Malachi 2:10

"Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers?"

"Have we not all one father ... ?" A very different subject is discussed, beginning here. The issue of the reprobate priesthood is settled; their covenant was abrogated. In this and verses following, Malachi speaks of the whole nation, condemning them also in the sternest language possible. It should be remembered that the final apostasy and judicial hardening of Israel (fleshly Israel) is the situation that lies behind these words. There was, of course, a faithful remnant; and Malachi would mention them in the next chapter.

"One father" here is God, as shown by the parallelism of the next clause where it is clear that the Creator is meant. This verse has sent some commentators into paroxysms of ecstasy, leading to bold generalizations with regard to the "Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man!" It is true of course that, "Here lie seeds for the concepts both of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man";[14] but he "was not thinking in terms of the universal brotherhood of man," but rather of "brotherly loyalty within the nation of Israel."[15] It is a false view that the mere fact of a common Creator forms any kind of a practical or legitimate foundation for an era of good will among the sons of Adam. The only "brotherhood of man" that has any possibility whatever of resolving the savage hatreds of unregenerated men for each other, is that of the brotherhood "in Christ Jesus." Only "in him" is the middle wall of partition broken down; only "in him" is there the grace to frustrate the evil passions of the flesh. Not even the strong fleshly ties among the Israelites has constituted any effective barrier against betrayal and exploitation by brothers against each other. The situation between the Arabs and the Jews more than twenty-five centuries later demonstrates this principle as well as the demonstration condemned by Malachi.

"Through the sin which it had committed, Judah, the community which had returned from exile, had profaned itself as the sanctuary of God, or neutralized itself as a holy community chosen and beloved of Jehovah."[16]

God had emphatically warned Israel against mixed marriages with pagans (Exodus 34:16; Deuteronomy 7:3; and Joshua 22:12,13). Through intermarriages with the heathen they profaned that covenant. Ezra had done his best to eradicate the evil (Ezra 9:10); and, "Nehemiah, too, contended against those who had contracted such marriages,"[17] having found many such violations of God's law upon his return to Jerusalem (Nehemiah 13:23-28). The important consideration in this desire on God's part that Israel should not marry foreign wives was that doing so injected an element of paganism into Israel, an injection which had actually been the source of the total apostasy of both the secular kingdoms of Israel before the exile.