Malachiæ 3:5

Clementine Latin Vulgate

Et dixit : Ponite cidarim mundam super caput ejus. Et posuerunt cidarim mundam super caput ejus, et induerunt eum vestibus : et angelus Domini stabat.

Parallel Translations

Jerome's Latin Vulgate (405)
Et accedam ad vos in judicio, et ero testis velox maleficis, et adulteris, et perjuris, et qui calumniantur mercedem mercenarii, viduas et pupillos, et opprimunt peregrinum, nec timuerunt me, dicit Dominus exercituum.

Nova Vulgata (1979)
Et accedam ad vos in iudicio; et ero testis velox maleficis et adulteris et periuris et, qui opprimunt mercennarios, viduas et pupillos et flectunt ius peregrinorum nec timuerunt me, dicit Dominus exercituum.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

I will come: Malachi 2:17, Psalms 50:3-6, Psalms 96:13, Psalms 98:9, Ezekiel 34:20-22, Hebrews 10:30, Hebrews 10:31, James 5:8, James 5:9, Jude 1:14, Jude 1:15

a swift: Malachi 2:14, Psalms 50:7, Psalms 81:8, Jeremiah 29:23, Micah 1:2, Matthew 23:14-35

the sorcerers: Leviticus 20:6, Leviticus 20:10, Leviticus 20:27, Deuteronomy 5:11, Deuteronomy 5:17-21, Jeremiah 7:9, Jeremiah 7:10, Ezekiel 22:6-12, Zechariah 5:3, Zechariah 5:4, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Corinthians 6:10, Galatians 5:19-21, Hebrews 13:4, Revelation 21:8, Revelation 22:15

against those: Exodus 22:21-24, Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:14, Deuteronomy 24:15, Deuteronomy 24:17, Deuteronomy 27:19, Proverbs 22:22, Proverbs 22:23, Proverbs 23:10, Proverbs 23:11, Jeremiah 22:13-17, James 5:4, James 5:12

oppress: or, defraud, 1 Thessalonians 4:6

fear: Genesis 20:11, Genesis 42:18, Exodus 1:17, Exodus 18:21, Nehemiah 5:15, Psalms 36:1, Proverbs 8:13, Proverbs 16:6, Luke 23:40, Romans 3:8

Reciprocal: Genesis 31:50 - God Genesis 39:11 - none of the men Exodus 20:14 - General Exodus 23:6 - General Leviticus 6:3 - sweareth Leviticus 18:20 - General Leviticus 19:12 - ye shall Leviticus 19:26 - use Leviticus 19:33 - And if Leviticus 25:17 - fear Leviticus 25:43 - but shalt Numbers 5:24 - General Deuteronomy 5:20 - General Deuteronomy 9:13 - I have Deuteronomy 15:13 - General Deuteronomy 23:16 - thou shalt not Joshua 9:20 - lest wrath Judges 11:10 - if we do Ruth 1:21 - the Lord 1 Kings 21:13 - the men of Belial Job 6:27 - the fatherless Job 7:2 - as an hireling Job 20:27 - heaven Job 22:9 - widows Job 27:13 - the heritage Job 31:12 - General Psalms 24:4 - sworn Psalms 94:6 - General Psalms 146:7 - executeth Psalms 146:9 - preserveth Proverbs 6:29 - he that Ecclesiastes 4:1 - and considered Ecclesiastes 5:8 - regardeth Ecclesiastes 9:2 - feareth Isaiah 1:23 - they judge Isaiah 3:5 - the people Isaiah 10:2 - turn aside Isaiah 29:21 - and turn Isaiah 48:1 - not in truth Jeremiah 5:2 - though Jeremiah 5:7 - they then Jeremiah 5:29 - General Jeremiah 7:6 - oppress Jeremiah 17:11 - he that Jeremiah 22:3 - do no violence Jeremiah 23:10 - full Jeremiah 27:9 - hearken Jeremiah 42:5 - The Lord be Jeremiah 49:11 - thy fatherless Ezekiel 17:16 - whose oath Ezekiel 18:7 - hath not Ezekiel 22:7 - dealt Ezekiel 22:11 - committed Hosea 12:7 - he loveth Amos 4:1 - which oppress Amos 5:12 - and they Micah 2:2 - so Zephaniah 3:1 - to the Zechariah 7:10 - oppress Zechariah 8:17 - love Zechariah 13:8 - two Malachi 3:16 - that feared Matthew 7:12 - for Matthew 26:72 - with John 7:7 - because Acts 6:1 - their 1 Corinthians 6:8 - General Ephesians 6:9 - ye Colossians 4:1 - give 1 Timothy 1:10 - perjured 1 Peter 4:17 - judgment 2 Peter 2:1 - and bring Revelation 9:21 - their sorceries

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And I will come near to you to judgment,.... And so will manifestly appear to be the God of judgment they asked after, Malachi 2:17 this is not to be understood of Christ's coming to judgment at the last day, but of his coming to judge and punish the wicked Jews at the time of Jerusalem's destruction; for the same is here meant, who is spoken of in the third person before, and who will not be afar off; there will be no need to inquire after him, when he will come he will be near enough, and too near for them:

and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers; not only a judge, but a witness; so that there will be no delay of judgment, or protracting or evading it, for want of witnesses of facts alleged; for the Judge himself, who is Christ, will be witness of them, he being the omniscient God, before whom all things are manifest. The Targum is,

"my Word shall be among you for a swift witness.''

Mention is made of "sorcerers", because there were many that used the magic art, enchantments, and sorceries, in the age of Christ and his apostles, and before the destruction of Jerusalem, even many of their doctors and members of the sanhedrim; Malachi 2:17- ::

and against the adulterers; with whom that age also abounded; hence our Lord calls it an adulterous generation, Matthew 12:39:

and against false swearers; who were guilty of perjury, and of vain oaths; who swore by the creatures, and not by the Lord, and to things not true; see Matthew 5:33:

and against those that oppress the hireling in [his] wages, the widow, and the fatherless; defrauding of servants of their wages, devouring widows' houses, and distressing the fatherless, were sins the Jews were addicted to in those times, as appears from James 1:27 who wrote to the twelve tribes; and from what our Lord charges them with, Matthew 23:14:

and that turn aside the stranger [from his right]; and so Kimchi supplies it,

"that turn aside the judgment of the stranger;''

that do not do him justice in civil things; yea, persecuted those that became proselytes to the Christian religion:

and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts; which was the root and cause of all their sins; irreverence of Christ, disbelief of him, and contempt of his Gospel.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

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 James 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.”

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Malachi 3:5. 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.