Malachi 2

1 “And now, priests, this command is for you.

2 If you will not listen and take it to heart, to give glory to my name,”

says the Lord Almighty,

“then I will send the curse on you and curse your blessing — yes, I will curse it — and I will scatter your blessing, and it will not be among you, because you do not take this to heart.

3 Look — I turn my shoulder against you. I will scatter dung on your faces, the dung of your feasts, and I will take you away together.

4 Then you will know that I sent this command to you so that my covenant with the Levites might remain,” says the Lord Almighty.

5 “My covenant of life and peace was with him. I gave them to him so that he would fear me and stand in awe of my name.

6 The law of truth was in his mouth, and wrongdoing was not found on his lips. He walked with me, directing his way in peace, and he turned many away from wrongdoing.

7 For a priest’s lips should guard knowledge, and people should seek the law from his mouth, because he is a messenger of the Lord Almighty.

8 But you have turned aside from the way and caused many to stumble in the law. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi,” says the Lord Almighty.

9 “So I have made you despised and cast aside among all the nations, because you have not kept my ways but have shown partiality in the law.”

10 Did not one God create you? Do you not all have one Father? Why has each of you abandoned his brother and treated the covenant of your fathers as common?

11 Judah has been abandoned, and a detestable thing has been done in Israel and Jerusalem. Judah has treated the Lord’s holy things as common — the things he loved — and has gone after foreign gods.

12 May the Lord utterly destroy the man who does this, until he is brought low out of Jacob’s tents and from among those who offer sacrifice to the Lord Almighty.

13 And you did these things that I hated: you covered the Lord’s altar with tears, weeping, and groaning because of your troubles. Should I still regard your sacrifice or receive anything from your hands with favor?

14 Yet you ask,

“Why?”

Because the Lord has borne witness between you and the wife of your youth, whom you abandoned, though she was your partner and the wife of your covenant.

15 No other did it, and some of his Spirit remained. And you ask,

“What does God seek but offspring?”

So guard your spirit, and do not abandon the wife of your youth.

16 “But if you hate your wife and send her away,”

says the Lord God of Israel,

“then ungodliness will cover your thoughts,”

says the Lord Almighty.

“So guard your spirit, and do not abandon her.”

17 You have provoked God with your words. Yet you ask,

“How have we provoked him?”

By saying,

“Everyone who does evil is pleasing in the Lord’s sight, and he delights in such people,”

and,

“Where is the God of righteousness?”