward than the muscle of the missionary in “missionary dating” will exert force upward. Here there is division from the beginning: apostasy at the altar. The home is split at the foundation, and will collapse in due time.
Divorce cuts off the godly line.
Read the King James Version (or the NASB for that matter) and you will read this: ‘For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away’ (v. 16a). Remember that word “hate” in 1:3. It is that same strong Hebrew word שָׂנֵא here. Some of the more recent translations will render this as an act of the guilty party and then soften up the word once again, so that the ESV says, ‘For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts.’ In addition to making the repetition of “says the LORD” awkward, it is not the sense of the word. I say “awkward” because it moves the action of God down to covering the garment with violence, when that also makes less sense than something that the man does. For those reasons, we must conclude the proper rendering as the traditional rendering: God hates divorce.
He then gives two reasons which ascend from something that ought to sober us to something which ought to do even more—it ought to transform us. First, the sobering reason: ‘Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?’ (v. 15a) This word שְׁאָר can also mean “remnant” or “residue,” but this is highly figurative, as the Holy Spirit is divine and as such is not contained or composite. It is better to understand the imagery as not a “unit” of Him, but as the smallness of the dwelling place, which is therefore a very special dwelling place. What did we just see about the sanctuary when it came to foreign wives? She defiled the temple by being brought in—This man defiles the temple by moving her out. It should be obvious that the same applies whenever the wife breaks the same:
[the woman] who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God (Prov. 2:17).
Remember Jesus’s words about divorce: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mat. 19:6). To divorce carries with it the audacity of presuming to sever the Spirit, to make the temple devoid of covenant love.
Here now is the anchoring words to the whole passage, which explain my title: ‘And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring’ (v. 15b). Now the phrase זֶ֣רַע אֱלֹהִ֑ים is woodenly “the seed of God,” but the name can be used adjectivally, and has to be here.3
Matthew Henry comments that this is
a seed that should bear the image of God, be employed in the service of God, and be devoted to his glory and honour … and thus might propagate the nature of man in such a way as might make it most likely to participate of a divine nature,—that the children, being born in holy matrimony, which is an ordinance of God, and by which the inclinations of nature are kept under the regulations of God’s command, might thus be made a seed to serve him, and be bred, as they are born, under his direction and dominion.4
One of the promises of the new covenant age was that, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). What would it take for that to happen? Who has knowledge of God but bearers of His image? In other words, renewed image-bearers will cover the earth. But where do they come from? The first place they come from is Christian homes.
If this is the great end, then the numbers also matter. More children means more image-bearers. More image-bearers means more glory to God. Greater Christian character in those who are multiplied is a more refined glory. This in itself mitigates that nagging concern that focus on this “greater” destroys that grace with which we should view others who have erred in the past and now regret, or those who, in God’s mysterious providence have found themselves either barren or single. We need not pit this grace against this glory. In fact, we must not. We must mature to cultivate them both in a direct relationship with each other, as twin virtues.
This is a text that requires two quick layers of logic in order to rightly apply: First, this is all true about marriage in general in Adam, and it is intensified about the marriage of those in Christ. Simply read about Paul’s vision in Ephesians 5:22-33 of marriage as a gospel drama. Second, every action item that his calls us to will fit either under propagation or promotion. The offspring is for propagation, yet we are not all at the same stations of life, or stages of life, and so for many what is called for is promotion—that is prayer and other support of those who are in that stage.
Practical Use of the Doctrine
Use 1. Instruction. Some truths are so simple and so often repeated that we are tempted to look down on them. Here is one: Marriage is the basic building block of society. Well, it is. In the 1930s, a book written by one Walter Maier lamented that the divorce rates in America in the previous decade were 1 out of 7, and that if trends continued, they would be 1 out of 4 by the 1950s, and 1 of every 2 by the 1990s. He was accused of being an alarmist. In fact, it was understatement, as the final statistic was reached as early as 1977.5 What has been the result in our country? I will not recount all the symptoms. They are all around us.
Use 2. Correction. Modern liberalism has two pillars: radical individualism and radical egalitarianism.6 These are the logical extensions of classical liberalism that was torn from its Christian moorings. In the eighteenth century, classical liberalism exalted liberty and equality. Because every lie is a twisted truth, classical liberalism plucked two fruits from the Christian tree and ran off the reservation with them.
Liberty is a gift from God. Equality before the law is a principle of His justice, whereas equal treatment (or impartiality) is, more generally, a Christian virtue. But the fruit of liberty, which rots as it travels farther from its Christian roots, degenerates into a narcissistic passion for self-expression, self-absorption, and finally the demand for others to affirm this imperial Self; and the fruit of equality, which rots as it travels farther from its Christian roots, degenerates into a resentment of excellence, a blindness to real, natural diversity, and a violent leveling of anything that will not conform to this narrow vision of fairness.
Here is why this matters: You cannot combine radical individualism and radical egalitarianism with marriage. Marriage makes no sense in such a mad context. Marriage only makes sense back in the real world buried beneath the surface of our present insanity. You cannot get married and stay married in a way that will produce that godly seed if you have not cut down those pillars of individualism and egalitarianism. Your marriage will be forced or temporary, or both.
Use 3. Admonition. Marry a Roman Catholic and you have married a priest whose garments are concealed, whose idea of reconciliation is conditioned by exacting confessions for which you can never satisfactorily make penance, and he or she takes orders from a foreign throne. This is a principle of nature and one which extends from the man who would marry to magistrate who would marry:
Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love (1 Kings 11:1)
Exalt a man who has married a Hindu, and you are committed to its many-armed demon-statues in every city, and its oppressive caste system to flow from its temples of darkness. This is also true of any public official who is compromised by marrying into either money or status without having first consulted the character and convictions of the spouse. To further suggest that his or her background—his immediate family line—is of no consequence is equally foolish. There is a mean to be observed here between present spiritual trajectory, which can be tested, and a spiritual seed born out over time, which is not to be ignored.
Use 4. Consolation. Jesus is not only the faithful Jacob to come who earns the true inheritance, not only the faithful priest to come who takes your polluted garments on Himself and gives you His pure garments, but He is also the faithful Husband to come who purchased you and reconciles you to Himself. There was another prophet who was called by God to live this out as an allegory of the gospel. His name was Hosea, and he was told,
Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods … So I bought her (Hos. 3:1-2)
As Jesus says to the adulterous women, “Go and sin no more” (Jn. 8:11), so the Lord had already said to His bride through Hosea—the unfaithful bride whom He would with His own blood—“You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you” (Hos. 3:3).
Your sins have been washed away—not so that you can go back to raising up an offspring of apostasy, but so that you can, in perfect purity, get to propagating (or promoting) the godly offspring.
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1. Of relevant meanings, chalal is to defile, break, pollute, or prostitute.
2. cf. James Montgomery Boice, The Minor Prophets, Volume 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986), 587.
3. Some early modern commentators, such as Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller, Franz Joseph Valentin Dominik Maurer, and Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, each took this to be an answer to an anticipated objection, though, in order to understand that, one must also have discovered that the grammar of verses 15 and 16 is actually difficult to interpret. At any rate, the objection is that Abraham did the very thing that the prophet is insinuating that no righteous man would ever do—that is, he put away Hagar. The following words about “the seed” distinguish Isaac from Ishmael in this respect. This view was rejected by Reformed commentators T. V. Moore,
4. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 1600.
5. cf. Boice, The Minor Prophets, II:586.
6. For a thorough discussion of these two pillars of modern, or radical, liberalism, see Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline (New York: Regan Books, 1996).
