Malachi 1:11

For "I will no longer accept the local and polluted offering, forI will substitute for it a pure and universal offering." "He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second."

my nameshall be great The A.V. supplies shall behere and twice again in this verse (incense shall be offered; my name shall be great), and the R.V. is, though with shall bein the margin. The reference may well be to the present as foreshadowing the future; to the spiritual offering of prayer and praise alreadyoffered in their synagogues and προσευχαί by the Jews of the Dispersion, whereby proselytes were won, and the way prepared for the New Dispensation and the abolition of the Temple ritual. The view that Almighty God is here recognising the worship of the heathen world as in reality offered to Him is quite inadmissible. The whole tenor of the Old Testament emphatically contradicts it, and the teaching of the New Testament is accordant and explicit: "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God" (1 Corinthians 10:20, cited from Deuteronomy 32:17). The terms of the prophecy itself forbid such an interpretation: for Jehovah Himself expressly declares that incense and offering are offered to His name, and that His nameis great.

The prophecy of this verse is at once repeated and expounded by our Lord Himself. John 4:21-24.

incenseshall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering There has been difference of opinion as to the grammatical construction of this clause, but the arrangement and rendering of A.V. is retained in R.V. and has the support of many critical authorities.

By "incense" and "offering" we are to understand those "spiritual sacrifices" of prayer and praise (Hebrews 13:15) and almsgiving (ib. Hebrews 13:16; Philippians 4:18) and self-dedication (Romans 12:1), which all Christians as a "holy priesthood" (1 Peter 2:5) are privileged to offer, and which are "acceptable to God through Jesus Christ". The more enlightened among the Jews recognised such spiritual sacrifices under the typical offerings of the ceremonial law, and they were therefore in no danger of giving a material interpretation to a prophecy like this. Before the prophecy was fulfilled it had come to be a matter of popular Jewish belief and practice that incense was the symbol of prayer. (Luke 1:9-10). The Psalmist saw the same spiritual significance in "incense" and "offering" (minchah, as here, Psalms 141:2). It has been supposed that by the offering, or minchah, of this verse, the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper are intended. But if that be the case we have here a prophecy of the universal offering of literal incensealso; for by no sound canon of interpretation can we give a material sense to one (offering) and a figurative sense to the other (incense) of two words which are thus placed by a writer in the same category. And then it follows that incense is as necessary a part of Christian worship, as "the bread and wine, which the Lord hath commanded to be received."

It has been too hastily assumed that the early Christian writers put this interpretation on the minchahhere foretold. Justin Martyr, for example, affirms that Almighty God in this passage declares by anticipation His acceptance of those who offer the sacrifices prescribed by Christ, that is to say "those sacrifices which in the eucharist of the bread and cup are offered by Christians in every part of the earth." But he presently makes it clear that it is not the bread and cup themselves that he means. "I too assert," he says, "that prayers and giving of thanks, offered by worthy worshippers, are the only sacrifices which are perfect and acceptable to God. And these alone moreover have Christians learned to offer even in the memorial of their dry and liquid sustenance, in which too the remembrance is made of the passion which for their sakes the Son of God endured." (Dial. cum Tryph.§ 177.)