Albert Barnes Commentary Malachi 1:11

"For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name [shall be] great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense [shall be] offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name [shall be] great among the Gentiles, saith Jehovah of hosts." — Malachi 1:11 (ASV)

For - The form of words does not express whether this declaration relates to the present or the future. It is a vivid present, such as is often used to describe the future. But the things spoken of show it to be future. The Jewish sacrifices had defects, partly incidental, partly inherent. Incidental were those with which the prophet had reproached them; an inherent defect, apart from their mere typical character, was that they could never be the religion of the world, since they were locally fixed at Jerusalem. Malachi tells them of a new sacrifice, which would be offered throughout the then-pagan world, grounded on His new revelation of Himself to them. For great shall be My Name among the pagan. The prophet anticipates an objection which the Jews might make to him.

The prophet anticipates an objection the Jews might make, similar to that in Joshua 7:9: what then will God do unto His great Name? The sacrifices by which He would replace them would be more worthy of God in two ways:

1. In themselves,
2. In their universality.

Then, whatever the pagan worshiped, even if some worshiped an “unknown God,” His Name was not known to them, nor was it great among them. Those who knew of Him knew of Him not as the Lord of heaven and earth, but as the God of the Jews only; their offerings were not pure, but in many ways defiled. A Hebrew prophet could not be an apologist for pagan idolatry amidst its abominations, or set it on a level with the worship which God had, for the time, appointed; much less could he set it forth as the true acceptable service of God. Malachi himself speaks of it as an aggravation of cruelty in their divorcing of their wives, that they (Malachi 2:11) married the daughter of a strange god.

The worship of those Jews who remained in foreign countries out of secular interests could not be represented as the pure offering; for they made no offerings, then as now, these being forbidden outside of Jerusalem. Nor would the worship of such Jews as were scattered in the large empire of Persia be contrasted with that at Jerusalem as the pure worship; otherwise, why should the Jews have returned? It would have been an abolition of the law before its time. Malachi prophesies then, as had Micah, Isaiah, and Zephaniah (Zephaniah 2:11), of a new revelation of God, when, and in which, people should worship Him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the pagan.

Our Lord Himself explains and expands it in His words to the Samaritan woman (John 4:21, 23-24): Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh, when you shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. He also declared the rejection of the Jews, who were sealing their own sentence against themselves (Matthew 21:41, 43), saying, I say to you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits of it. And even before that, He had said (Matthew 8:11–12): Many shall come from the East and West, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, and the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.

Incense shall be offered unto My name, literally, I think, “there shall be incense, oblation made unto My name” (this is a mere question of construction), and a pure oblation.

This sacrifice, which would be offered, is designated by the special name of “meal-offering” (Leviticus 2:7 (Leviticus 2:14 in English) and the following verses). God would not accept it from the Jews; He would from the pagans. It was a special sacrifice, offered by itself as an unbloody sacrifice, or together with the bloody sacrifice (Leviticus 6:17 (Leviticus 6:10 in Hebrew)): It is most holy, as the sin-offering and as the trespass-offering. In the daily sacrifice it was offered morning and evening with the lamb. Since this was typical of the precious blood-shedding of the Lamb without spot upon the cross, so was the meal-offering which accompanied it typical of the Holy Eucharist.

The early Christians saw the force of the prediction that sacrifice was contrasted with sacrifice: the bloody sacrifices which were ended by the “One full perfect and sufficient sacrifice oblation and satisfaction” made by our Lord “on the altar of the cross for the sins of the whole world,” and those sacrifices which He commanded to be made on our altars as a memorial of Him.

So Justin, who was converted probably in AD 133, within 30 years of the death of John, says, “God has, therefore, beforehand declared that all who through this name offer those sacrifices which Jesus, who is the Christ, commanded to be offered—that is to say, in the Eucharist of the bread and of the cup, which are offered in every part of the world by us Christians—are well-pleasing to Him. But those sacrifices which are offered by you and through those priests of yours, He wholly rejects, saying, ‘And I will not accept your offerings at your hands. For from the rising of the sun even to the going down of the same, My Name is glorified among the Gentiles; but ye profane it.’”

