Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Malachi · About this commentary
One Father, One God
Malachi 2:10-12
10 Don’t we all have one father? Hasn’t one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, profaning the covenant of our fathers? · WEB
The argument turns from priests to everyone, and it grounds an obligation between neighbors in the fact that they share a maker.
Don't we all have one father? Hasn't one God created us? The two questions are the premise, and the conclusion drawn from them is social: why then do we deal treacherously, each against his brother?
The word for treachery — used five times in this short book — is the language of a broken faith rather than a mere injury, and it will carry into the next paragraph about marriage. Here the specific charge is that Judah has profaned what God loves and married the daughter of a foreign god.
The phrase is chosen with care. It is not the foreign wife's nationality that is named but her god, which is what the law had actually warned about — the danger being that the household's worship would follow Deuteronomy 7:3–4. Nehemiah found and fought the same thing in the same period Nehemiah 13:23–27. What makes it treachery rather than merely disobedience is the first verse of the paragraph: people who share one father have obligations to each other, and this broke them.
settled What this mark means