Separation from Foreigners

¹When the Law of Moses was being read aloud to the people, they came to the passage that said that no Ammonite or Moabite was ever to be permitted to join God's people.

²This was because the people of Ammon and Moab did not give food and water to the Israelites on their way out of Egypt. Instead, they paid money to Balaam to curse Israel, but our God turned the curse into a blessing.

³When the people of Israel heard this law read, they excluded all foreigners from the community.

Nehemiah's Reforms

⁴The priest Eliashib, who was in charge of the Temple storerooms, had for a long time been on good terms with Tobiah.

⁵He allowed Tobiah to use a large room that was intended only for storing offerings of grain and incense, the equipment used in the Temple, the offerings for the priests, and the tithes of grain, wine, and olive oil given to the Levites, to the Temple musicians, and to the Temple guards.

⁶While this was going on, I was not in Jerusalem, because in the thirty-second year that Artaxerxes was king of Babylon I had gone back to report to him. After some time I received his permission

⁷and returned to Jerusalem. There I was shocked to find that Eliashib had allowed Tobiah to use a room in the Temple.

⁸I was furious and threw out all of Tobiah's belongings.

⁹I gave orders for the rooms to be ritually purified and for the Temple equipment, grain offerings, and incense to be put back.

¹⁰I also learned that the Temple musicians and other Levites had left Jerusalem and gone back to their farms, because the people had not been giving them enough to live on.

¹¹I reprimanded the officials for letting the Temple be neglected. And I brought the Levites and musicians back to the Temple and put them to work again.

¹²Then all the people of Israel again started bringing to the Temple storerooms their tithes of grain, wine, and olive oil.

¹³I put the following men in charge of the storerooms: Shelemiah, a priest; Zadok, a scholar of the Law; and Pedaiah, a Levite. Hanan, the son of Zaccur and grandson of Mattaniah, was to be their assistant. I knew I could trust these men to be honest in distributing the supplies to the other workers.

¹⁴Remember, my God, all these things that I have done for your Temple and its worship.

¹⁵At that time I saw people in Judah pressing juice from grapes on the Sabbath. Others were loading grain, wine, grapes, figs, and other things on their donkeys and taking them into Jerusalem; I warned them not to sell anything on the Sabbath.

¹⁶Some people from the city of Tyre were living in Jerusalem, and they brought fish and all kinds of goods into the city to sell to our people on the Sabbath.

¹⁷I reprimanded the Jewish leaders and told them, “Look at the evil you're doing! You're making the Sabbath unholy.

¹⁸This is exactly why God punished your ancestors when he brought destruction on this city. And yet you insist on bringing more of God's anger down on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.”

¹⁹So I gave orders for the city gates to be shut at the beginning of every Sabbath, as soon as evening began to fall, and not to be opened again until the Sabbath was over. I stationed some of my men at the gates to make sure that nothing was brought into the city on the Sabbath.

²⁰Once or twice merchants who sold all kinds of goods spent Friday night outside the city walls.

²¹I warned them, “It's no use waiting out there for morning to come. If you try this again, I'll use force on you.” From then on they did not come back on the Sabbath.

²²I ordered the Levites to purify themselves and to go and guard the gates to make sure that the Sabbath was kept holy. Remember me, O God, for this also, and spare me because of your great love.

²³At that time I also discovered that many of the Jewish men had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

²⁴Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or some other language and didn't know how to speak our language.

²⁵I reprimanded the men, called down curses on them, beat them, and pulled out their hair. Then I made them take an oath in God's name that never again would they or their children intermarry with foreigners.

²⁶I told them, “It was foreign women that made King Solomon sin. Here was a man who was greater than any of the kings of other nations. God loved him and made him king over all of Israel, and yet he fell into this sin.

²⁷Are we then to follow your example and disobey our God by marrying foreign women?”

²⁸Joiada was the son of Eliashib the High Priest, but one of Joiada's sons married the daughter of Sanballat, from the town of Beth Horon, so I made Joiada leave Jerusalem.

²⁹Remember, God, how those people defiled both the office of priest and the covenant you made with the priests and the Levites.

