Commentary on the Twelve Minor Prophets

Contents

All twelve prophets staged (Hosea to Malachi). Zechariah 12-14 verse numbers were lost in the scan: those comments sit inside Zechariah 11 refs.

Reading pages: 0.0.1–1.1.7 · 1.2.4–1.5.15 · 1.6.2–1.8.12 · 1.9.1–1.11.11 · 1.12.1–1.13.15 · 2.1.1–2.1.19 · 2.2.6–3.0.1 · 3.1.1–3.3.11 · 3.4.1–3.7.11 · 3.8.1–4.1.19 · 5.0.1–5.3.4 · 5.4.5–6.2.13 · 6.3.5–6.5.8 · 6.6.1–7.1.14 · 7.2.2–8.0.1 · 8.1.1–8.1.15 · 8.2.1–9.0.1 · 9.1.4–9.2.15 · 9.3.1–10.2.8 · 11.0.1–11.2.17 · 11.3.1–11.7.14 · 11.8.1–11.10.11 · 11.11.1–11.13.8 · 11.14.1–12.1.13 · 12.2.1–12.3.24

1. 0.0.1Theodoret defends writing another commentary on the prophets, offering it as the poor offered hair for the tabernacle, and sets out when each of the twelve prophets lived and why their prophecies form one book.
2. 1.0.1Theodoret's introduction to Hosea sets out the history of the northern kingdom from Jeroboam's golden calves to the Assyrian conquest and explains why Hosea calls the two tribes Judah and the ten Ephraim.
3. 1.1.1Hosea dates his prophecy by the kings of both Judah and Israel, showing that he was sent to both kingdoms.
4. 1.1.2Theodoret defends the literal reality of Hosea's marriage to a prostitute, arguing that God's symbolic commands to prophets were real actions and that an act is judged good or evil by its aim, and explains the names Jezreel and Not-pitied.
5. 1.1.7Theodoret applies Hosea's promise to Judah to the destruction of Sennacherib's army, explains the name Not-my-people, and reads the reversal of the names as the return from Babylon under one ruler.
6. 1.2.4God's divorce of Israel is not for her ruin but a discipline meant to root sexual immorality and adultery (idolatry) out of her heart.
7. 1.2.5The stripping of Israel means a return to bondage like that in Egypt, now under Assyria, and the loss of God's care, because she credited her goods to the idols.
8. 1.2.8God's hedging of Israel's way is a merciful punishment that teaches her the idols' weakness and leads her back to her first husband, God, who calls himself husband rather than master.
9. 1.2.10Because Israel gave God's gifts of grain, wine and silver to Baal, God threatens to withdraw them and to make her ruined vines a testimony against her idolatry.
10. 1.2.16God will send Israel wandering into captivity but will comfort her there.
11. 1.2.17Theodoret explains the valley of Achor (noting the Syriac reading Achar) through Achar of Joshua's time, whose punishment taught Israel the evil of transgression: the captivity will teach Israel the same lesson.
12. 1.2.18Israel's slavery in Assyria, like that in Egypt, will turn her from the Baals so that she calls God her husband.
13. 1.2.20The covenant with beasts, birds and reptiles means peace from beastly enemies, and dwelling in hope points to the eternal goods Paul calls hope.
14. 1.2.21The eternal betrothal is fulfilled not in the Synagogue but in the Church of Jews and Gentiles, won by justice against the devil and mercy toward his captives.
15. 1.2.22The betrothal in faith means that converts bring faith alone and receive righteousness in baptism; the promise of rain and harvest follows for an earthly-minded people.
16. 1.2.25The promise to Not-pitied and Not-my-people was fulfilled in figure under Zerubbabel and in truth in the Church; Hosea is then told to love an adulteress as an image of God's love for unworthy Israel.
17. 1.3.4Israel in exile will be without king, sacrifice or priestly oracle, as Hosea lived with the woman without marital relations: God would neither abandon them nor show his care openly.
18. 1.3.5Israel's return to God and to David's line after the seventy years is foretold, followed by the indictment of Hosea 4 for lying, murder, theft and adultery, and the fall of priest and false prophet.
19. 1.4.6The people who refused the knowledge of God are likened to night; God rejects them from his priesthood as they rejected knowledge.
20. 1.4.7The more God multiplied Israel, the more they sinned against him.
21. 1.4.8Israel will reap the fruit of its sins; some apply the verse to priests who fed on the sin offerings but did not correct sinners.
22. 1.4.9Priest and people will be punished alike, with evils coming one after another for their drunkenness, idolatry and divination.
23. 1.4.12Israel consulted tokens and rods out of a spirit of sexual immorality, that is, of idolatry.
24. 1.4.13Israel's worship under the trees is punished by the open violation of its daughters by enemies; sexual immorality means both licentiousness and impiety, and the "initiated" are those initiated into idolatrous rites.
25. 1.4.15On is the Hebrew name of the idol at Bethel (Aquila and Theodotion "uselessness", Symmachus "injustice"), and Gilgal, the place of God's memorials under Joshua, had become a center of idolatry.
26. 1.4.16Israel, maddened by idolatry like a heifer stung by the gadfly, will be scattered like a stray lamb.
27. 1.4.19The comment on the whirlwind in Israel's wings breaks off at once.
28. 1.5.4Israel and Ephraim, who abandoned the knowledge of God, will fall first and Judah after them, and their sacrifices will not find the Lord.
29. 1.5.7Israel forsook the Lord and took foreign wives; the trumpet over Benjamin and Ephraim mocks the idols, and Judah's rulers, who move God's boundaries, will be swept away like a torrent.
30. 1.5.11Ephraim's injustice came from his idolatry; the rest is lost.
31. 1.5.12God will goad Ephraim and Judah through enemy invasion.
32. 1.5.13Ephraim, sick from his sins, sought help from Assyria (Phul) and from Egypt ("King Jareb") instead of from God, and found none.
33. 1.5.14God will fall on Ephraim and Judah like a panther and a lion, and none can rescue them.
34. 1.5.15Like a lion returning to its lair, God will withdraw his care until Israel, chastened, seeks him who struck and will heal.
35. 1.6.2The healing on the third day means God's swift restoration of Israel and also points to Christ's resurrection, the pledge of the common resurrection and of full knowledge of God.
36. 1.6.4Israel's repentance vanishes like morning dew, yet God kept caring for them, even sending prophets whom they killed.
37. 1.6.5Killing the prophets cannot make their prophecy false; God will show its truth like light.
38. 1.6.6God accepts sacrifices only in condescension to human weakness; what he requires is love of God and of neighbor, which Israel broke like a faithless partner to a covenant.
39. 1.6.8Gilgal's idols worked by trickery like pirates; the priests, descendants of Levi who avenged Dinah at Shechem, kept silent before Israel's idolatry, and Judah is urged to gather the fruit of righteousness after the captivity.
