| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | Berean Study Bible |
| 1[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 1“Behold, I will send My messenger, who will prepare the way before Me. Then the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple—the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight—see, He is coming,” says the LORD of Hosts. |
| 2[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 2But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He will be like a refiner’s fire, like a launderer’s soap. |
| 3[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 3And He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. |
| 4[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 4Then the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will please the LORD, as in days of old and years gone by. |
| 5[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 5“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. And I will be a swift witness against sorcerers and adulterers and perjurers, against oppressors of the widowed and fatherless, and against those who defraud laborers of their wages and deny justice to the foreigner but do not fear Me,” says the LORD of Hosts. |
| 6[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 6“Because I, the LORD, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed. |
| 7[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 7Yet from the days of your fathers, you have turned away from My statutes and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of Hosts. “But you ask, ‘How can we return?’ |
| 8[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 8Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you ask, ‘How do we rob You?’ In tithes and offerings. |
| 9[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 9You are cursed with a curse, yet you—the whole nation—are still robbing Me. |
| 10[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 10Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this,” says the LORD of Hosts. “See if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour out for you blessing without measure. |
| 11[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 11I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of your land, and the vine in your field will not fail to produce fruit,” says the LORD of Hosts. |
| 12[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 12“Then all the nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight,” says the LORD of Hosts. |
| 13[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 13“Your words against Me have been harsh,” says the LORD. “Yet you ask, ‘What have we spoken against You?’ |
| 14[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 14You have said, ‘It is futile to serve God. What have we gained by keeping His requirements and walking mournfully before the LORD of Hosts? |
| 15[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 15So now we call the arrogant blessed. Not only do evildoers prosper, they even test God and escape.’ ” |
| 16[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 16At that time those who feared the LORD spoke with one another, and the LORD listened and heard them. So a scroll of remembrance was written before Him regarding those who feared the LORD and honored His name. |
| 17[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 17“They will be Mine,” says the LORD of Hosts, “on the day when I prepare My treasured possession. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him. |
| 18[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 18So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.” |
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