Malachi 3:12

And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(12) Comp. Zechariah 7:14; Zechariah 8:13-23; also Isaiah 62:4; Daniel 11:16.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

3:7-12 The men of that generation turned away from God, they had not kept his ordinances. God gives them a gracious call. But they said, Wherein shall we return? God notices what returns our hearts make to the calls of his word. It shows great perverseness in sin, when men make afflictions excuses for sin, which are sent to part between them and their sins. Here is an earnest exhortation to reform. God must be served in the first place; and the interest of our souls ought to be preferred before that of our bodies. Let them trust God to provide for their comfort. God has blessings ready for us, but through the weakness of our faith and the narrowness of our desires, we have not room to receive them. He who makes trial will find nothing is lost by honouring the Lord with his substance.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

All nations shall call you blessed - The promise goes beyond the temporal prosperity of their immediate obedience. Few could know or think much of the restored prolificalness of Judaea; none could know of its antecedents. A people, as well as individuals, may starve, and none know of it. Had the whole population of Judah died out, their Persian masters would not have cared for it, but would have sent fresh colonists to replace them and pay the tribute to the great king. The only interest, which all nations could have in them, was as being the people of God, from whom He should come, "the Desire of all nations, in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed." Of this, God's outward favor was the earnest; they should have again the blessings which He had promised to His people.

And ye shall be called a delightsome land - , literally "a land of good pleasure." It was not so much the land as the people; ye shall be called. The land stands for the people upon it, in whom its characteristics lay. The river Jordan was not so bright as Abana and Pharpar: "the aspect of the shore" is the same, when the inhabitants are spiritually or morally dead; only the more beautiful, in contrast with the lifeless "spirit of man." So Isaiah says Isaiah 62:2-4, "The nations shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory; and thou shrill be called by a name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name Thou shalt no more be called Forsaken, nor shall thy land be called Desolate, but thou shalt be called My-delight-is-in-her, and thy land Married: for the Lord delighteth in thee and thy land shall be married." God and man should delight in her.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

12. Fulfilling the blessing (De 33:29; Zec 8:13).

delightsome land—(Da 8:9).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

All nations, all that are about you, that know you, and see God’s dealings with you, shall call you blessed; praise the state and condition you are in, and pronounce you to be a very happy people, whose God is the Lord, and whose mercies come thus from God.

Ye shall be a delightsome land; of delights, or desirable for its pleasantness; a land so good man would desire it; and when purged, it will be a land the Lord will delight in, and give it the name Hephzibah.

Saith the Lord of hosts; added as an assurance that it shall be according to this promise, forasmuch as he who is Lord of hosts hath engaged his word to do it, and his word will do it, can make all creatures co-operate for that purpose.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And all nations shall call you blessed,.... When they shall see the land freed from the devouring locust, and other hurtful creatures; the former and the latter rains given in their season, and the earth yielding a large increase:

for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts; or a desirable (n) one; not only pleasant to themselves, being fruitful, but wished for by others, by their neighbouring nations, who, seeing their prosperity, could not but desire to dwell with them; or delightsome to the Lord of hosts: thus Jarchi interprets it, the land that I delight in; and so Aben Ezra; to which agrees the Targum,

"and all nations shall praise you, because you dwell in the land of the house of my Shechinah or majesty, and do my will in it;''

and the Syriac version renders it, "the land of my delight": see Isaiah 62:4.

(n) "terra desiderabilis", V. L. Pagninus, Drusius; "terra beneplaciti", Montanus, Vatablus, Burkius; "oblectationis", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.

Geneva Study Bible

And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

12. call you blessed] or happy, R.V., as in Malachi 3:15. μακαριοῦσιν ὑμᾶς, LXX. Comp. μακαριοῦσι με, Luke 1:48, and James 5:11.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 12. - Shall call you blessed; or, happy, as ver. 15 (comp. Deuteronomy 33:29; Zechariah 8:13, 23). A delightsome land; γῆ θελητή (Septuagint); literally, a land of good pleasure - a land in which God is well pleased (comp. Isaiah 62:4; Jeremiah 3:19). Malachi 3:12

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Malachi 3:10. "Bring ye all the tithe into the treasure-house, that there may be consumption in my house, and prove me now herewith, saith Jehovah of hosts, if I do not open you the sluices of heaven, and pour you out a blessing to superabundance. Malachi 3:11. And I will rebuke the devourer for you, that he may not destroy the fruit of your ground; and your vine will not miscarry in the field, saith Jehovah of hosts. Malachi 3:12. And all nations will call you blessed; for ye will be a land of good pleasure, saith Jehovah of hosts." In Malachi 3:10 the emphasis lies upon kol: the whole of the tithe they are to bring, and not merely a portion of it, and so defraud the Lord; for the tithe was paid to Jehovah for His servants the Levites (Numbers 18:24). It was delivered, at least after the times of the later kings, at the sanctuary, where store-chambers were built for the purpose (cf. 2 Chronicles 31:11.; Nehemiah 10:38-39; Nehemiah 12:44; Nehemiah 13:12). Tereph signifies here food, or consumption, as in Proverbs 31:15; Psalm 111:5. בּזאת, through this, i.e., through their giving to God what they are under obligation to give Him, they are to prove God, whether in His attitude towards them He is no longer the holy and righteous God (Malachi 2:17; Malachi 3:6). Then will they also learn, that He causes the promised blessing to flow in the richest abundance to those who keep His commandments. אם לא is not a particle of asseveration or oath (Koehler), but an indirect question: whether not. Opening the sluices of heaven is a figure, denoting the most copious supply of blessing, so that it flows down from heaven like a pouring rain (as in 2 Kings 7:2). עד בּלי די, till there is no more need, i.e., in superabundance. This thought is individualized in Malachi 3:11. Everything that could injure the fruits of the land God will take away. גּער, to rebuke practically, i.e., to avert the intention. אכל, the devourer, is here the locust, so called from its insatiable voracity. Shikkēl, to miscarry, is affirmed of the vine, when it has set a good quantity of grapes, which perish and drop off before they ripen. In consequence of this blessing, all nations will call Israel blessed (Malachi 3:12), because its land will be an object of pleasure to every one (cf. Zechariah 7:14; Zechariah 8:13, Zechariah 8:23).