40. 1.7.1Theodoret comments on the exposure of Ephraim's sins, the leaven of impiety from Jeroboam onward, and the drunken, plotting rulers, and notes that prophets speak of the future in the past tense, as Isaiah does of Christ.
41. 1.7.8Ephraim mingled with the nations and, like a cake baked on one side, would not turn to the better.
42. 1.7.9Though worn down by foreigners and grown gray, Ephraim did not recognize God's discipline.
43. 1.7.10Humbled Israel still did not seek God but, like a senseless dove, ran back and forth between Assyria and Egypt.
44. 1.7.12God will net Israel like birds, yet laments over them as a father and recalls that he redeemed them from Egypt, though they spoke lies against him.
45. 1.7.14Israel's hearts did not cry to God; settled in the promised land, they practiced pagan rites and turned against God the strength he had given them.
46. 1.7.16Having abandoned God, Israel became useless like an unstrung bow, and its rulers will fall by the sword.
47. 1.8.1Israel, imitating its rebellious fathers, will be laid waste when the enemy king, the eagle of Ezekiel, falls on the house of the Lord.
48. 1.8.2Only in disaster will Israel cry to God.
49. 1.8.3The ten tribes rejected God's good rule by making Jeroboam king without consulting God; Ahijah's prophecy was addressed to Jeroboam, not to the people.
50. 1.8.5Samaria is told to cast away its calf.
51. 1.8.6The calf of Samaria is a craftsman's work and no god; like wind-blasted grain, idols look full outside and are empty within, and will perish with their worshipers.
52. 1.8.8Israel, having sought Assyria's help, will be swallowed up among the nations and lose its self-made kings.
53. 1.8.11Ephraim's many altars became his sin, and his lawless kingdom will end.
54. 1.8.12God will record Israel's idolatrous altars and laws; he does not need sacrifices but a right disposition, and will punish Israel with exile and Judah's walled cities with fire.
55. 1.9.1Israel, taught by the prophets yet offering its harvest to demons, has no reason to rejoice like the nations and will lose its harvest.
56. 1.9.3Israel did not live in the Lord's land as a holy land; having loved lawlessness even in the land of promise, it will eat unclean food in Assyria.
57. 1.9.4Israel's sacrifices, offered without sincerity, are like the defiling bread of mourners, and God rejects them as he rejected Cain's.
58. 1.9.5In exile Israel cannot keep the Lord's feasts, and its flight to Egypt will yield only thorns.
59. 1.9.7When punishment comes, Israel will rave like a frenzied prophet, maddened by the multitude of its sins.
60. 1.9.8Israel was meant to be God's watchman and prophet to the nations, but became a snare to them by spreading idolatry, even into God's temple.
61. 1.9.10God found the patriarchs like grapes in the desert, but their descendants, despite the exodus, turned to Baal-peor and became abhorred.
62. 1.9.11Ephraim, proud of its many children, will be made childless, yet God will not destroy Israel utterly until he takes flesh from it in Christ, as Paul and Isaiah teach; the children offered to idols bring the curse of barren wombs.
63. 1.9.16The withered root of Ephraim is the northern kingdom, uprooted by Shalmaneser, after which the ten tribes were scattered among the nations.
64. 1.10.1Israel, called a vine by Isaiah, David, Jeremiah and Christ, is luxuriant here only in numbers, and used its abundance to build altars and pillars to idols.
65. 1.10.2Israel divided its heart among idols; in repentance it will confess that its kings, who made faithless treaties, could not save it, and judgment will spring up like weeds.
66. 1.10.5Samaria will cling to the calf of Bethel for help, only to mourn it when it is carried off in disgrace.
67. 1.10.6Israel will send its melted-down calf as tribute to Egypt in vain; the disaster will make them beg the mountains to fall on them, punished for the two sins of forsaking God and preferring idols.
68. 1.10.11Ephraim, an unruly heifer, will be broken to the yoke, while Judah is spared from Sennacherib for Hezekiah's virtue and is urged to sow righteousness while there is time.
69. 1.10.13Israel should have confessed its impiety instead of hiding it; its trust in chariots and numbers was false food.
70. 1.10.14Israel's walls will not save it; Theodoret identifies Salmana with the Midianite ruler killed by Gideon, whose fate Israel will share.
71. 1.11.1Israel, cast off at dawn like a foolish child, forgot the God who called it out of Egypt and cared for it like a father; it will fall under Assyria however often it flees to Egypt.
72. 1.11.8God, though Israel deserves the fate of Admah and Zeboiim, will not destroy Ephraim, because he is God and not man; he speaks in anger and mercy as a parent, and will roar like a lion to defend his people.
73. 1.11.11Israel will return from Egypt and Assyria like homing doves, as happened in the return under Zerubbabel.
74. 1.12.1Ephraim's idolatry and alliances with Assyria and Egypt are contrasted with the virtue of Jacob, who prevailed with God (Christ, the Angel of great counsel) and met him at Bethel, now the shrine of the idol On; God revealed himself through prophets and visions, yet Israel sacrificed to demons at Gilead and Gilgal.
75. 1.12.15Ephraim's idolatry, even to human sacrifice, will bring the Assyrians on it like wild beasts and destroy its kings; yet God will redeem Israel from death, fulfilled in figure at the return from exile and in truth in Christ's resurrection, the pledge of the resurrection of all.
76. 1.13.15The burning wind is Cyrus, who destroyed Babylon; Samaria will fall, but Israel is called to return to God, who will make it blossom like a lily, as the soul clothed in baptism, and the commentary on Hosea closes with the call to wisdom and a doxology.
77. 2.1.1Joel names his father to distinguish himself and presents his words as inspired by God, not human reasoning.
78. 2.1.2Joel calls the elders to pass on to their children the memory of an unheard-of disaster; Theodoret holds that the plagues of caterpillar, locust, grub and blight really happened, as Amos and Jeremiah confirm, though some read them of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings.
79. 2.1.5Joel calls the drunkards and the priests to mourn as the locust, or the Assyrian, devours the land; Theodoret notes that Scripture speaks of the future as past to confirm its certainty, and that the barrenness is caused by human lawlessness.
80. 2.1.14Joel summons the whole land to a sanctified fast in the house of God.
81. 2.1.15Fasting is a medicine for souls sick with sin; the people are to set themselves apart for a pure fast as the day of the Lord brings misery upon misery.
82. 2.1.17Famine makes the heifers thrash and the herds and flocks low, while granaries and wine vats stand empty.
83. 2.1.19The prophet cries to God as fire, whether enemies or locusts, devours the land; God sounds the alarm in Zion for the day of darkness, and the horse-like army of Joel 2 is read both of the Assyrians and Babylonians and, from observation of locusts' heads and swarms, of the locusts themselves.
