Malachi 1:14

14. To the specific condemnation of the priests is added a curse upon all Israelites whose worship is insincere.

The deceiver One who seeks to deceive Jehovah in the manner described in the succeeding clauses. Keil sees here two kinds of deception: (1) when according to the law a male animal should have been sacrificed, and the person offering the sacrifice substituted a female, that is, one of less value, under the pretense that he did not have a male; (2) when one made a vow that demanded a perfect sacrifice, but offered one that was faulty and therefore unfit. To get this distinction from the present text requires considerable stretching of the Hebrew as well as of the imagination. Was there any occasion on which a diseased animal could be vowed? It is better, therefore, to understand the words of only one kind of deception. The thought becomes clearer if, following LXX., the pronominal suffix is added to the verb voweth, “who hath in his flock a male and voweth it, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a blemished thing.”

Voweth Only perfect animals could be offered in fulfillment of a vow (Leviticus 22:21).

A corrupt thing R.V., “blemished.” Instead of the perfect animal, which, though vowed, he retains in the flock. Such hypocrisy the great and terrible God of the universe cannot endure (compare Isaiah 1:13).

A great King Over all the earth. As such he has the right to demand the best.

My name See on Malachi 1:6, and references there.

Is dreadful among the heathen R.V., “terrible among the Gentiles” (see on Zephaniah 2:11); but here the word seems to be used rather in the sense of “is feared” held in reverence. Jehovah who is reverenced even among the nations (Malachi 1:11), cannot, in justice to himself and to the nations, permit himself to be treated with contempt by his own people.