This section of Malachi condemns the priests of Israel. Yet when we look more closely, we see a powerful connection between their rejection and that of Esau’s. With each verse, a pattern emerges, and this disturbing relationship becomes clear. The priests have taken on the role of a new Esau, a new Edom, within Israel itself. We see this in the words, “O Priests who despise My Name.”
In Scripture, the meaning of a word is important, but so are its first appearances and its use throughout the Bible. The word despise, bazah, appears only once in Genesis, at Genesis 25:34, where Esau despises his birthright. He treats what God has given as worthless. The word appears again in Numbers 15:31, where the only occurrence of this word in this book describes a defiant person whom the Lord says, “has despised the word of the Lord.” Once again, bazah is linked to deliberate rejection and spiritual rebellion.
These passages reveal the full weight of the word. Though it appears fewer than forty times in Scripture, it is used twice in Isaiah 53:3, the prophecy concerning the Messiah’s coming. “He was despised and forsaken of men… He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” The connection is striking. Esau’s contempt for his birthright parallels this passage in Isaiah, showing the people’s rejection of God’s Word and the Servant, the Messiah whom He sent. Malachi presses this reality to its deepest level, revealing that this same contempt is nothing less than a rejection of God Himself—as Father and as Master.
There is also something else in this text that is deeply revealing about the power and persistence of religious systems. Have you noticed the answers the priests give to God’s complaints? They are completely oblivious to the reality of their rebellion. In vs.6, when the Lord tells them that they have despised His Name, they answer, “How have we despised Your name?” In vs.7, when the Lord tells them that they defiled His altar, they answer, “How have we defiled You?”
It did not take long at all, from Ezra to Malachi, for them to drift so far from the pure and simple Word of God that it was lost to memory. It is like someone standing in a smoke-filled room, coughing and gasping for air, yet insisting everything is perfectly fine. The signs are obvious to everyone else, yet blindness has set in. It is really about a forgotten identity. When we forget who God is, we inevitably forget who we are. And when identity is lost, honor fades, reverence weakens, and worship becomes mechanical. Malachi teaches us this sobering truth: Spiritual decline does not always begin with defiance; it begins with amnesia.
And it is in this text that God’s anger, His righteous indignation, is so well depicted in Malachi. This is when the Lord gives the priests the same judgment He gave to Edom: see Malachi 2:3, I will rebuke your offspring. This is a mild way of saying, I will put an end to your seed or ancestry. And the language of the rest of the verse is among the most powerful in the Scriptures, where He treats these priests as worse than waste and rubbish: His perfect hatred is seen here as well.
However, here again, God’s words pose a problem for us: if the Lord will rebuke the priestly seed, does that mean the priesthood in Israel will end? If the priesthood in Israel ends, does that mean Israel itself will end? God forbids that!
This dilemma is addressed at the heart of the New Testament, the Brit Chadashah, in Romans 9:6. There, after quoting Malachi and addressing the fall of many in Israel, he resolves the problem by saying, “But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel.”
What does Paul mean by this: For they are not all Israel who are of Israel? Here, Paul distinguishes between those in Israel who believe and those who do not. He is not comparing Jews and Gentiles, for Gentiles cannot take on the name of Israel, as no one can change their ancestry. Israel, or a Jew, is by definition a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; no one can convert to this. As Jeremiah asks, can a leopard change its spots? (Jeremiah 13:23).
Paul cites Romans 9:29, which quotes Isaiah 1:9, “Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.” If it were not for a remnant in Israel, there would be no Israel at all; the remnant, that is, the believing part of Israel, sustains the nation as a whole. This is reflected in the prophets and in the Brit Chadashah.
The truth that a faithful remnant sustains the whole nation is not limited to Israel; it is also clearly present within the visible church. This is not only a Jewish story; it is also a universal spiritual reality. Yeshua Himself makes this unmistakably clear in Matthew 7:21, when He says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.”
Not all who call Jesus “Lord” will go to heaven. Only those who truly follow Him, have been spiritually baptized into the Body of Messiah, and do the will of the Father will be promised entrance. This is the faithful remnant who is promised entrance. Scripture consistently affirms that those who genuinely know the Lord, the Messiah of the Scriptures, inherit eternal life. Because this truth is so important, Yeshua repeats it again and again throughout the Gospels, especially in the Parables of the Kingdom.
In the Parable of the Seed, only one of the four soils produces lasting fruit. In the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, the weeds grow alongside the wheat, even attempting to overtake it. And in the Parable of the Mustard Seed, something small grows into something unnaturally large, a huge tree that overshadows what was meant to remain pure and contained. At the time, a mustard tree was not allowed to grow in cities, for it would just overtake the whole neighborhood.
These parables point to something very important: the difference between the visible and invisible church. The visible church is the outward, visible expression of Christendom, including many visible practices and ordinances, and it includes both believers and unbelievers. The invisible church, on the other hand, consists only of true, faithful believers. But Yeshua left these instructions: from Matthew 13:28b-30, these two entities were left to continue side by side until a certain time, as Yeshua said, “The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ 29 But He said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into My barn.””
Just as it was with Israel, so it is with the church. Each individual must turn to God through the Scriptures and honestly examine where they stand, ensuring they are on the right side of eternity.
Click Here for the Video : Malachi Part 3 – Faithless Guardians of the Torah