TruthVid's 100 Proofs that the Israelites were White, Part 37: 51, Malachi and the corrupted priesthood

TruthVid's 100 Proofs that the Israelites were White, Part 37

Over the last several presentations in this series we have discussed the warnings of Peter and Jude, that a certain caste of intruders and infiltrators had corrupted the assemblies and doctrines of the people of God in ancient times, and that they would continue to do so in the Christian era. These infiltrators were clearly linked by both apostles to the fallen angels, and described as a race which is both distinct from and hostile to the children of Israel. Doing that, we had cited passages from Paul of Tarsus where he had described those same infiltrators in different terms, even labeling them as Satan. Then finally, where we had last left off, we discussed these infiltrators once again from the perspective of the apostle John, how he had described them as a race of antichrists who came from among the Judaeans, but who were not actually of the same origins as the Christians of Judaea, and therefore they could not have been true Israelites. Now, in keeping with this same theme, we are going to discuss the prophet Malachi and the corruption of the priesthood which he had prophesied centuries before the ministry of Christ, and thereby we may see that Malachi prophesied concerning the very circumstances in Judaea of which Christ had spoken, and the apostles of Christ had written, and some of these prophecies were played out explicitly during the ministry of Christ.

51) Malachi and the corrupted priesthood, Part 1

At least many of my notes here this evening are condensed from parts 2 and 3 of my early 2017 commentary on the prophet Malachi, which were titled The Corrupted Priesthood and Universalism Rebuked. While we are eager to discuss the opening verses of the prophet, concerning Jacob and Esau, we will leave most of that for a subsequent discussion of Jacob and Esau in prophecy. However here it is important to note that the words of the prophet attribute great significance to the distinction between Jacob and Esau, as he opens his book with a hypothetical dialogue between Yahweh God and the children of Israel which begins in verse 2 with Yahweh telling Jacob “I have loved you” but attributing to the children of Israel the questions: “Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother?” So Yahweh responds by stating that: “yet I loved Jacob, 3 And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.”

So in this dialogue, the children of Israel are depicted in a manner which clearly portrays them as having a lack of understanding as to the intentions of Yahweh concerning Esau, and therefore He is offering them correction. We must ask, why are the Israelites of the time of Malachi depicted in this manner as being concerned about Esau? Today, because of that same lack of understanding, we can say that the true Israelites, the so-called “lost tribes” scattered in Europe and at that time, Anatolia, Syria and Mesopotamia, have still not accepted this correction, and now, after two thousand years of having been infiltrated and corrupted, they actually worship Esau, by worshipping Jews instead of Jesus.

But more significantly in our current context, this expression of confusion sets the stage for what Malachi is going to prophesize, the confusion is evidently quite old, and it describes the origin of the Jews today, which we hope to make more clear as we proceed. This may have even reflected the political debate of Malachi’s own time, since there were many Edomites in Palestine as he was writing. We can demonstrate historically that the modern Jews are, at least in large part, the descendants of the ancient Edomites, of the seed of Esau, and here we shall see that the priesthood became corrupted before the time of Christ, so once that is understood, it may become evident as to why the Jews had sought and still seek to destroy Christianity, which is the true religion of the prophets, right from the beginning.

It is difficult to pin down exactly when Malachi was writing. It is during the second temple period. The city is already rebuilt, the priests are already organized, and therefore the time of Zerubbabel, Joshua the high priest and Nehemiah is already past. Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest, as well as the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, were in Jerusalem from the rebuilding of the temple beginning about 520 BC. We have established elsewhere that the term of Nehemiah in Jerusalem was from 502 to 490 BC, when he was recalled, that he visited the city once again later on, as the final chapters of Nehemiah explain, and he found the priesthood to be corrupted, and Ezra returned even later, around 458 or 457 BC, finding it corrupted once again.

As we may witness in Nehemiah chapters 12 and 13, the priests were already corrupting themselves then, and he disciplined them. But later, in the time of Ezra, when Ezra had returned to Judaea after the Persian war with the Greeks, he had to send for priests from among Levites in Casiphia, as they were continuing to corrupt themselves by intermarrying with other races. In Ezra chapter 8 it describes the return of several hundred more priests on this occasion. So Malachi may be assigned to this time, but since he does not make any mention of the return of additional priests from captivity which Ezra had sent for, it certainly seems that he most likely wrote even later. Furthermore, Ezra returned to finish the rebuilding of the city, whereas Zerubbabel only built the temple, and Nehemiah the walls. Yet in Malachi the city appears to be whole already, so he was almost certainly writing some time later.

