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Journey Through Minor Prophets, Part 2

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2 Chronicles | Chapter Summaries + Study Questions

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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
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 <div class="chapter ch1" data-usfm="MAL.1">
 <div class="label">1</div><div class="p"> 1A prophecy: The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.#1:1 Malachi means my messenger.</div><div class="s1">Israel Doubts God&#8217;s Love</div><div class="p"> 2&#8220;I have loved you,&#8221; says the Lord.</div><div class="p">&#8220;But you ask, &#8216;How have you loved us?&#8217;</div><div class="p">&#8220;Was not Esau Jacob&#8217;s brother?&#8221; declares the Lord. &#8220;Yet I have loved Jacob, 3but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.&#8221;</div><div class="p"> 4Edom may say, &#8220;Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.&#8221;</div><div class="p">But this is what the Lord Almighty says: &#8220;They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the Lord. 5You will see it with your own eyes and say, &#8216;Great is the Lord&#8212;even beyond the borders of Israel!&#8217;</div><div class="s1">Breaking Covenant Through Blemished Sacrifices</div><div class="p"> 6&#8220;A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p">&#8220;It is you priests who show contempt for my name.</div><div class="p">&#8220;But you ask, &#8216;How have we shown contempt for your name?&#8217;</div><div class="p"> 7&#8220;By offering defiled food on my altar.</div><div class="p">&#8220;But you ask, &#8216;How have we defiled you?&#8217;</div><div class="p">&#8220;By saying that the Lord&#8217;s table is contemptible. 8When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p"> 9&#8220;Now plead with God to be gracious to us. With such offerings from your hands, will he accept you?&#8221;&#8212;says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p"> 10&#8220;Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty, &#8220;and I will accept no offering from your hands. 11My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p"> 12&#8220;But you profane it by saying, &#8216;The Lord&#8217;s table is defiled,&#8217; and, &#8216;Its food is contemptible.&#8217; 13And you say, &#8216;What a burden!&#8217; and you sniff at it contemptuously,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p">&#8220;When you bring injured, lame or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?&#8221; says the Lord. 14&#8220;Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty, &#8220;and my name is to be feared among the nations.</div>
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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
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 <div class="chapter ch2" data-usfm="MAL.2">
 <div class="label">2</div><div class="s1">Additional Warning to the Priests</div><div class="p"> 1&#8220;And now, you priests, this warning is for you. 2If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty, &#8220;I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me.</div><div class="p"> 3&#8220;Because of you I will rebuke your descendants#2:3 Or will blight your grain; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. 4And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty. 5&#8220;My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. 6True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.</div><div class="p"> 7&#8220;For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. 8But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty. 9&#8220;So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.&#8221;</div><div class="s1">Breaking Covenant Through Divorce</div><div class="p"> 10Do we not all have one Father#2:10 Or father? Did not one God create us? Why do we profane the covenant of our ancestors by being unfaithful to one another?</div><div class="p"> 11Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god. 12As for the man who does this, whoever he may be, may the Lord remove him from the tents of Jacob#2:12 Or 12 May the Lord remove from the tents of Jacob anyone who gives testimony in behalf of the man who does this&#8212;even though he brings an offering to the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p"> 13Another thing you do: You flood the Lord&#8217;s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer looks with favor on your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands. 14You ask, &#8220;Why?&#8221; It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.</div><div class="p"> 15Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring.#2:15 The meaning of the Hebrew for the first part of this verse is uncertain. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.</div><div class="p"> 16&#8220;The man who hates and divorces his wife,&#8221; says the Lord, the God of Israel, &#8220;does violence to the one he should protect,&#8221;#2:16 Or &#8220;I hate divorce,&#8221; says the Lord, the God of Israel, &#8220;because the man who divorces his wife covers his garment with violence,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p">So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.</div><div class="s1">Breaking Covenant Through Injustice</div><div class="p"> 17You have wearied the Lord with your words.</div><div class="p">&#8220;How have we wearied him?&#8221; you ask.</div><div class="p">By saying, &#8220;All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them&#8221; or &#8220;Where is the God of justice?&#8221;</div>
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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
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 <div class="chapter ch3" data-usfm="MAL.3">
 <div class="label">3</div><div class="p"> 1&#8220;I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p"> 2But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner&#8217;s fire or a launderer&#8217;s soap. 3He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.</div><div class="p"> 5&#8220;So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="s1">Breaking Covenant by Withholding Tithes</div><div class="p"> 6&#8220;I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. 7Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p">&#8220;But you ask, &#8216;How are we to return?&#8217;</div><div class="p"> 8&#8220;Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me.</div><div class="p">&#8220;But you ask, &#8216;How are we robbing you?&#8217;</div><div class="p">&#8220;In tithes and offerings. 9You are under a curse&#8212;your whole nation&#8212;because you are robbing me. 10Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty, &#8220;and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. 11I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty. 12&#8220;Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="s1">Israel Speaks Arrogantly Against God</div><div class="p"> 13&#8220;You have spoken arrogantly against me,&#8221; says the Lord.</div><div class="p">&#8220;Yet you ask, &#8216;What have we said against you?&#8217;</div><div class="p"> 14&#8220;You have said, &#8216;It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the Lord Almighty? 15But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.&#8217;&#8198;&#8221;</div><div class="s1">The Faithful Remnant</div><div class="p"> 16Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.</div><div class="p"> 17&#8220;On the day when I act,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty, &#8220;they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. 18And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.</div>
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<div class="version vid111 iso6393eng" data-vid="111" data-iso6393="eng">
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 <div class="chapter ch4" data-usfm="MAL.4">
 <div class="label">4</div><div class="s1">Judgment and Covenant Renewal</div><div class="p"> # In Hebrew texts 4:1-6 is numbered 3:19-24. 1&#8220;Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty. &#8220;Not a root or a branch will be left to them. 2But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. 3Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,&#8221; says the Lord Almighty.</div><div class="p"> 4&#8220;Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.</div><div class="p"> 5&#8220;See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. 6He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.&#8221;</div>
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