84. 2.2.6Famine will blacken the people's faces like a pot scorched by fire.
85. 2.2.7The invaders, whether enemies or locusts, advance in unbroken order, scale walls and enter houses; the darkening of sun and stars may be literal or the way disaster feels, and no one can withstand the day of the Lord.
86. 2.2.12Joel calls Israel to return to God with an undivided heart, with fasting and tears; the rest is lost.
87. 2.2.13True repentance is a rending of the heart; God's "repentance" means that his threats are meant to change people, not that he changes his mind, and Joel's "who knows" both promises and warns.
88. 2.2.15All Israel, from elders to infants and newlyweds, is to assemble in fasting and repentance, with the priests interceding at the temple.
89. 2.2.17The priests' prayer for God's people is set in the time of Sennacherib and Hezekiah; God answers by restoring grain, wine and oil and removing Israel's reproach among the nations.
90. 2.2.20The northern enemy is the Assyrian, driven from Jerusalem by the angel and later destroyed by Babylon, which in turn fell to Cyrus; the first and last seas are the Babylonian and Persian armies.
91. 2.2.21God bids the land and the beasts rejoice at the coming rains and harvest, as a way of consoling the despondent people.
92. 2.2.23After promising Israel restored harvests, Joel foretells the outpouring of the Spirit, fulfilled at Pentecost and in the prophets of the apostolic church and later saints; the signs in heaven precede Christ's second coming, and salvation is preached from Zion; then the nations (Gog and Magog, Tyre, the Scythians) who attacked Jerusalem after the exile are judged in the valley of Jehoshaphat.
93. 2.4.12God sits in judgment on the surrounding nations, whose slaughter is pictured as a vintage in the winepress of the valley.
94. 2.4.14The valley of Jehoshaphat is the valley of judgment, where the darkening of the lights may be literal or the darkness of death and disaster.
95. 2.4.16God's thunder from Zion destroys the nations and protects his people; Theodoret holds that the promises were conditional on obedience, reads the fountain from the temple as the grace of the Holy Spirit watering the nations, and Egypt and Edom both spiritually and historically.
96. 2.4.20God will avenge his wronged people and dwell in Zion; the promise that Judea will be inhabited forever, Theodoret says, was conditional, and the Jews forfeited it; the rest is lost.
97. 3.0.1The end of the preface to Amos, followed by a short notice on the prophet's death and a one-line summary of the prophecy's meaning.
98. 3.1.1Theodoret dates Amos's prophecy by the kings of Judah and Israel and argues from the chronology that it began early in Uzziah's reign, not after his death.
99. 3.1.2God's voice from Zion pronounces judgment; Carmel stands for Israel, the shepherds for the kings of the neighboring nations, and the pastures for their subjects.
100. 3.1.3God will no longer overlook the many crimes of Damascus, above all its savage treatment of the people of Gilead.
101. 3.1.4Fire will fall on Hazael's house and on Ben-hadad, whom Theodoret identifies as Hazael's son, not his father.
102. 3.1.5Theodoret runs through the oracles against Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, and Ammon, explaining each charge, above all Edom's hatred of his twin brother.
103. 3.1.14Ammon's capital and its god Milcom will go into captivity, and Moab will be punished for burning the king of Edom.
104. 3.2.4Judah will be punished for rejecting God's law and following idols, and Israel for selling the poor, oppressing the humble, and sexual license that dishonored God's name among the nations.
105. 3.2.8Israel profanes the temple with feasting on unjust gain, though God destroyed the giant Amorites for them and brought them out of Egypt.
106. 3.2.11Israel silenced the prophets and corrupted the Nazirites, so God will crush them, and neither speed, courage, nor skill will save them.
107. 3.3.1Because God chose Israel he will punish its sins, and as nothing happens without a cause, no punishment comes unless God wills it; "evil" here means harm, not moral evil.
108. 3.3.7God reveals his judgments to the prophets, who must speak them; even the Assyrians and Egyptians are summoned to witness Samaria's oppression.
109. 3.3.11Israel will be torn apart like a sheep in a lion's mouth, Judah spared for a time, and the altars of Bethel and the houses of the rich destroyed.
110. 3.4.1The luxurious women of Samaria, the "heifers of Bashan", rob the poor and order their husbands about as servants.
111. 3.4.2The Lord swears that the people will be carried off by armed enemies.
112. 3.4.3Men and women will be led away naked into captivity, the husbands burning with jealousy at the enemies' abuse of their wives, because Israel feasted for idols at Bethel and Gilgal.
113. 3.4.5Israel followed the laws of idol worshippers, and loved doing so.
114. 3.4.6God sent famine, drought, disease, blight, and the sword as remedies, but Israel did not return to him.
115. 3.4.11Israel, overthrown like Sodom and left like a half-burnt brand, is called to seek the Creator, who will announce Cyrus, his anointed, as their deliverer.
116. 3.5.1God laments fallen Israel; Theodoret reads the promise that it will not rise again as the loss of its own rule, fulfilled after the rejection of Christ.
117. 3.5.3Only a tenth of Israel will survive; the people are urged to abandon the idol shrines of Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba and seek God.
118. 3.5.6Seeking God brings life, while sin kindles the fire of judgment.
119. 3.5.7The almighty Creator, who can turn darkness to dawn and strength to ruin, will punish Israel for hating the prophets' reproof and oppressing the poor.
120. 3.5.13The wise will fall silent in dismay when the foretold disaster comes.
121. 3.5.14Israel must prove its professed love of the good by doing justice, or lament will fill the land.
122. 3.5.18Those who mock the prophets by demanding the day of the Lord will find it darkness, like a man escaping a lion and a bear only to be bitten by a snake.
123. 3.5.21God rejects Israel's feasts, sacrifices, and music; he never needed them, and allowed music in worship only to lead the people from pleasant things to serious ones.
124. 3.5.24Judgment will sweep over Israel like a flood, since even in the desert they worshipped idols and stars, and they will be deported beyond Damascus.
125. 3.6.1Woe to those who trust in Samaria and despise Zion, forgetting that Zion's God gave them the land.
126. 3.6.2Israel's leaders feast in luxury on false sabbaths while ignoring Joseph's ruin, so they will go first into captivity and death will empty their houses.
127. 3.6.11God's judgment will strike great and small houses alike.
128. 3.6.12Proud Israel will be overrun from end to end of its borders; Amos's vision of locusts signifies the Assyrian and Babylonian armies.
129. 3.7.4The vision of fire devouring the deep and the Lord's portion signifies the enemies conquering the nations and Israel.
130. 3.7.7The vision of adamant means a crushing blow on Israel's idols and kingdom; Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, fearing for his trade, denounces Amos to the king.
