| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | New International Version |
| 1[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 1"I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty. |
| 2[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 2But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. |
| 3[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 3He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, |
| 4[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 4and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. |
| 5[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 5"So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me," says the LORD Almighty. |
| 6[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 6"I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. |
| 7[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 7Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you," says the LORD Almighty. "But you ask, 'How are we to return?' |
| 8[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 8"Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob me. "But you ask, 'How are we robbing you?' "In tithes and offerings. |
| 9[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 9You are under a curse--your whole nation--because you are robbing me. |
| 10[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 10Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. |
| 11[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 11I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe," says the LORD Almighty. |
| 12[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 12"Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land," says the LORD Almighty. |
| 13[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 13"You have spoken arrogantly against me," says the LORD. "Yet you ask, 'What have we said against you?' |
| 14[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 14"You have said, 'It is futile to serve God. What do we gain by carrying out his requirements and going about like mourners before the LORD Almighty? |
| 15[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 15But now we call the arrogant blessed. Certainly evildoers prosper, and even when they put God to the test, they get away with it.'" |
| 16[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 16Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name. |
| 17[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 17"On the day when I act," says the LORD Almighty, "they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. |
| 18[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 18And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not. |
| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. |
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