Malachi 2:15

did not he make one?] The interpretation of this very difficult verse follows in the main, though with some variety of detail, one or other of two lines.

(1) By "one" here Abraham is held to be intended, who is called "one" in Isaiah 51:2 (lit. "for one I called him"; "I called him alone", A.V.; "when he was but one I called him", R.V.), and in Ezekiel 33:24 ("Abraham was one"). The words are thus regarded as spoken by the Jews, who seek to shelter themselves from the prophet's censure under the example of Abraham. "Did not one (Abraham)", say they, "do it (that of which you complain in us, when he took to wife Hagar, the Egyptian)? And yet he had the residue of the spirit" (comp. Numbers 27:18: "Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit"). "And wherefore", the prophet replies, "(did) the one (do it)? He was seeking (not as you are the gratification of his lust, but) a seed of God" (the son whom God had promised him. Genesis 16:2). "Therefore", seeing that Abraham's example avails you nothing, "take head." If this, however, were the argument, we might have expected the prophet to reply, that so far from divorcing (as they were doing) his proper wife, it was Hagar and not Sarah whom Abraham sent away, so soon as disagreement arose.

(2) The other line of interpretation is that adopted in A.V. and retained in R.V. According to it the prophet recalls them (as our Lord does in His argument with the Jews on the same subject, Mark 10:2-9) to the original institution of marriage and relation of the sexes. "Did not He (God) make one (one man, and out of him one woman, and the twain -one flesh")? And (yet) the residue of the spirit (of life, comp. Genesis 7:22: -the breath of the spirit of life") was His (so that He could, had it pleased Him, have created, for example, one man and many women). And why (did He make) the one? He sought (what only by the purity and integrity of the marriage bond can be secured) a godly seed."