He points out further the failure of the Jewish explanation regarding their sacrifices, in that the Church was everywhere, but the Jews were not.

“You and your teachers deceive yourselves when you interpret this passage of Scripture as referring to those of your nation who were in the dispersion, saying that it speaks of their prayers and sacrifices made in every place as pure and well-pleasing. You know that you speak falsely and endeavor in every way to impose upon yourselves. First, because your people are not found, even now, from the rising to the setting of the sun; indeed, there are nations in which none of your race have ever lived. In contrast, there is not one nation of people—whether Barbarians, or Greeks, or by whatever name distinguished, whether nomads who live in wagons, or those who have no houses, or pastoral people who dwell in tents—among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered to the Father and Creator of all things through the name of the crucified Jesus. And you know that at the time when the prophet Malachi said this, your dispersion through the whole world, in which you now are, had not yet taken place, as is also shown by Scripture.”

Irenaeus, in the same century, said, “He took that which is part of the creation, namely, bread, and gave thanks, saying, ‘This is My body.’ And the cup likewise, which is of the creation that pertains to us, He professed to be His own blood and taught people the new oblation of the New Testament. This the Church, receiving from the apostles, offers to God in the world—to Him who gives us nourishment, the firstfruits of His own gifts, in the New Testament. Of this, Malachi, among the twelve prophets, gave this intimation beforehand , most evidently thereby intimating that while the former people should cease to make offerings to God, in every place sacrifice should be offered to Him, and that in purity; His Name also is glorified among the Gentiles.

“Now what other name is there which is glorified among the Gentiles than that which belongs to our Lord, by whom the Father is glorified and man is glorified?

“And because man belongs to His Own Son and is made by Him, He calls him His Own. Just as if some king were himself to paint an image of his own son, he justly calls it his own image on both accounts—first, that it is his son’s, and next, that he himself made it—so also the Name of Jesus Christ, which is glorified in the Church throughout the whole world, the Father professes to be His Own, both because it is His Son’s and because He Himself wrote and gave it for the salvation of men. Because, therefore, the Name of the Son properly belongs to the Father, and in God Almighty through Jesus Christ the Church makes her offering, He rightly says on both accounts, ‘And in every place incense is offered unto My Name, and a pure sacrifice.’ And incense, John in the Apocalypse declares, is the prayers of the saints.

“Therefore, the offering of the Church, which the Lord has taught to be offered in the whole world, is accounted by God as a pure sacrifice and accepted by Him.”

Tertullian contrasts the “sacerdotal law through Moses, in Leviticus, prescribing to the people of Israel that sacrifices should in no other place be offered to God than in the land of promise, which the Lord God was about to give to the people Israel and to their brethren, so that on Israel’s introduction there, sacrifices and holocausts should be celebrated there, for sins as well as for souls, and nowhere else but in the holy land” (Leviticus 17:1–6; Deuteronomy 12:5–14, 12:26-27), with this subsequent prediction of the Spirit through the prophets that in every place and in every land sacrifices should be offered to God, as He says through the angel Malachi, one of the twelve prophets .

Hippolytus, a disciple of Irenaeus and a martyr around AD 220, says in a commentary on Daniel that “when Antichrist comes, the sacrifice and libation will be taken away, which is now in every place offered by the Gentiles to God.” The terms Sacrifice offered in every place are terms from Malachi.

So Cyprian, in his Testimonies against the Jews, sums up the teaching of the passage under this heading: “That the old sacrifice was to be made void, and a new sacrifice instituted.”

In the “Apostolic Constitutions,” the prophecy is quoted as “said by God of His ecumenical Church.”