Once we determine the truth of these things, the meaning of the vision of the prophet is readily manifest. Since Malachi was writing in the second temple period, after the rebuilding of Jerusalem, then the desolate places to which prophetically referred must be those places which were left desolate after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, as Christ also attested in the Gospel, where He told His opponents that their house was left to them desolate. It is Esau who is mentioned in Malachi chapter 1 as returning to rebuild desolate places, and not Jacob. But since the Edomites had never returned anywhere to build anything up to that point in history, when did the Edomites ever return and rebuild desolate places at all? Never, not until the 20th century and the advent of modern Jewish Zionism. The words of Malachi are prophecy, so they may allude to events from the past to explain his present and to prophecy of events in the future. So here he is not necessarily speaking of what had already come to pass, but rather, of what would come to pass some time in the future.

In the next verses of Malachi chapter 1, which are 4 and 5, we read: “4 Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever. 5 And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.”

Ancient Idumea, the land to the south of Palestine near Arabia, disappeared from the maps during the Persian period, as the Edomites migrated northwards into the lands of Judah and Israel. This migration is noticed in Ezekiel chapter 35 where we read an oracle against the Edomites, and it says in part: “10 Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was there: 11 Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I have judged thee.” Ezekiel wrote those words shortly after the first temple and city were destroyed and what was left of Judah by the Assyrians had went off into Babylonian captivity. So in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, what was later called Idumea was actually a significant portion of the lands of ancient Judah and Israel. The Greeks of the time considered the ancient lands of Edom to belong to the Nabataean arabs, and Strabo referred to them in that context while also explaining that the Edomites had originally come from there, but had moved into Palestine where they dwelt with the Judaeans. By the first century, they had lost their identity as Edomites, and Edomites, or Idumaeans, disappeared from history, but the truth is that they were thereafter known exclusively as Jews. If we would ask the question “O Edom, where art thou?” the only legitimate answer would be “Jewry”.

The Idumaeans, or Edomites, never rebuilt the original land of Edom, and it remains a barren desert wasteland even to this very day. When Malachi was writing, they were occupying a large portion of the waste places of ancient Israel. During the time of the Maccabees, their cities were destroyed until they were forcibly converted to the religion of Judah, which in this corrupted context we should now call Judaism. We should save further discussion of this topic for the next proof in our list, which is about Jacob and Esau in prophecy. But for now we should examine those parts of Malachi which prophesy the corruption of the priesthood, as an understanding of this has immediate consequences on an ability to understand the New Testament and why the priests were so divided over the coming of the Christ.

However first we should offer some further historic background. In the so-called Apocrypha and the inter-testamental Biblical literature, we have two books called Maccabees, known as I and II Maccabees. First, Maccabee is the English spelling of a Hebrew word meaning hammer, and it was given as a nickname to the high priest Judas, son of Matthias, when he prevailed in battle over the Greeks of Syria and ultimately gained independence for the people of Judah at Jerusalem, perhaps around 165 BC. He was succeeded by his brother Simon, from whom descended the Hasmonean dynasty of high priests sometimes referred to as the Maccabees. These books overlap one another, rather than following one another. Evidently they were written independently, as one is apparently a chronicle of the time, perhaps made by the priests, and the other is a history of the same time attributed to one Jason of Cyrene. However neither of them explains what happened after the ascension of John Hyrcanus to the office of high priest around 129 BC.

Once the Maccabees gained independence, as the books illustrate, the policy of the priests was to burn and drive the inhabitants from out of all of the cities of ancient Judah and Israel, reclaiming the Holy Land for themselves. But after Hyrcanus came to power, that policy was changed and the inhabitants of those cities would be forcibly converted to Judaism and circumcised. Writing of events around this same time, the historian Josephus first mentions the emergence of the parties of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and we can only conjecture that these parties arose due to divisions over this policy, as pharisee is from a Hebrew word which essentially means separatist.

