2“Priests, this command is for you. ²Listen to me. Pay attention to what I say. Honor my name,” says the Lord All-Powerful. “If you don’t, I will send a curse on you and on your blessings. I have already cursed them, because you don’t pay attention to what I say.

³“I will punish your descendants. I will smear your faces with the animal insides left from your feasts, and you will be thrown away with it. ⁴Then you will know that I am giving you this command so my agreement with Levi will continue,” says the Lord All-Powerful. ⁵“My agreement for priests was with the tribe of Levi. I promised them life and peace so they would honor me. And they did honor me and fear me. ⁶They taught the true teachings and spoke no lies. With peace and honesty they did what I said they should do, and they kept many people from sinning.

⁷“A priest should teach what he knows, and people should learn the teachings from him, because he is the messenger of the Lord All-Powerful. ⁸But you priests have stopped obeying me. With your teachings you have caused many people to do wrong. You have broken the agreement with the tribe of Levi!” says the Lord All-Powerful. ⁹“You have not been careful to do what I say, but instead you take sides in court cases. So I have caused you to be hated and disgraced in front of everybody.”

Judah Was Not Loyal to God

¹⁰We all have the same father; the same God made us. So why do people break their promises to each other and show no respect for the agreement our ancestors made with God? ¹¹The people of Judah have broken their promises. They have done something God hates in Israel and Jerusalem: The people of Judah did not respect the Temple that the Lord loves, and the men of Judah married women who worship foreign gods. ¹²Whoever does this might bring offerings to the Lord All-Powerful, but the Lord will still cut that person off from the community of Israel.

¹³This is another thing you do. You cover the Lord’s altar with your tears. You cry and moan, because he does not accept your offerings and is not pleased with what you bring. ¹⁴You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord sees how you treated the wife you married when you were young. You broke your promise to her, even though she was your partner and you had an agreement with her. ¹⁵God made husbands and wives to become one body and one spirit for his purpose—so they would have children who are true to God.

So be careful, and do not break your promise to the wife you married when you were young.

¹⁶The Lord God of Israel says, “I hate divorce. And I hate people who do cruel things as easily as they put on clothes,” says the Lord All-Powerful.

So be careful. And do not break your trust.

The Special Day of Judging

¹⁷You have tired the Lord with your words.

You ask, “How have we tired him?”

You did it by saying, “The Lord thinks anyone who does evil is good, and he is pleased with them.” Or you asked, “Where is the God who is fair?”

3The Lord All-Powerful says, “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way for me. Suddenly, the Lord you are looking for will come to his Temple; the messenger of the agreement, whom you want, will come.” ²No one can live through that time; no one can survive when he comes. He will be like a purifying fire and like laundry soap. ³Like someone who heats and purifies silver, he will purify the Levites and make them pure like gold and silver. Then they will bring offerings to the Lord in the right way. ⁴And the Lord will accept the offerings from Judah and Jerusalem, as it was in the past. ⁵The Lord All-Powerful says, “Then I will come to you and judge you. I will be quick to testify against those who take part in evil magic, adultery, and lying under oath, those who cheat workers of their pay and who cheat widows and orphans, those who are unfair to foreigners, and those who do not respect me.

Stealing from God

⁶“I the Lord do not change. So you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed. ⁷Since the time of your ancestors, you have disobeyed my rules and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord All-Powerful.

“But you ask, ‘How can we return?’

⁸“Should a person rob God? But you are robbing me.

“You ask, ‘How have we robbed you?’

“You have robbed me in your offerings and the tenth of your crops. ⁹So a curse is on you, because the whole nation has robbed me. ¹⁰Bring to the storehouse a full tenth of what you earn so there will be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord All-Powerful. “I will open the windows of heaven for you and pour out all the blessings you need. ¹¹I will stop the insects so they won’t eat your crops. The grapes won’t fall from your vines before they are ready to pick,” says the Lord All-Powerful. ¹²“All the nations will call you blessed, because you will have a pleasant country,” says the Lord All-Powerful.

The Lord’s Promise of Mercy

¹³The Lord says, “You have said terrible things about me.

“But you ask, ‘What have we said about you?’

¹⁴“You have said, ‘It is useless to serve God. It did no good to obey his laws and to show the Lord All-Powerful that we were sorry for what we did. ¹⁵So we say that proud people are happy. Evil people succeed. They challenge God and get away with it.’ ”

¹⁶Then those who honored the Lord spoke with each other, and the Lord listened and heard them. The names of those who honored the Lord and respected him were written in his presence in a book to be remembered.

¹⁷The Lord All-Powerful says, “They belong to me; on that day they will be my very own. As a parent shows mercy to his child who serves him, I will show mercy to my people. ¹⁸You will again see the difference between good and evil people, between those who serve God and those who don’t.

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