John Calvin Commentary Malachi 3:9

"Ye are cursed with the curse; for ye rob me, even this whole nation." — Malachi 3:9 (ASV)

Malachi pursues the same subject, for he answers the Jews in God's name: they unjustly complained of His severity as being excessive, since they themselves were the cause of all their evils. He says that they were cursed, but he adds that this happened to them deservedly, as if he had said: “Granted what you say (for lamentations were continually made), why is it that God afflicts us without end or limits?” God seems to grant what they were accustomed to declare reproachfully, but He says in answer to this: “But you have defrauded Me; what wonder then that my curse consumes you? Since, then, you have robbed Me, as far as you could, I will render to you your just recompense. For it is not right that I should be bountiful and kind to you, while you thus defraud me, and take from me what is my own.”

The meaning then is this: it was indeed true that the Jews lamented that they were under a curse, but the cause should have been searched out. They indeed wished their plunderings and sacrileges, by which they defrauded God, to be forgiven; but God declares that He punished them justly by consuming them with poverty and need, since they so sparingly rendered to Him what they owed.

He mentions the whole nation, and thus aggravates the wickedness of the Jews. For not a few were guilty of the sacrilege mentioned; rather, all, from the least to the greatest—indeed, all of them—plundered the tithes and the offerings. It therefore follows that God’s vengeance did not exceed due limits, since there was, so to speak, a common conspiracy. Not ten or a hundred were implicated in this sin but, as he says, the whole people.