Malachi 3:5

Translations

King James Version (KJV)

And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, said the LORD of hosts.

American King James Version (AKJV)

And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, said the LORD of hosts.

American Standard Version (ASV)

And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the sojourner from his right , and fear not me, saith Jehovah of hosts.

Basic English Translation (BBE)

And I will come near to you for judging; I will quickly be a witness against the wonder-workers, against those who have been untrue in married life, against those who take false oaths; against those who keep back from the servant his payment, and who are hard on the widow and the child without a father, who do not give his rights to the man from a strange country, and have no fear of me, says the Lord of armies.

Webster's Revision

And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.

World English Bible

I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and don't fear me," says Yahweh of Armies.

English Revised Version (ERV)

And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers; and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts.

Definitions for Malachi 3:5

Hireling - A laborer employed on hire.

Clarke's Malachi 3:5 Bible Commentary

I will come near to you to judgment - And what fearful cases does he get to judge! Sorcerers, adulterers, false swearers, defrauders of the wages of the hireling, oppressors of widows and orphans, and perverters of the stranger and such as do not fear the Lord: a horrible crew; and the land at that time was full of them. Several were converted under the preaching of Christ and his apostles, and the rest the Romans destroyed or carried into captivity.

Barnes's Malachi 3:5 Bible Commentary

And I will come near to you to judgment - They had clamored for the coming of "the God of judgment;" God assures them that He will come to judgment, which they had desired, but far other than they look for. The few would be purified; the great mass of them (so that He calls them "you"), the main body of those who had so clamored, would find that He came as a Judge, not for them but against them.

And I will be a swift witness - o "In judging I will bear witness, and witnessing, I, the same, will bring forth judgment, saith the Lord; therefore, the judgment shall be terrible, since the judge is an infallible witness, whom the conscience of no one will be able to contradict."

God would be a "swift witness," as He had said before, "He shall come suddenly." Our Lord calls Himself (Revelation 3:14; Revelation 1:5, "I, and not other witnesses, having seen with My own eyes." Theod. Jerome) "the Faithful and True witness," when He stands in the midst of the Church, as their Judge. God's judgments are always unexpected by those, on whom they fall. The sins are those especially condemned by the law; the use of magical arts as drawing men away from God, the rest as sins of special malignity. Magical arts were rife at the time of the Coming of our Lord; and adultery, as shown in the history of the woman taken in adultery, when her accusers were convicted in their own consciences. (John 8:9, "adulterous generation." Matthew 12:39. Lightfoot on John 8:3 quotes Sotah f. 47. 1. "From the time that homicides were multiplied, the beheading of the heifer ceased: from the time that adulterers were multiplied, the bitter waters ceased:" and Maimonides on Sotah, c. 3. "When the adulterers multiplied under the second Temple, the Sanhedrin abolished the ordeal of the adulteresses by the bitter water; relying on its being written, 'I will not visit your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery.'" Lightfoot subjoins, "The Gemarists teach that Johanan ben Zacchai was the author of that advice, who was still alive, in the Sanhedrin, and perhaps among those who brought the adulteress before Christ. For some things make it probable, that the "scribes and Pharisees," mentioned here, were elders of the synagogue." Justin reproaches them with having fresh wives, wherever they went throughout the world. Dial. fin. p. 243. Oxford translation.)

Oppress the hireling - , literally "oppress the hire," i. e., deal oppressively in it. "Behold," says James Jam 5:4, "the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is by you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." The mere delay in the payment of the wages of the laborer brought sin unto him, against whom he cried to God Deuteronomy 24:14-15. It is no light sin, since it is united with the heaviest, and is spoken of as reaching the ears of God. The widow and the fatherless stand in a relation of special nearness to God.

And fear not Me - He closes with the central defect, which was the mainspring of all their sins, the absence of the fear of God. The commission of any of these sins, rife as they unhappily are, proves that those who did them had no fear of God. "Nothing hinders that this should be referred to the first coming of Christ. For Christ, in preaching to the Jews, exercised upon them a judgment of just rebuke, especially of the priests, Scribes and Pharisees, as the Gospels show."

Wesley's Malachi 3:5 Bible Commentary

3:5 I will come near - You have spoken as if you thought I was far off, but you shall see I am near. To you - O Jews, not those very persons Malachi preached to, but those who were living when the Messiah came.

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