Eusebius says, “The truth bears witness to the prophetic word, by which God, rejecting the Mosaic sacrifices, foretells what will be among us: ‘For from the rising of the sun etc.’ We then sacrifice to the supreme God the sacrifice of praise; we sacrifice the divine, revered, and holy oblation; we sacrifice, in a new way according to the New Testament, the pure sacrifice. The broken heart is also called a sacrifice to God. We also sacrifice the memory of that great Sacrifice, performing it according to the mysteries which have been transmitted by Him.”

Cyril of Jerusalem speaks of it only as prophesying the rejection of the Jews and the adoption of the Gentiles.

In the Liturgy of Mark, it is naturally quoted only as fulfilled “in the reasonable and unbloody sacrifice, which all nations offer to You, O Lord, from the rising of the sun to the setting of it,” not in reference to the cessation of Jewish sacrifices.

Chrysostom dwells on its special force, coming from so late a prophet: “Hear Malachi, who came after the other prophets. For I adduce, for the time, no testimony from Isaiah or Jeremiah or any other before the captivity, lest you should say that the terrible things which he foretold were exhausted in the captivity. But I adduce a prophet, after the return from Babylon and the restoration of your city, prophesying clearly about you.

“For when they had returned, recovered their city, rebuilt the temple, and performed the sacrifices, Malachi, foretelling this present desolation then future and the taking away of the sacrifice, thus speaks in the Person of God (Malachi 1:10 (end) and Malachi 1:12 (beginning)). When, O Jew, did all this happen? When was incense offered to God in every place? When a pure sacrifice? You could not name any other time than this, after the coming of Christ. If the prophet does not foretell this time and our sacrifice, but the Jewish, the prophecy will be against the law.

“For if, when Moses commands that sacrifice should be offered in no other place than where the Lord God should choose, and confines those sacrifices to one place, the prophet says that incense should be offered in every place and a pure sacrifice, he opposes and contradicts Moses. But there is no strife nor contention. For Moses speaks of one sacrifice, and Malachi of another. How is this apparent? (From the place, not Judea only; from the mode, that it should be pure; from the offerers, not Israel, but the nations), from East to West, showing that whatever of earth the sun surveys, the preaching will embrace. He calls the former sacrifice impure, not in its own nature but in the mind of the offerers; if one compares the sacrifice itself, there is such a boundless distance that this (that offered by Christians) might in comparison be called pure.”

Even the cold but clear Theodoret writes: “Foretelling to the Jews the cessation of the legal priesthood, he announces the pure and unbloody sacrifice of the Gentiles. And first he says to the Jews, ‘I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will not accept a sacrifice at your hands.’ Then he foreshows the piety of the Gentiles: ‘For from the rising of the sun etc.’ (Malachi 1:11). You then I will wholly reject, for I detest altogether what you do.

“Therefore I also reject the sacrifice offered by you; but instead of you, I have the whole world to worship Me. For the dwellers in the whole earth, which the rising and setting sun illuminates, will everywhere both offer to Me incense and will sacrifice to Me the pure sacrifice, which I love. For they shall know My name and My will, and shall offer to Me due reverence. So the Lord said to the Samaritan woman, ‘Woman, believe Me, that the hour cometh and now is, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father.’ The blessed Paul, being instructed in this, says (1 Timothy 2:8), ‘I will that men pray everywhere etc.’ And the divine Malachi clearly taught us in this place the worship now used, for the circumscribed worship of the priests is brought to an end, every place is accounted fit for the worship of God, the sacrifice of irrational victims is ended, and He, our spotless Lamb, Who taketh away the sin of the world, is sacrificed.”

Lastly, Augustine says: “Malachi, prophesying of the Church which we see propagated through Christ, says most plainly to the Jews in the person of God, ‘I have no pleasure in you, and will not receive an offering at your hands. For from the rising of the sun etc.’ Since we see this sacrifice through the priesthood of Christ after the order of Melchizedek, now offered to God in every place from the rising of the sun to its setting—while the sacrifice of the Jews, of which it is said, ‘I have no pleasure in you, neither will I accept an offering from your hands,’ they cannot deny has ceased—why do they still expect another Christ, since what they read as prophesied and see fulfilled could not be fulfilled except through Him?”