³⁰I purified the people from everything foreign; I prepared regulations for the priests and the Levites so that all of them would know their duties;

³¹I arranged for the wood used for burning the offerings to be brought at the proper times, and for the people to bring their offerings of the first grain and the first fruits that ripened. Remember all this, O God, and give me credit for it.

¹This is the message that the Lord gave Malachi to tell the people of Israel.

The Lord's Love for Israel

²The Lord says to his people, “I have always loved you.” But they reply, “How have you shown your love for us?” The Lord answers, “Esau and Jacob were brothers, but I have loved Jacob and his descendants,

³and have hated Esau and his descendants. I have devastated Esau's hill country and abandoned the land to jackals.”

⁴If Esau's descendants, the Edomites, say, “Our towns have been destroyed, but we will rebuild them,” then the Lord will reply, “Let them rebuild—I will tear them down again. People will call them ‘The evil country’ and ‘The nation with whom the Lord is angry forever.’”

⁵The people of Israel are going to see this with their own eyes, and they will say, “The Lord is mighty even outside the land of Israel!”

The Lord Reprimands the Priests

⁶The Lord Almighty says to the priests, “Children honor their parents, and servants honor their masters. I am your father—why don't you honor me? I am your master—why don't you respect me? You despise me, and yet you ask, ‘How have we despised you?’

⁷This is how—by offering worthless food on my altar. Then you ask, ‘How have we failed to respect you?’ I will tell you—by showing contempt for my altar.

⁸When you bring a blind or sick or lame animal to sacrifice to me, do you think there's nothing wrong with that? Try giving an animal like that to the governor! Would he be pleased with you or grant you any favors?”

⁹Now, you priests, try asking God to be good to us. He will not answer your prayer, and it will be your fault.

¹⁰The Lord Almighty says, “I wish one of you would close the Temple doors so as to prevent you from lighting useless fires on my altar. I am not pleased with you; I will not accept the offerings you bring me.

¹¹People from one end of the world to the other honor me. Everywhere they burn incense to me and offer acceptable sacrifices. All of them honor me!

¹²But you dishonor me when you say that my altar is worthless and when you offer on it food that you despise.

¹³You say, ‘How tired we are of all this!’ and you turn up your nose at me. As your offering to me you bring a stolen animal or one that is lame or sick. Do you think I will accept that from you?

¹⁴A curse on the cheater who sacrifices a worthless animal to me, when he has in his flock a good animal that he promised to give me! For I am a great king, and people of all nations fear me.”

¹The Lord Almighty says to the priests, “This command is for you:

²You must honor me by what you do. If you will not listen to what I say, then I will bring a curse on you. I will put a curse on the things you receive for your support. In fact, I have already put a curse on them, because you do not take my command seriously.

³I will punish your children and rub your faces in the dung of the animals you sacrifice—and you will be taken out to the dung heap.

⁴Then you will know that I have given you this command, so that my covenant with the priests, the descendants of Levi, will not be broken.

⁵“In my covenant I promised them life and well-being, and this is what I gave them, so that they might respect me. In those days they did respect and fear me.

⁶They taught what was right, not what was wrong. They lived in harmony with me; they not only did what was right themselves, but they also helped many others to stop doing evil.

⁷It is the duty of priests to teach the true knowledge of God. People should go to them to learn my will, because they are the messengers of the Lord Almighty.

⁸“But now you priests have turned away from the right path. Your teaching has led many to do wrong. You have broken the covenant I made with you.

⁹So I, in turn, will make the people of Israel despise you because you do not obey my will, and when you teach my people, you do not treat everyone alike.”

The People's Unfaithfulness to God

¹⁰Don't we all have the same father? Didn't the same God create us all? Then why do we break our promises to one another, and why do we despise the covenant that God made with our ancestors?

¹¹The people of Judah have broken their promise to God and done a horrible thing in Jerusalem and all over the country. They have defiled the Temple which the Lord loves. Men have married women who worship foreign gods.

¹²May the Lord remove from the community of Israel those who did this, and never again let them participate in the offerings our nation brings to the Lord Almighty.

¹³This is another thing you do. You drown the Lord's altar with tears, weeping and wailing because he no longer accepts the offerings you bring him.