131. 3.7.11Amos answers Amaziah that he was a herdsman and dresser of sycamore figs whom God called to prophesy, and foretells the priest's ruin.
132. 3.8.1The fowler's vessel signifies Israel's swift capture; the temple will be burned, the oppressors of the poor punished, and a famine of the word of God will follow.
133. 3.8.14Israel swears by the idols of Dan and Beersheba, so God, standing at the altar, decrees a destruction from which no one can escape, whether to Hades, heaven, Carmel, the sea, or the enemy.
134. 3.9.6God's power over heaven, earth, and sea confirms his threats.
135. 3.9.7Israel shares one human nature with the Ethiopians, but God showed it unique care in the exodus and the conquest.
136. 3.9.8God will destroy the sinful kingdom but not the whole house of Jacob, sifting the people like grain.
137. 3.9.11The rebuilding of David's fallen tent is fulfilled not in Zerubbabel but in Christ, the Son of David who took flesh and brought the nations to the knowledge of God; the promises of plenty are added for those who cannot grasp spiritual ones.
138. 3.9.15God's promises and threats depend on the response of those who receive them; Theodoret closes the commentary on Amos with a prayer.
139. 4.0.1The preface explains that Edom inherited Esau's grudge against Jacob and harmed Israel from the exodus to the Babylonian conquest, and adds a short notice on the prophet Obadiah.
140. 4.1.1Obadiah speaks as God's instrument: God himself rallies the nations against Edom.
141. 4.1.2Edom trusts in its mountain strongholds, but God will bring it down even if it nests among the stars.
142. 4.1.5Unlike thieves or grape-pickers who leave something behind, Edom's enemies will plunder it completely.
143. 4.1.7Edom's allies will betray it, its wise men and warriors will perish, because of its violence against its brother Jacob.
144. 4.1.11Edom's guilt is greater than the foreigners' because it joined them against its own kin.
145. 4.1.12Edom must not gloat over Judah's disaster, join in sacking Jerusalem, or add to its sufferings.
146. 4.1.14Edom must not cut off Judah's fugitives; God warns and pleads with Edom even knowing it will not listen.
147. 4.1.15The day of the Lord will repay Edom for what it did.
148. 4.1.16The cup of punishment that Edom made Judah drink will pass to all the nations that shared its crimes.
149. 4.1.17Zion will be restored after the exile, and from it salvation through the cross will reach the whole world.
150. 4.1.18Israel will burn up Edom like stubble, and Edom will have no strength left.
151. 4.1.19The returned exiles will possess Edom and the surrounding lands, as in the end of Ezekiel; Theodoret closes the commentary on Obadiah with an exhortation and a doxology.
152. 5.0.1Theodoret opens the preface to Jonah by showing that God's care for Israel always served to reveal him to the nations, from Egypt to Babylon and Persia.
153. 5.0.2God sent Jonah to Nineveh to show his care for the nations before the incarnation, refuting Marcion's two gods; Jonah fled toward Tharsis, which cannot be India.
154. 5.0.3Tharsis is Carthage, not India; Jonah fled not from fear but because he foresaw that God would spare repentant Nineveh and make his prophecy seem false, and God sent a storm on his ship alone.
155. 5.0.4The lot falls on Jonah, and the sailors question him as judges about his origin and occupation.
156. 5.1.9Jonah, though facing death, proclaims the Creator of sea and land; the sailors reproach him, and only after trying to row ashore do they reluctantly throw him into the sea.
157. 5.1.14The sailors pray not to be guilty of Jonah's blood; the sea grows calm, they worship God, and Jonah lives three days unharmed in the sea monster.
158. 5.2.3Jonah found God present even in the sea monster's belly, which he calls Hades as a type of Christ's three days in the heart of the earth.
159. 5.2.4Jonah, cast into the depths, fears he has lost God's care and will never see the temple again.
160. 5.2.7From the depths, near death, Jonah remembers God and prays to return to life and to worship in the temple.
161. 5.2.9Jonah vows thanksgiving and later recorded his own flight and rescue, as David recorded his sin; freed from the monster, he obeys and goes to Nineveh.
162. 5.3.3Nineveh was dear to God for its many people; its "three days' journey" means the time needed to go around it preaching.
163. 5.3.4Jonah preaches; the Ninevites, king and people and even animals, fast in sackcloth and turn from evil, so God spares them, and Jonah, ashamed that his prophecy seems false, asks to die.
164. 5.4.5Jonah's booth outside Nineveh is told out of order; it preceded his despondency, and God consoled him with a gourd.
165. 5.4.6God's "command" to the gourd, as to the sea monster, means his will; the gourd cheers Jonah until God sends a worm to destroy it.
166. 5.4.8God answers Jonah's grief over the gourd by asking him to judge whether God should not spare Nineveh, full of children and cattle; Theodoret closes with praise of God's mercy.
167. 6.0.1Theodoret introduces Micah as one of the many prophets God sent to heal Israel, a contemporary of Hosea, Joel, and Amos.
168. 6.1.2Micah summons the "peoples", the two divided kingdoms, to hear God's testimony from his temple.
169. 6.1.3God, who is in no place, is said to come out from his temple to shake the proud and judge Samaria's idolatry and Jerusalem's lawlessness.
170. 6.1.6Samaria will be so utterly destroyed that vineyards will grow where its streets stood.
171. 6.1.7Samaria's idols, bought like a harlot's wages, will be burned; Theodoret also sees an allusion to temple prostitution.
172. 6.1.8Samaria will mourn its ruin with wailing like serpents and Sirens.
173. 6.1.9The Assyrian blow will reach Jerusalem itself; the Philistines of Gath, descendants of the giant Anak, must not gloat but mourn their own coming disasters.
174. 6.1.11The neighboring towns that would not grieve with Israel will share its disaster.
175. 6.1.12It is God himself, not any human enemy, who brings disaster on prosperous Jerusalem.
176. 6.1.13The chariots of the invaders are God's instrument; Lachish, which led Jerusalem into Israel's sins, will be punished first.
177. 6.1.14Judah's land will be laid waste until God brings back its heirs; following Aquila's singular "heir", Theodoret also sees Christ, the heir of the parable, who freed the world from idols.
178. 6.2.1The powerful plot by night and by day seize fields, orphans, and houses.
179. 6.2.3God will bow Judah's proud neck under captivity, as he did the other tribes.
180. 6.2.4Israel's fate will become a byword as foreigners divide its land; the people should mourn their sin rather than their punishment and show repentance in deeds.
181. 6.2.8By opposing God's laws Israel lost its peace and protection and was given over to war.
182. 6.2.9Israel's leaders, deceived by false prophets, will be driven from their luxury into exile and scattered like frightened sheep.
