Albert Barnes Commentary Malachi 2:10

"Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers?" — Malachi 2:10 (ASV)

Have we not all one Father?

Hath not one God created us? Malachi turns abruptly to another offense, in which the priests also set an evil example: the capricious dismissal of their Hebrew wives and taking other women instead. Here, as before, he lays down, at the outset, a general moral principle, which he applies. “The one Father” (it appears from the parallel) is manifestly Almighty God, as the Jews said to our Lord (John 8:41), We have one Father, even God. He created them, not only as He did all mankind, but by the spiritual relationship with Himself, into which He brought them.

So Isaiah speaks (Isaiah 43:1, Isaiah 43:7, Isaiah 43:21; also Isaiah 44:2, Isaiah 44:21, Isaiah 44:24), Thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and He that formed thee, O Israel. Every one that is called by My Name; I have created Him for My glory; I have formed him; yea I have made him. This people have I formed for Myself; they shall show forth My praise.

And from the first in Moses’ song (Deuteronomy 32:6), Is not He thy Father that created thee? Hath He not made thee and established thee? This creation of them by God, as His people, gave them a new existence, a new relation to each other; so that every offense against each other was a violation of their relation to God, who had given them this unity, and was, in a closer sense than of any other, the common Father of all.

“Why then,” the prophet adds, do we deal treacherously, a man against his brother, to profane the covenant of our fathers? He does not yet say how this treacherous dealing consisted; but awakens them to the thought that sin against a brother is sin against God, Who made him a brother; as, and much more under the Gospel, in which we are all members of one mystical body (1 Corinthians 8:12), when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. He speaks of the sin as affecting those who did not commit it.

Why do we deal treacherously? So Isaiah, before his lips were cleansed by the mystical coal, said (Isaiah 6:5), I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; and the high priest Joshua was shown in the vision, clothed with defiled garments (Zechariah 3:3–4; see above pages 354-355).

The sin of Achan became the sin of the children of Israel (Joshua 7:1, Joshua 7:11), and David’s sinful pride in numbering the people was visited upon all (2 Samuel 24).

He teaches beforehand that (1 Corinthians 12:26), whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.

They also “profaned” the covenant of their fathers by marrying those whom God forbade, and who would seduce, as pagan wives had Solomon, from His worship.

Paul, in sanctioning the remarriage of widows, adds (1 Corinthians 7:39), only ... in the Lord; that is, to Christian husbands.

“He who treated as null the difference between the Israelites and a pagan woman showed that the difference between the God of Israel and the God of the pagan had before become null to him, from which it follows.”