¹⁴You ask why he no longer accepts them. It is because he knows you have broken your promise to the wife you married when you were young. She was your partner, and you have broken your promise to her, although you promised before God that you would be faithful to her.

¹⁵Didn't God make you one body and spirit with her? What was his purpose in this? It was that you should have children who are truly God's people. So make sure that none of you breaks his promise to his wife.

¹⁶“I hate divorce,” says the Lord God of Israel. “I hate it when one of you does such a cruel thing to his wife. Make sure that you do not break your promise to be faithful to your wife.”

The Day of Judgment Is Near

¹⁷You have tired the Lord out with your talk. But you ask, “How have we tired him?” By saying, “The Lord Almighty thinks all evildoers are good; in fact he likes them.” Or by asking, “Where is the God who is supposed to be just?”

¹The Lord Almighty answers, “I will send my messenger to prepare the way for me. Then the Lord you are looking for will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger you long to see will come and proclaim my covenant.”

²But who will be able to endure the day when he comes? Who will be able to survive when he appears? He will be like strong soap, like a fire that refines metal.

³He will come to judge like one who refines and purifies silver. As a metalworker refines silver and gold, so the Lord's messenger will purify the priests, so that they will bring to the Lord the right kind of offerings.

⁴Then the offerings which the people of Judah and Jerusalem bring to the Lord will be pleasing to him, as they used to be in the past.

⁵The Lord Almighty says, “I will appear among you to judge, and I will testify at once against those who practice magic, against adulterers, against those who give false testimony, those who cheat employees out of their wages, and those who take advantage of widows, orphans, and foreigners—against all who do not respect me.

The Payment of Tithes

⁶“I am the Lord, and I do not change. And so you, the descendants of Jacob, are not yet completely lost.

⁷You, like your ancestors before you, have turned away from my laws and have not kept them. Turn back to me, and I will turn to you. But you ask, ‘What must we do to turn back to you?’

⁸I ask you, is it right for a person to cheat God? Of course not, yet you are cheating me. ‘How?’ you ask. In the matter of tithes and offerings.

⁹A curse is on all of you because the whole nation is cheating me.

¹⁰Bring the full amount of your tithes to the Temple, so that there will be plenty of food there. Put me to the test and you will see that I will open the windows of heaven and pour out on you in abundance all kinds of good things.

¹¹I will not let insects destroy your crops, and your grapevines will be loaded with grapes.

¹²Then the people of all nations will call you happy, because your land will be a good place to live.

God's Promise of Mercy

¹³“You have said terrible things about me,” says the Lord. “But you ask, ‘What have we said about you?’

¹⁴You have said, ‘It's useless to serve God. What's the use of doing what he says or of trying to show the Lord Almighty that we are sorry for what we have done?

¹⁵As we see it, proud people are the ones who are happy. Evil people not only prosper, but they test God's patience with their evil deeds and get away with it.’”

¹⁶Then the people who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard what they said. In his presence, there was written down in a book a record of those who feared the Lord and respected him.

¹⁷“They will be my people,” says the Lord Almighty. “On the day when I act, they will be my very own. I will be merciful to them as parents are merciful to the children who serve them.

¹⁸Once again my people will see the difference between what happens to the righteous and to the wicked, to the person who serves me and the one who does not.”

The Day of the Lord Is Coming

¹The Lord Almighty says, “The day is coming when all proud and evil people will burn like straw. On that day they will burn up, and there will be nothing left of them.

²But for you who obey me, my saving power will rise on you like the sun and bring healing like the sun's rays. You will be as free and happy as calves let out of a stall.

³On the day when I act, you will overcome the wicked, and they will be like dust under your feet.

⁴“Remember the teachings of my servant Moses, the laws and commands which I gave him at Mount Sinai for all the people of Israel to obey.

⁵“But before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes, I will send you the prophet Elijah.

⁶He will bring fathers and children together again; otherwise I would have to come and destroy your country.”

²⁵Lazy people who refuse to work are only killing themselves;

²⁶all they do is think about what they would like to have. The righteous, however, can give, and give generously.

²⁷The Lord hates it when wicked people offer him sacrifices, especially if they do it from evil motives.

²⁸The testimony of a liar is not believed, but the word of someone who thinks matters through is accepted.