183. 6.2.13The prophecy of the breach is fulfilled in King Zedekiah's flight and capture; the rulers who devoured the poor will cry to God in vain.
184. 6.3.5The false prophets who promised peace for gain are the true cause of the war.
185. 6.3.6When war comes instead of the promised peace, the false prophets will be shamed and mocked.
186. 6.3.8Micah, filled with the Spirit's power, will boldly expose the people's sins.
187. 6.3.9Jerusalem's corrupt rulers, priests, and prophets bring on its destruction, fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar and finally after the rejection of Christ; the exalted mountain of Mic 4 is the Church spread through the world, not the return from Babylon.
188. 6.4.5The peace foretold in Mic 4 is the peace of the Roman world under which the gospel spread, not anything the Jews received.
189. 6.4.6The gathering of the crushed and outcast is Christ's gathering of sinners into the Church, where he reigns forever; the "tower of the flock" is the temple, which Babylon will attack.
190. 6.4.9Neither king nor counselors will save Zion from the pangs of exile in Babylon, but God will redeem her from there.
191. 6.4.11The nations who gather to gloat over Zion are gathered by God, without being forced, to be threshed by Zion with the strength he gives.
192. 6.4.14Zion will be besieged and humiliated, but God will protect her for the sake of the king to be born from her.
193. 6.5.1The ruler from Bethlehem whose goings forth are from eternity is the eternal Word born in the flesh, not Zerubbabel; "she who is in labor" is the Church of Jews and Gentiles.
194. 6.5.3The Lord's shepherding and worldwide glory are fulfilled in the Church; the defeat of the Assyrian serves as a pledge of it.
195. 6.5.4God will give Judah peace by defeating Assyria and later Babylon, the land of Nimrod; these deliverances are pledges of the Gospel's spread to the nations.
196. 6.5.6The believing remnant, the apostles, will water the nations like dew and consume impiety like lambs grazing.
197. 6.5.7The apostles began as lambs among wolves, but once emperors entered the Church its teachers became like lions against falsehood.
198. 6.5.8The believing remnant will prevail; the unbelieving will lose their kingdom and, scattered among the converted nations, will be weaned from idols; the mountains are called to witness God's past deliverances.
199. 6.6.1God summons his people to plead their case before the mountains that witnessed his help.
200. 6.6.2Because the people are insensible, God calls the lifeless hills as judges.
201. 6.6.3God challenges his people to say what wrong he has done them.
202. 6.6.4God recalls the exodus, the leadership of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, and Balaam's blessing, all given to keep his promise to Abraham.
203. 6.6.6The prophet, speaking for the people, asks what offering could repay God or atone for sin, and concludes that no sacrifice suffices.
204. 6.6.8God asks not for sacrifices but for justice, mercy, and obedience, as the Psalms and the law of love also teach.
205. 6.6.9God's saving voice protects those who fear him, while injustice destroys a city like fire.
206. 6.6.11Cheating merchants and liars will be punished with repeated disasters.
207. 6.6.14Israel will labor without satisfaction or harvest because it followed the works of Ahab's house.
208. 6.7.1The prophet laments that he finds no godly person left, only murderous judges and rulers who demand bribes.
209. 6.7.4Judgment will eat away Israel like a moth, and in the disaster friends, families, and kings will abandon one another.
210. 6.7.7The prophet waits in hope for God, who will hear him.
211. 6.7.8Jerusalem accepts God's just punishment but awaits judgment on her gloating enemy, Edom, who with Tyre, Syria, and the neighbors will be trampled like mud.
212. 6.7.14God will shepherd his returned people as in the exodus, and the nations will be struck dumb with fear.
213. 6.7.18No god is like the Lord, who forgives when he sees repentance and does not keep his anger.
214. 6.7.19God not only forgives sins but forgets them, casting them into the depths of the sea.
215. 6.7.20God keeps his oath to the patriarchs; as Israel's sins were cast into the sea, ours are blotted out in baptism, prefigured by the Red Sea crossing.
216. 7.0.1Nineveh, spared after Jonah's preaching, fell back into wickedness and attacked Israel; Nahum foretells its destruction as God's just punishment of an arrogant instrument.
217. 7.1.1Theodoret explains the "burden" (lēmma) of Nahum as the Spirit's seizing of the prophet's mind, one of the ways in which the Spirit inspired the prophets.
218. 7.1.2God's "jealousy" is his just anger against the Assyrians who blasphemed him.
219. 7.1.3God is long-suffering, as Nineveh's earlier rescue shows, but will not leave the unrepentant unpunished; the notice on Nahum's life follows.
220. 7.1.4God can dry up sea and rivers in an instant; he used Assyria to punish Bashan, Carmel, and Lebanon.
221. 7.1.5God shakes the whole earth by a nod, showing he is not the God of the Jews alone.
222. 7.1.6No one can withstand God's anger, yet he is good to those who wait for him in affliction.
223. 7.1.8God will sweep away his enemies like a flood and pursue them with darkness.
224. 7.1.9God will destroy Nineveh at one stroke, as fire consumes dry stubble.
225. 7.1.11Nineveh will be punished for Sennacherib's blasphemous boasting against God.
226. 7.1.12The Babylonian army, like many waters, will besiege and silence Nineveh.
227. 7.1.13God will break Assyria's rod, the authority he once gave it.
228. 7.1.14Nineveh's name and idols will perish, and messengers will bring Judah the good news of peace, so that it can keep its feasts again.
229. 7.2.2God's "breathing" that rescues Judah from Assyria is a type of Christ's breathing the Spirit on the apostles; Judah is to take courage, while Nineveh's chariots and warriors will be useless.
230. 7.2.6Nineveh's nobles will try to defend the walls, but the gates will open and the palace treasures be taken.
231. 7.2.8Nineveh's subject towns will be led away with her, moaning like doves.
232. 7.2.9Nineveh, full of people like an overflowing pool, will empty in flight.
233. 7.2.10Nineveh's ill-gotten treasures will be plundered.
234. 7.2.11Terror at the attack will shake Nineveh like an earthquake and turn its people's faces livid.
235. 7.2.12Nineveh, the lions' den that fed on the plunder of nations, stands helpless before its enemies.
236. 7.2.14God will smoke out the lions of Nineveh; for its idolatry and sorcery it will be shamed before the nations, and, unlike Egypt which suffered from it and may now rejoice, it will fall like ripe figs.
237. 7.3.14Nineveh's fortifications and wealth will not save it; its allies will scatter like locusts in the sun, and its kings will sleep in death at the hand of the Babylonian, whom Scripture also calls the Assyrian.
238. 7.3.19Nineveh's wound is incurable, and all whom it oppressed will applaud its fall; Theodoret ends the commentary on Nahum with an exhortation to fear God's judgment.
