Malachi 2:17 meaning

Here in Malachi 2:17, God deals with the complaints of the people, saying You have wearied the LORD with your words (v 17a).

This hearkens back to Malachi 2:13 where God ceased responding to the sacrifices and prayers of the people because they were breaking their covenant vow to Him by not loving others as they love themselves and because they were breaking their marital vows.

Now God highlights that the people seem perplexed about why He would say they have wearied Him by continuing to pray for His blessing. The people respond to being told God is weary with them by questioning why God would think that way: Yet you say, “How have we wearied Him?” (v. 17 b).

So the LORD spells it out for them about why He is wearied with their words. It is likely God refers here to words of petition and worship, given the immediate context of Malachi 2:13:

In that you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and He delights in them,” or, “Where is the God of justice?” (v. 17c).

Here God notes two things the people are doing that are wearying Him.

1. They are saying that the LORD delights in things that are, in truth, evil. 
2. They are questioning God, asking, Where is the God of justice? when they themselves are dealing treacherously with God, their community, and with their wives, as highlighted in the previous section.

The root of the word translated “treachery” and “treacherously” appears five times in Malachi, all in Chapter 2 (Malachi 2:10, 11, 14, 15, 16). The people are dealing treacherously, which is evil. God’s covenant command can basically be summarized as “Love God and love others as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39). The priests and the Jewish people who followed their example were doing neither. Rather, they were dealing treacherously, exploiting others instead of serving them.

To exploit others is the opposite of God’s design for creation. Evil is functioning in a manner that is outside God’s design for us. The people were not only living apart from God’s design, they were claiming that God delighted in them living this way. The people were doing evil and claiming it was good.

In doing this, they were falling into the same deception as did Eve, and Adam with her. God told Adam and Eve they would have life if they followed in God’s ways (Genesis 2:17). But they believed the serpent’s lie and decided they could have life by following their own way. As God told them, they actually got death.

The people of Israel were doing something similar. Rather than follow the commands of the covenant/treaty they had entered into with the LORD, their Suzerain/ruler, they were following their own way. Thus, they were doing evil. But in their own eyes they were doing good. This wearied the LORD.

It would follow that when Judah’s leaders led the people with an example of exploiting others, the society would naturally fill with injustice. So, the people ask Where is the God of justice? But God had already told them how to have justice—keep His commands. The reason there is injustice is because they are following the pagan ways of exploitation rather than God’s way of loving one another, as we saw in the prior sections of Malachi 2.

The Hebrew word translated justice in verse 17 is translated to Greek as “dikaiosune” in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint). The root of “dikaiosune” occurs often in the New Testament, thirty-four times in the book of Romans alone. It is usually translated to English as “righteousness” or “justice.”

“Dikaiosune” is a noun that represents a status when all things within a particular sphere are operating according to God’s (good) design. It can apply to an individual, a group, or a nation. The theme verses of Romans includes “dikaiosune” as well as its adjective form “dikaios”:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness [‘dikaiosune’] of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS [‘dikaios’] man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.’”
(Romans 1:16-17)

Romans 1:17 quotes Habakkuk 2:4, which reads in full:

“Behold, as for the proud one,
His soul is not right within him;
But the righteous [‘dikaiosune’ in the Greek translation] will live by his faith.”
(Habakkuk 2:4)

We can see here in Habakkuk 2 that the opposite of faith is pride. To live by faith is to walk in obedience to God’s ways, believing that His ways are for our best. To live by pride is to believe that our own ways are better. Living by faith leads to righteousness, living by pride leads to evil and death. Death is separation. When we walk in pride we separate ourselves from God’s (good) design.

The people of Judah at the time of Malachi were living in pride. They were walking in their own ways. Although they followed pagan practices, they also continued to perform religious practices for the purpose of getting God to do things for them (Malachi 2:13). But that is not the way things work in the reality of God’s created order. God built the world with cause-effect relationships.

There is a divine Mercy Principle, where people get what they give. Those who give mercy receive mercy (Matthew 5:7). The people of Judah were practicing injustice, so that is what they were getting in return; it was a negative reward of their own making. That would appear to be why they were asking Where is the God of justice? In a real sense of irony, the direct answer could be, “The God of justice is being just, by pronouncing judgment on your unjust practices.”

As we will soon see, when it comes to His people, God’s purpose in judging them is to purify them. Purification will be God’s emphasis in the first verses of Chapter 3. God is like a refining fire or a launderer’s soap; He is an agent of cleansing. And He will cleanse the people either through their willing obedience or through His judgment. They will get to choose. This principle also appears in the New Testament.

The reader might refer to our commentary on Romans 8:28-30 which describes that God has ordained that each believer will be conformed to the image of Christ, and God will use all things we encounter to see that transpire. However, we have a choice whether to be refined through obedience in this life and gain immense benefits and rewards, or wait until the next life and lose those great benefits. Like Jesus, the principles of scripture are consistent.