John Calvin Commentary Malachi 2:14

"Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because Jehovah hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously, though she is thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant." — Malachi 2:14 (ASV)

The Prophet tells us here, as before, how inclined the priests were to protest loudly. It is a very common thing for hypocrites to immediately raise a shield to cover their vices whenever they are reproved. Thus it appears that men are, as it were, fascinated by Satan when they reach such a hardness that they dare to answer God and repel all warnings with loud and defiant words.

Malachi has already used this way of speaking several times; therefore, we may conclude that the people had by then become so hardened that warnings held no weight for them. But he mentions one particular detail, from which it seems evident that they had fallen into unbearable vices.

Indeed, there is no doubt that he points out one of the many vices that prevailed. So, in this verse, there is an instance of stating one thing to represent the whole, as if he had said, “Your hypocrisy is extremely flagrant; but, leaving other things aside, by what pretext can you excuse this faithlessness—that there is no marital faithfulness among you?

If there were any integrity and a sense of religion in men, these qualities would surely appear in their marital relationship; but you have cast away all shame and have taken many wives for yourselves. Therefore, there is no basis for you to think that you can escape by evasions, because this one glaring vice sufficiently proves your guilt.” This is the meaning of the Prophet’s answer.

We have indeed seen that the priests were involved in other vices. Therefore, the Prophet does not now charge them with faithlessness as if they were free from other sins. Instead, he meant to show by this one example, as I have already said, how wickedly and shamelessly they sought to evade God’s judgment.

They did this even though they had violated the marriage pledge, an act that was to completely destroy the very order of nature. For, as has already been said, there can be no chastity in society unless the bond of marriage is preserved, because marriage, so to speak, is the fountain of humankind.

But to press the point more firmly with the priests, he calls their attention to the fact that God is the founder of marriage. Testified has Jehovah, he says, between thee and thy wife. He implies in these words that when a marriage takes place between a man and a woman, God presides and requires a mutual pledge from both.

Therefore Solomon, in Proverbs 2:17, calls marriage the covenant of God, for it is superior to all human contracts. So Malachi also declares that God is, as it were, the one who establishes the agreement, who by His authority joins the man to the woman and sanctions the alliance.

So God has testified between thee and thy wife, as if He had said, “You have violated not only all human laws but also the compact which God Himself has consecrated, and which ought justly to be considered more sacred than all other compacts. Since then God has testified between you and your wife, and you now deceive her, how dare you come to the altar? And how can you think that God will be pleased with your sacrifices or regard your oblations?”

He calls her the wife of his youth because lust is all the more filthy when husbands cast away marital love for those wives whom they married in their youth. The bond of marriage is indeed inviolable in all cases, even between the old, but it is a circumstance that increases the depravity of the deed when anyone alienates himself from a wife whom he married when she was a girl and in the prime of her life.

For youth fosters love, and we also see that when a husband and wife have lived together for many years, mutual love endures between them into extreme old age, because their hearts were united in their youth.

It is not, therefore, without reason that this circumstance is mentioned, for the lust of the priests was all the more filthy and, as it were, more monstrous, because they abandoned wives whom they should have regarded with the tenderest love, as they had married them when they were young. Thou hast dealt unfaithfully with her, he says, though she was thy consort and the wife of thy covenant.

He calls her a consort, companion, or associate, because marriage, we know, is entered into on the condition that the wife is to become, as it were, one half of the man. Since, then, the bond of marriage is inseparable, the Prophet here provokes the priests, indeed, touches them to the quick, when he rebukes them for being unmindful of what was natural, as they had erased from their minds the memory of a most sacred covenant.

The phrase wife of thy covenant is to be understood as a covenanted wife; that is, “The wife who has been united to you by God’s authority, so that there should be no separation. But all integrity is violated and, as it were, abolished.” He then adds.