239. 8.0.1Theodoret introduces Habakkuk: like the author of Psalm 73, the prophet voices other people's perplexity at the prosperity of the wicked in order to give God's answer to it.
240. 8.1.1The heading of Habakkuk's prophecy introduces the complaint that follows.
241. 8.1.2The prophet's complaint about injustice in Jerusalem voices the perplexity of others, and God's answer follows as its cure.
242. 8.1.5God warns the scornful of coming judgment even though he foreknows their unbelief, because he does not punish on foreknowledge alone.
243. 8.1.6God answers that he will bring the savage Chaldeans on the lawless people of Judah.
244. 8.1.7The Chaldeans are a law to themselves, and their strength and speed are pictured by the eagle, the leopard, and the wolf.
245. 8.1.9The Chaldeans will destroy the ungodly and overthrow kings and strongholds as if in sport, but God will have pity on their victims.
246. 8.1.11Theodoret reads the verse of God turning his wrath into mercy, which the prophet hails as God's strength.
247. 8.1.12The prophet confesses the eternal, holy God as the source of salvation and says he was made to reprove sinners and foretell their punishment.
248. 8.1.13The prophet voices the question why God lets the Chaldeans, worse than Judah, devour those more righteous than themselves, as if people were fish without a ruler.
249. 8.1.15The Babylonian king, who nets nations like fish, credits his own power and demands worship, as Daniel and Isaiah also show.
250. 8.2.1The prophet waits on his watchtower for God's answer, and God tells him to write the vision for later readers, since it will surely be fulfilled after a long time.
251. 8.2.4God refuses his care to whoever doubts his predictions, while the righteous who trusts them and lives accordingly will live.
252. 8.2.5The arrogant Babylonian, insatiable as death, will not keep his power long.
253. 8.2.6The nations will mock the king who enriches himself with others' goods and crushes his subjects with tribute.
254. 8.2.7Those whom the Babylonian oppressed will rise up and plunder him in turn.
255. 8.2.9The one who builds his house high by unjust gain falls the further and brings shame on his house.
256. 8.2.11Even stones and wood will cry out against the Babylonian's madness, a hyperbole like the Lord's saying about the stones.
257. 8.2.12The Babylonian who built his kingdom on slaughter will drink the cup of God's punishment for his crimes against Jerusalem, while the whole earth will come to know God; idols made by hands are senseless.
258. 8.2.19Those who call on lifeless idols of gold and silver to wake are to be lamented.
259. 8.2.20After God's answer that the Babylonian, who despised the true God's temple, will be punished, Theodoret reads Habakkuk's prayer (chapter 3) as a prophecy of Christ's incarnation, cross, and the apostles' mission to the nations, and the prophet's grief over his unbelieving kinsmen, rejecting a purely historical reading of it as about the return from Babylon.
260. 9.0.1Theodoret sets Zephaniah under Josiah, after the apostasy of Manasseh and Amon, outlines the book, and explains the threat that even animals will perish with the lawless people they served.
261. 9.1.4God threatens Judah's idolaters, those who swear both by the Lord and by Melchom, the royal house and those who wear foreign dress, calling their slaughter his sacrifice.
262. 9.1.7Those who flee to the temple, the mountains, or the rooftops will not escape the enemy.
263. 9.1.11Jerusalem, which imitated Canaan, will share its fate; God will search it out with a lamp and punish those who deny his providence.
264. 9.1.14The day of the Lord is great because it brings complete punishment.
265. 9.1.15The day of the Lord will bring war and darkness on Judah, and no wealth will buy release from it.
266. 9.2.1Zephaniah calls Judah to bind its wounds with repentance and to seek the Lord in justice and meekness, so as to be sheltered when the Philistine cities fall.
267. 9.2.5Theodoret explains the names Zephaniah gives the Philistine coast, which is threatened with desolation.
268. 9.2.7The promise that Judah's remnant will possess the coast and the lands of Moab, Ammon and Damascus was partly fulfilled under the Maccabees, but exactly in the apostles, the remnant chosen by grace.
269. 9.2.11The worship of God by the nations "each from his own place" is fulfilled not in the Jerusalem temple but in the Gospel, as Jesus told the Samaritan woman.
270. 9.2.12The Ethiopians' fall also signifies the demons and the godless overcome by the cross; the prophet then turns to Assyria.
271. 9.2.13Nineveh will become a desolate haunt of flocks, beasts and ravens because of its cedar-like pride.
272. 9.2.15Proud Nineveh, which thought itself beyond all harm, will become a desolation at which passers-by hiss.
273. 9.3.1Jerusalem, once famous, often saved by God and comely as a dove, is now to be lamented for its sins.
274. 9.3.2Zephaniah lists Jerusalem's sins: deafness to God, unbelief, and savage rulers and judges.
275. 9.3.4Jerusalem's false prophets are empty and its priests profane the holy things.
276. 9.3.5The righteous Lord will judge Jerusalem swiftly and openly and not let injustice prevail.
277. 9.3.6God, having destroyed the proud nations, urges Jerusalem to repent quickly and promises that even the remnant of the Assyrians will fall to Babylon.
278. 9.3.8God bids his people wait for the day when he will rise to judge the nations and overthrow unjust kingdoms.
279. 9.3.9God will purify the tongues of the nations from polytheism, so that all call on the one Lord.
280. 9.3.10The farthest nations, taught by the apostles whom God scattered, will offer him spiritual sacrifices.
281. 9.3.11Jerusalem's believers will be freed from shame, and the meek and humble remnant, the apostles, will replace the stubborn people.
282. 9.3.14Zion's joy and the promise to gather the oppressed fit the return from Babylon but are fulfilled exactly in Christ, whose salvation is a free gift; Theodoret ends Zephaniah with a call to stand in Christ's freedom.
283. 10.0.1Theodoret sets Haggai in the reign of Darius, when the rebuilding of the temple, begun under Cyrus and halted under Cambyses, was resumed and finished.
284. 10.1.1Haggai dates his prophecy by the Persian king, and God, through Zerubbabel and Jesus the high priest, accuses the people of adorning their own houses while leaving his house unbuilt.
285. 10.1.5God bids the people consider how their neglect of his temple left them hungry and poor, and calls them to cut timber and build.
286. 10.1.9God sent drought and failure because the temple lay waste, not because he needs a house but to keep the law in force until Christ, the heir; when the leaders obeyed, he promised to be with them.
287. 10.1.14God stirs up the leaders and the people to work on the temple.
288. 10.1.15The people began building within weeks of the prophecy, and God, through Haggai, laments the poverty of the new house compared with the old.
289. 10.2.4God encourages the builders with his presence and Spirit, and Theodoret reads the shaking of the nations as the defeat of Gog and Magog, whose wealth went to the temple.
