John Calvin Commentary Malachi 2:7

"For the priest`s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of Jehovah of hosts." — Malachi 2:7 (ASV)

What the Prophet has said of the first priests he now extends to the whole Levitical tribe, and shows that it was a perpetual and unchangeable law regarding the priesthood. He had said that Levi had been appointed over the Church, not to claim for himself the honor due to God, but to stand in his own place as the minister of God and the teacher of the chosen people.

He now confirms the same thing, declaring it as a general truth that the lips of the priest ought to retain knowledge. This is as if he had said that they were to be the storehouse from which the food of the Church was to be drawn.

God then appointed the priests over his chosen people so that the people might seek their food from them as from a storeroom, just as is the case with the head of a household, who has his storeroom for wine and provisions.

Just as the food for an entire family is usually taken from places where provisions are stored, so the Prophet uses this analogy: God has deposited knowledge with the priests, so that the mouth of every priest might be a kind of storehouse, so to speak, from which the people are to seek knowledge and the rule of a religious life: Keep knowledge then shall the lips of the priest, and the law shall they seek from his mouth.

He shows how this knowledge is to be kept: the priests are not to withhold it, but the whole Church is to enjoy the knowledge of which they are the keepers. The people, therefore, shall seek or demand the law from his mouth.

The term “law” may be understood simply as truth; but the Prophet undoubtedly alludes here to the doctrine of Moses, the only true fountain of all knowledge. Indeed, we know that God included in his law whatever was necessary for the welfare of his Church, nor was anything added by the Prophets. Our Prophet then includes every truth in the word תורה (ture), or law, in such a way that he might at the same time show that it was contained in what Moses taught.

Finally, he says that the priest is the messenger of Jehovah. He briefly defines here what the priesthood is: namely, an embassy that God entrusts to men, so that they may be his interpreters in teaching and ruling the Church.

What then is a priest? A messenger of God and his interpreter. It therefore follows that the office of teaching cannot be separated from the priesthood, for it is a monstrous thing when anyone boasts of being a priest but is not a teacher.

The Prophet then draws an argument from the definition itself when he says that a priest is a messenger of God. Then follows the contrast when he says