Commentary - Malachi 2:17

Bird's-eye view

Malachi is prophesying to a post-exilic community that has grown comfortable, cynical, and spiritually lethargic. The temple has been rebuilt, the sacrifices are being offered, but the heart of the people is far from God. Their worship is perfunctory, their covenants are broken, and their sense of divine justice has been eroded into a kind of insolent skepticism. This final verse of chapter two serves as a hinge, summarizing the core spiritual problem of the people and setting the stage for the dramatic announcement of the Lord's coming in judgment and purification in the next chapter. The people have managed to exhaust the patience of God Himself, not through some grand idolatrous rebellion as in the old days, but through the incessant drip, drip, drip of their cynical, self-justifying words. They have redefined good and evil to suit themselves and then have the audacity to ask where the God of justice has gone, as though He were the one who was lost.

Outline

Clause-by-Clause Commentary

17 You have wearied Yahweh with your words.

The charge is blunt. The prophet is not mincing words. The people of God, the covenant community, have become tiresome to their God. Now, we must be careful here. This is anthropomorphic language, of course. God, in His essence, does not get tired or run out of patience as we do (Is. 40:28). He is not subject to passions or emotional fatigue. So what does this mean? It means that their conduct has reached a point of such persistent offense that, speaking in human terms, the only appropriate word is "wearisome." It is the language of a covenant relationship stretched to its breaking point. Their sin is not a one-off transgression but a constant, grating noise in the ears of Heaven. And notice the instrument of their offense: their words. Not their swords, not their idols of stone, but their words. Theology matters. What we say about God, what we teach, what we mutter under our breath, has weight. Bad theology, cynical theology, is not a lightweight matter; it is profoundly wearying to a holy God.

But you say, “How have we wearied Him?”

Here we see the spiritual state of the people in high definition. This is not the question of a tender conscience, desperate to know its fault and repent. This is the retort of the self-righteous. It is feigned innocence, a challenge masquerading as a question. It is the fifth time in this short book that the people have responded to God's charge with a defiant "How...?" (Mal. 1:2, 6, 7; 2:14). They are so steeped in their own rationalizations that they genuinely cannot see their sin. Their spiritual nerve endings are dead. They hear the prophet's accusation, and it simply does not compute. They look at their lives, their temple service, their formal religion, and they see nothing amiss. This is a people who have lost the ability to blush. Their conscience has been cauterized by the hot iron of persistent self-justification.

In that you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of Yahweh, and He delights in them,”

Now the prophet provides the evidence, the transcript of their wearying words. And the first charge is a complete inversion of the moral order. They look at the wicked, very likely the pagan nations around them or perhaps the corrupt opportunists within Israel, and they see them prospering. And from this observation, they draw a blasphemous conclusion. They don't just say, "The wicked seem to be prospering." They go a step further and attribute this state of affairs to the character of God Himself. They are saying, "Apparently, this is what God likes. He must approve of this evil, because He is blessing it." This is the ancient root of all modern therapeutic, non-judgmental religion. It is the refusal to call sin, sin. It is a profound moral confusion that they lay at the feet of God. They are calling evil good, which Isaiah pronounced a woe upon (Is. 5:20). They are slandering the very holiness of God, suggesting that His standards are so low, so pliable, that He actually takes pleasure in wickedness. This is a God remade in their own corrupt image.

or, “Where is the God of justice?”

This is the second piece of evidence, and it is the flip side of the first. It is the cry of the impatient cynic. If their first statement was a perversion of God's holiness, this one is a direct challenge to His justice. Having observed the prosperity of the wicked, they draw one of two conclusions. The first was that God must approve of evil. The second, presented here as an alternative, is that God is simply absent or impotent. "Where is He? If He is a God of justice, why doesn't He do something?" It is a taunt. It is the cry of a man who has waited five minutes for God to act and has concluded that the throne of the universe must be vacant. They demand that God operate on their timetable, according to their definition of justice. They cannot see the slow, sure grinding of the divine mills. They fail to understand that the patience of God, which they are currently abusing, is itself an aspect of His character. They mistake His longsuffering for indifference. This question is not an honest plea for understanding, like that of Habakkuk. It is a demand, a complaint lodged against the Almighty. And God's answer is about to come in fire and fury in the next verse: "Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me." They asked where the God of justice was, and He is about to show up.

Application

The sins of Malachi's day are startlingly contemporary. We live in an age that is utterly exhausted with moral clarity. The wearying words of the ancient Jews are echoed in our pulpits and podcasts today. The first word, "Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of Yahweh," is the mantra of a soft, sentimental evangelicalism that has lost its nerve. We dare not call sin what God calls it, for fear of being unloving. We have exchanged the righteousness of God for a cheap, cloying niceness. We see sin prosper, and instead of lamenting it, we begin to accommodate it, to make theological excuses for it, until we end up saying that God must delight in it. This is a damnable lie that wearies God.

The second word, "Where is the God of justice?" is the cry of the deconstructionist, the burned-out activist, and the impatient believer. We see injustice in the world, and because God has not fixed it by teatime, we conclude He is either not there or not just. We want a God who acts like a celestial vending machine, dispensing justice on our demand. We must repent of this arrogance. God's justice is coming. The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple. That is a promise, but it is also a terrifying threat. When we glibly ask where the God of justice is, we had better be ready for the answer. For the Christian, the answer has already come in the cross. There, at Calvary, the justice and mercy of God met. God condemned sin in the flesh of His own Son, proving He does not delight in evil. And He provided a way of escape, proving His patience. Our task is not to question His justice, but to proclaim the justice He has already executed, and to live as a people who have been rescued from the coming judgment.