by Paul Mann
18 October 2015 at Bedfordview PM
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by Mike Graves
18 October 2015 at Bedfordview AM
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Malachi is the last book in the Hebrew Canon and in our Bibles. It can be placed after the rebuilding of the Temple by Zerubbabel (516 B.C) and before the arrival of Ezra in 458 B.C. It can also be dated some time after Nehemiah had left (445 B.C). Whenever it is dated, what is certain is that the people had become religiously cold and morally lax. They had heard the promises of restoration but now time had passed and disillusionment was the feeling of the time. God appeared to have abandoned his promise and Judah remained a small insignificant province in the Persian Empire.
The problems amongst the people that Malachi addresses are: mixed marriages (2:11-15); failure to tithe (3:8-10); no concern for the Sabbath (2:8-9); corrupt priests (1:6-2:9); and social problems (3:5). In a unique structure Malachi records the Lord’s words to the people. Malachi lists the problems as disputes that the people have with the Lord. He takes each one in turn describing God’s character, the people’s failure, and God’s solution.
Take for example (1:6-2:9). Introduction: God is father and master and you have defiled that. Question: How have we defiled you? Answer: you have placed lame animals on the altar.
The work pictures God as showing his great love for his people but questioning their love for him. He loves his people (2:1); He is their Father and master (1:6); their Father and creator (2:10); a just God (2:17); He does not change (3:6); and is totally honest (3:13), but they have failed to love him with the same enthusiasm. The book lists their behaviour that proves what God ‘suspects’.
Malachi ends, promising the Sun of righteousness will come with healing in his wings – a fitting end.
By Tyrone Daniel
4 October 2015
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By Matt Doty
4 October 2015 at Bedfordview AM
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Nehemiah was cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. Nehemiah’s stepmother was most probably Esther the Jewess. Nehemiah is faithful to the king but he still has a heart for his people in Jerusalem. He asks the King if he may have permission to go to Jerusalem to help rebuild the wall of the city. When Nehemiah arrived in 445 B.C., Ezra had been there thirteen years. Nehemiah was an engineer who carried civil authority from the King. By assigning each family to repair a portion of the wall they accomplished the task in fifty-two days.
The rebuilding didn’t happen without opposition. The Samaritans tried to derail the work and troubles from within also threatened to stop progress. But Nehemiah prays, stands strong, and succeeds. He gives his brother Hanani the charge of the city that consisted of 42,360 people, besides 7,337 servants and 245 singing men and women.
The exile in Babylon had worked. God’s people from then until today have never en masse worshipped foreign gods. Nehemiah works with Ezra to uphold reform of the heart and a revival comes to the people who vow to follow God. But we all know, without the Messiah who will ‘put the law into the heart’ as Ezekiel said, total reform will always allude anyone who tries to follow the God of the Bible.
By Darian Venerable
11 October 2015 at Bedfordview AM
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Almost snuck in unnoticed in the exile-restoration period is the great story of Esther. The events of the book are set between 486-465 B.C in the reign of Xerxes the Persian. The Temple has already been restored for 37 years. Ezra will arrive with a contingent from Babylon about nine years later. After that Nehemiah will rebuild the wall.
Interestingly, God is never mentioned directly in the whole book. But the message is clear, even though the story follows the life of a Jewish peasant woman who comes to be the wife of a non-Jewish King. The road is paved with trouble, but multiple ‘co-incidences’ protect and keep her on track. Co-incidences are the author’s masterful stroke in showing God as the Lord of all events in history. It becomes obvious that there were no coincidences here and God was behind it all.
The exact teaching of the book each reader and teacher has to arrive at himself or herself as the rich narrative lends itself to many life lessons along the way. Big themes in the book are: the Lord of all people in all nations; the Lord orders history; the Lord protects his people; the Lord’s promises stand; Jews will be kept by God in ungodly nations; in Jesus, the dividing lines between Jew and Gentile will break.
Pic: Kate Gardiner Hastings (British, 1837-1925), Esther.
Only because of the messages and help of Zechariah and Haggai do the discouraged in Jerusalem rebuild the Temple which was finished in 516 B.C. Zechariah and Haggai have very similar themes to their prophecies, understandably. Zechariah’s work can be divided into two parts: Chapters 1-8 deal with more immediate concerns that the community would have been facing, while Chapters 9-14 deal with future events.
Zechariah might be the hardest of the minor prophetic books to understand. Chapters 1-8 consist of visions and reports of historical events. There are eight visions and their probable meanings are below:
Vision 1 – Israel had experienced the Day of Lord but the other nations were at ease – how come? The answer comes that God has not forgotten his people and the nations will have their day, too.
Vision 2 – opposition against God’s people will not last nor succeed.
Vision 3 – the glory of God will no longer be confined to the Temple but the city will be the dwelling place of God.
Vision 4 – the people would be able to build an acceptable Temple for God.
Vision 5 – the temple they were building was God’s work and although they didn’t find it acceptable, God did.
Vision 6 & 7 – God had initiated the exile for purification but sin had returned in the hearts of the returned exiles. This would be dealt with too.
Vision 8 – God would have the final say and clear his name amongst the nations.
The chapter closes out with the scene of a coronation (6:9-11) in which most Christian interpreters have seen the blending of Priest and King in Christ. The last thoughts in chapters 7-8 are around fasts that the Jews had observed and set up. Zechariah warns that cold formalism is a possibility that they should fear and shun.
Chapters 9-14 are Zechariah encouraging the people with future events. The return of the exiles was a great victory and restoration but complete restoration still waits. This is the theme of the chapters. The restoration from captivity was only a token compared to the great redemption to come.
Ezra tells us that 50,000 Jews returned from Babylon to Jerusalem. Their arrival was not welcomed with palm branches and cheers. Opposition to their return caused them to stammer and fall in discouragement. Ezra reports their rebuilding of the temple but there is a little space that he leaves out. It is the space of the words of Haggai.
Haggai and Zechariah arrive to a discouraged people. They are busy restoring their homes and restoring agricultural productivity (Haggai 1). It was in 520 B.C that the two prophets begin telling the people their priorities are upside down. The Temple is to be built first. By 516 B.C the Temple is built.
The book consists of four oracles that Haggai recorded. The first oracle (1:1-11) covers Haggai telling the leaders and people that the trouble they were facing was because they hadn’t tended to the most important thing – the Temple first.
His second oracle came less than a month after the rebuilding had started (2:1-9). It was clear to all that the second Temple was nowhere close to the glory of Solomon’s Temple. The people who saw Solomon’s would have been in their seventies. Haggai assures them that the second Temple will none the less far exceed Solomon’s in glory.
The third oracle (2:10-19) is in two parts. The message is that holiness is not contagious. Having a temple would not make the people holy. The only hope the people had was not the ‘magic’ of the Temple but the grace and mercy of God.
His fourth oracle (2:20-23) is for Zerubbabel the governor of Judah. The message is that Zerubbabel would not be the one to see a return of David’s rule to Judah, this would come in the future.