290. 10.2.8God, owner of all silver and gold, will make the second temple's glory greater by destroying the nations that come against it; after the priests' ruling on holiness and uncleanness and the promise of plenty, Theodoret ends Haggai by rejecting a reading that puts Gog and Magog at the end of the age.
291. 11.0.1Theodoret introduces Zechariah, who with Haggai taught the returned exiles and, through visions, foretold Christ's meek kingdom, his passion, and the Jews' rejection and its consequences.
292. 11.1.1Zechariah began prophesying two months after Haggai, in the second year of Darius, and names his father and grandfather to distinguish himself from false prophets of the same name.
293. 11.1.2Zechariah opens by recalling God's anger at the fathers, so that the returned exiles might seek his favor.
294. 11.1.3God calls the people to return to him, unlike their fathers who ignored the prophets, and names himself Lord Almighty to show his power to bless.
295. 11.1.5The fathers and the prophets have died, but the prophets' words were proved true by events, and the people confess that God's punishment was just.
296. 11.1.7Theodoret explains Zechariah's night visions (the rider among the shady mountains, the four horns and craftsmen, the man with the measuring line) as angelic care for the returned exiles, and reads "the Lord Almighty has sent me" as showing two persons, Father and Son, equal in honor, the Son sent as man.
297. 11.2.17The prophets are the clouds from which God appears; the verse fits the return from Babylon but is fulfilled exactly in the nations' coming to Christ.
298. 11.3.1Satan's accusation of Jesus the high priest, rebuked by the Lord, prefigures the devil's attack on Christ the great high priest; the priest's filthy clothes, taken away, stand for the people's sins forgiven.
299. 11.3.7The restored high priest is promised that if he keeps God's ways his line will continue to govern the people.
300. 11.3.8The "stone" with seven eyes is Zerubbabel, a type of Christ the stone; the golden lampstand and two olive trees signify God's providence and the kingship and priesthood of Zerubbabel and Jesus, who succeed by God's Spirit, not their strength.
301. 11.4.7The great mountain of hostile nations will not stop Zerubbabel, whom God makes a firm stone; the flying sickle, the woman in the measure, and the four chariots show God judging all sin, removing Israel's guilt to Babylon, and sending his angels over the whole earth.
302. 11.6.8After judgment falls on Babylon, the prophet is told to crown Jesus the high priest and to announce "Dawn", whom Theodoret takes to be Zerubbabel, who will rebuild the temple and rule in concord with the priest.
303. 11.7.1Foreign leaders living near Judah send to ask whether they should go on fasting for the temple, and God answers through Zechariah.
304. 11.7.5God gains nothing from fasting: like eating and drinking, it benefits those who do it, as the prophets taught of old.
305. 11.7.7God recalls that the earlier prophets demanded justice and mercy toward widows, orphans, strangers and the poor, and that the fathers' refusal brought his wrath.
306. 11.7.14The future tenses describe the fathers' past exile, not a new threat to the returned exiles.
307. 11.8.1God's jealousy for Jerusalem, his bride, explains both her punishment and the blessings now promised.
308. 11.8.3God's return to Zion was fulfilled in type after Zerubbabel's rebuilding and in truth after the incarnation.
309. 11.8.4Jerusalem will again be full of the aged and of children at play.
310. 11.8.6What seems impossible to the small, poor remnant is not impossible to God, who will gather his people and dwell among them.
311. 11.8.9God encourages the builders with promises of peace and plenty, and commands truth, peaceful judgment, freedom from rancor, and honest oaths before he speaks of fasting.
312. 11.8.19The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth months will become feasts of joy; fasting is to be kept gladly, together with love of truth and peace.
313. 11.8.20Many nations will stream to Jerusalem to seek God, dimly after the rebuilding and fully in the pilgrims who come to the places of Christ's passion.
314. 11.8.23The ten men clinging to a Jew's hem are the Gentile converts who followed the Jewish apostles, such as Paul's companions; any fulfillment after the return is a type of this.
315. 11.9.1The burden on Hadrach, Damascus and Hamath foretells that these once idolatrous cities will offer sacrifice to God, who cares for all peoples.
316. 11.9.3The judgments on Tyre and the Philistine cities were partly fulfilled under the Maccabees and fully when those peoples turned to God; the king riding on a colt is Christ, whose peaceful rule over the world, under the Roman peace, Theodoret defends against the Jewish application to Zerubbabel.
317. 11.9.11Christ by the blood of the new covenant freed humanity from the waterless pit of death and idolatry.
318. 11.9.12Judah and Ephraim, God's bow and sword against the Greeks, are the apostles armed with spiritual weapons against the philosophers, prefigured by the Maccabean victories over the Macedonians.
319. 11.9.14God fights for his people with storm and hail, and their victory is pictured as drinking their enemies' blood, which Theodoret explains as a figure of joy, not literal drinking.
320. 11.9.16For the sake of the holy ones God will save his flock and give it grain and wine.
321. 11.10.1God, who gives grain and wine, rain and lightning, is to be asked for the seasonal rains.
322. 11.10.2The diviners and dream-interpreters are exposed as false and punished.
323. 11.10.3God punished the bad shepherds and will make the restored flock of Judah a war horse that tramples its enemies with no help but his.
324. 11.10.6God will restore Judah and Joseph so fully that they will forget the captivity, and their children will rejoice in him.
325. 11.10.8God will gather his people and make them so numerous that they spread to other cities and bring salvation to others.
326. 11.10.9God will scatter and then gather his people from Egypt and Assyria into Gilead and Lebanon.
327. 11.10.11God will bring his people through great dangers, humble Assyria and Egypt, and make Israel renowned.
328. 11.11.1The fall of Lebanon's cedars and the wailing of shepherds and lions describe the humbling of the proud nations that attacked the Jews after the return.
329. 11.11.4The shepherd of the sheep of slaughter is Christ, who receives the Father's command as man, being as God equal in honor to the Father.
330. 11.11.5The sheep sold and slaughtered are the Jews oppressed by impious kings and by priests who bought the priesthood, as Maccabees and Josephus relate.
331. 11.11.6God abandons the impious to one another's hands but cares for the better sort.
332. 11.11.7Christ shepherds believers in every land and, through the two rods, gathers Jews and Gentiles into one flock.
333. 11.11.8The three shepherds removed are the Jews' kings, prophets and priests; because the people roared against God, he gave them up, and the breaking of the rod Beauty separates believers from unbelievers among the nations.
334. 11.11.11Gentile believers, the "Canaanites", will see the unbelievers' ruin and recognize the prophecy as God's word.
335. 11.11.12The thirty pieces of silver weighed out as the shepherd's wage are fulfilled in Judas's sale of Christ, and the temple is a furnace where penitents are renewed.
336. 11.11.14The breaking of the second rod is the end of God's care for unbelieving Israel, shown by the loss of temple and worship; the prophet then turns to the Antichrist whom the Jews will accept.
