Bring the Whole Tithe
6 “For I, Yahweh, don’t change; therefore you, sons of Jacob, are not consumed. 7 From the days of your fathers you have turned away from my ordinances and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says Yahweh of Armies. “But you say, ‘How shall we return?’ 8 Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In tithes and offerings. 9 You are cursed with the curse; for you rob me, even this whole nation. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and test me now in this,” says Yahweh of Armies, “if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there will not be enough room for. 11 I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast its fruit before its time in the field,” says Yahweh of Armies. 12 “All nations shall call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land,” says Yahweh of Armies.
Their survival is credited to God's constancy rather than their own, and the one invitation in Scripture to test God is issued here.
I, Yahweh, do not change; therefore you, sons of Jacob, are not consumed. The logic is worth pausing on. Their continued existence is not evidence of their fidelity but of his, and the sentence gives them no credit at all while promising them everything.
Return to me and I will return to you — answered with the objection, how shall we return? The reply is concrete: in tithes and offerings. The temple staff depended on them, and when they stopped arriving the Levites left for their fields, which is precisely the collapse Nehemiah found and repaired Nehemiah 13:10–12.
Then the invitation that stands alone in Scripture: test me now in this. Elsewhere testing God is forbidden outright Deuteronomy 6:16, and the Lord refuses to do it himself when pressed Matthew 4:7. Here it is commanded, in one narrow matter, with a promise attached — windows of heaven opened, the devourer rebuked, and a land other nations call blessed.
settled What this mark means