337. 11.11.15The foolish shepherd who devours the flock is the Antichrist, whose persecution matches the great tribulation foretold by Christ.
338. 11.11.17The worthless shepherd struck in arm and eye is the Antichrist, whom Antiochus Epiphanes prefigured; Christ will destroy him at his coming.
339. 11.12.1The Creator of heaven, earth and every human soul is the one who speaks this burden on Israel.
340. 11.12.2God will make Jerusalem easy prey for the nations.
341. 11.12.3Jerusalem, trampled by the nations after it rejected the precious stone, was earlier protected by God against the Macedonians, whose horses he struck with blindness.
342. 11.12.6Judah's commanders will consume their enemies, and Jerusalem will live apart under the law.
343. 11.12.7God saves Judah first so that neither the royal house nor Jerusalem may boast of its own strength.
344. 11.12.8God's protection made the Maccabean house of David renowned, yet the people pierced him when he came; at his glorious return they will mourn him as a firstborn, tribe by tribe.
345. 11.13.1The fountain opened for David's house is Christ, the source of living water, and the sprinkling is baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
346. 11.13.2Through those who believed in Christ, idolatry and divination were so discredited that families would not tolerate a diviner, and false prophets disowned their craft.
347. 11.13.5The former diviner denies his calling, and the wounds his parents gave him betray him.
348. 11.13.7The sword against the shepherd is the Father's permission of Christ's willing passion, which then struck the apostles; Christ applied the verse to himself.
349. 11.13.8The third part refined by fire is the Jews who believed in Christ, from the apostles to the many thousands in Acts.
350. 11.14.1On the day of the Lord Jerusalem's spoils will be divided by its enemies.
351. 11.14.2The capture of Jerusalem is its fall to Vespasian and Titus, from which the Christians escaped by a revelation, as Christ foretold; the Lord fought against the Jews, with his angels.
352. 11.14.4The splitting of the Mount of Olives, from which Christ ascended, signifies the Roman siege lines around Jerusalem and recalls the convulsions of nature at the crucifixion.
353. 11.14.6The day without light is the day of the crucifixion, when darkness covered the world and the night was cold.
354. 11.14.7The day neither day nor night is the day of the crucifixion; the living water is the gospel and the water and blood from Christ's side; the one Lord will reign over all nations.
355. 11.14.12God will strike the nations that attack Jerusalem with wasting plagues and mutual slaughter, and the Jews will take their spoil.
356. 11.14.16The surviving nations will come yearly to Jerusalem for the feast of Tabernacles, and those who later neglect it will be punished.
357. 11.14.20The holy bridles and cauldrons are the spoils dedicated to God after the nations' defeat; Theodoret ends Zechariah praying that no "Canaanite" be found among Christians.
358. 12.0.1Theodoret summarizes Malachi: rebukes to priests and people, prophecies of Christ's coming, the calling of the nations, the Jews' unbelief, and the second coming.
359. 12.1.1Malachi calls himself God's messenger because he serves the divine words, and bids the people take them to heart.
360. 12.1.2God shows his love for Israel by recalling that he preferred Jacob to his twin Esau, whom he rejected for his wickedness and whose land he left desolate.
361. 12.1.5Edom's ruin will show Israel how greatly God cares for it.
362. 12.1.6God, Israel's Father and Lord, receives neither honor nor fear, and the priests above all despise his name.
363. 12.1.7The priests insult God by offering defiled bread and blind and lame victims that no human governor would accept.
364. 12.1.9God calls the priests to repent, foretells that he will shut the temple and end the sacrifices of the law, and announces the pure sacrifice of the nations.
365. 12.1.11The pure sacrifice offered in every place among the nations is the Christian worship in which the spotless Lamb alone is sacrificed, replacing the Jerusalem sacrifices, as Christ told the Samaritan woman.
366. 12.1.13God rejects the maimed offerings of those who keep back their promised victims and will make his kingship known to all.
367. 12.2.1God threatens to curse the priesthood, the priests' "blessing", because they dishonor it.
368. 12.2.3Instead of the breast and shoulder due to the priests, God will throw the dung of their feasts in their faces, a sign of the shame of a priesthood that has abandoned piety and virtue.
369. 12.2.4The punishment will show that God's commandment and covenant with Levi came from him.
370. 12.2.5God's covenant with Levi promised life and peace to the priest who feared him.
371. 12.2.6Levi once taught truth and turned many from sin, but the priests have corrupted his covenant by partiality and blemished sacrifices, and God has made them despised among the nations.
372. 12.2.11Judah has profaned God's holy things by turning to foreign gods.
373. 12.2.12God rejects the sacrifices of men who abandon their wives, whose tears cover his altar, and recalls that he joined man and woman as one flesh from the beginning; marriage is for chastity, not only for offspring.
374. 12.2.16Theodoret reads "if you hate her, send her away" as a concession, like Moses' bill of divorce, permitting the lesser evil of divorce to prevent the murder of a hated wife, while Christ restores the original law of one man and one woman and forbids divorce except for sexual immorality.
375. 12.2.17God rebukes those who say he favors the wicked, and promises a time of just recompense, beginning with the coming of Christ and his forerunner.
376. 12.3.1The messenger is John the Baptist and the Lord who comes to his temple is Christ, whose temple is the human nature he assumed; at his second coming he refines like fire, and he cleanses by the Spirit and grace, making believing Levites like Barnabas offer the bloodless sacrifice.
377. 12.3.4The new sacrifice that pleases God is eternal, not temporary.
378. 12.3.5God himself will be the swift witness against sorcerers, adulteresses, perjurers, and those who defraud workers and oppress widows, orphans and strangers.
379. 12.3.6The unchanging God charges the people with defrauding him of tithes and first-fruits, which belong to the priests and the poor, promises plenty if they pay them, and rebukes those who say serving God is useless.
380. 12.3.16God records those who fear him in a book of remembrance and will claim them as his own, like a father his faithful son, on the day of judgment.
381. 12.3.18The returned people will see the difference between the righteous and the wicked.
382. 12.3.19The burning day will test all and consume the wicked, while for those who fear God Christ rises as the sun of righteousness, both at his first coming and at his second, when he will raise the dead.
383. 12.3.21The righteous will tread down the wicked, as the martyrs over their persecutors; then the prophet recalls Moses' law.
384. 12.3.22God bids Israel remember Moses' law and, foreseeing their rejection of Christ, promises to send Elijah.
385. 12.3.23Elijah will come before Christ's second coming to unite the Jews with the believing Gentiles in one Church; the warning applies to Christians too, who must prepare for the day of judgment.
386. 12.3.24The opening words of Malachi 4:6, displaced in the scan; the comment on the verse stands in the preceding section.