So, speaking of that Hyrcanus who came to the high priesthood around 129 BC, Josephus wrote in Antiquities Book 13 that “Hyrcanus took also Dora and Marissa, cities of Idumea, and subdued all the Idumaeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would submit to circumcision, and make use of the laws of the Judaeans...” (13:257) But that is not all, as it is evident that the successors of Hyrcanus continued in that new policy. So a little later in that same book, speaking of the time of Alexander Janneus a few decades later, Josephus described the taking and forced conversion of the non-Israelite, and ostensibly Edomite and Canaanite populations of 30 additional cities throughout Judaea, informing us that out of them all, only Pella was destroyed because its inhabitants refused to convert to Judaism (13:393-397). When the Romans conquered Jerusalem from about 63 BC, the people were all treated as Judaeans and as equal subjects of Rome no matter their original tribe, and they all fell under the jurisdiction of Herod, the Edomite who sold out the Hasmonaeans and was made king of Judaea by the Romans. All of these Edomites and Canaanites and others of the mixed races became the so-called Jews of later history.

During this period of Judaean history the substance of Judaea and the religion of the people suffered drastic changes. No longer was it the faith of Moses, Ezra and Nehemiah. From this time it was open to anyone who would undergo circumcision, and it became absolutely antithetical to the ancient faith of Israel. From this time the Judaeans sought to be a religiously separate sect in the midst of the pagan Hellenistic world, while its true and original exclusivity based on race was lost forever, and even today the word pharisee is now interpreted by historians in that context. Their opponents, the Sadducees, were always the party of the wealthy minority, and evidently the Edomite Herodians favored them since from the time of the first Herod most of the high priests were appointed from that party.

So in the books of Maccabees there are no more warnings concerning race-mixing, or accounts of priests taking wives from other tribes. The race-mixing of the priests in the days of Nehemiah and Ezra is described explicitly, and it troubled those prophets greatly, and therefore it was condemned. But in Maccabees it is not even mentioned. Now from verse 6 of Malachi chapter 1, we shall see that it did not end with Ezra and Nehemiah:

Malachi 1:6 A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?

Yahweh was being dishonored because the priests were not keeping the law, yet they are portrayed here as being ignorant as to how they were transgressing. Honoring a father necessitates obedience to a father. So Esau troubled his parents when he took alien wives, which cost him his birthright and doomed his posterity. But Jacob obeyed his father so the promises to Abraham fell to him, and his posterity were blessed. However now the priests of Malachi’s time evidently also held their heritage in contempt, and therefore the substance of their sacrifices is used as an analogy for their disdain:

Malachi 1:7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the LORD is contemptible. 8 And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil?...

According to the law, which is found in Leviticus chapter 4, the offerings which were made to Yahweh had to be without spot or blemish. All of the laws concerning sacrifices commanded that the sacrifices be without blemish, meaning that they were to have no deformities of any kind. Such animals would of course be valued more dearly than deformed or blemished animals. So it would seem that the priests were more concerned with personal gain than they were with pleasing God.

Now, we left off halfway through verse 8, so we will continue:

… offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts. 9 And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means: will he regard your persons? saith the LORD of hosts.

The word for governor here is pechah (Strong’s # 6347), which appears first in 1 Kings chapter 10, and four times in the books of Kings and Chronicles, mostly of foreign rulers. But it is a title that was used of Nehemiah and others of his period, to describe governors of Jerusalem and other provinces of the Persian empire. So the use of this title here in this context also helps to date Malachi. Ezra did not use the title of himself, but he fulfilled the role from the time of his commission by Artaxerxes, which is described in Ezra chapter 7. Secular authorities would not accept deformed or sickly animals as payment, so why should the priests offer such things unto their God? Dealing unjustly with an earthly governor, one would be rejected. So dealing unjustly with Yahweh, one’s person, or status, would not be accepted by Him. But evidently these priests had no true fear of Yahweh in the first place.

The first half of verse 10 is more acceptable contextually as it is found in the Septuagint, but here it is from the King James Version:

Malachi 1:10 Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought? neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought….

Once again, we will leave off halfway through verse 10. In the Septuagint, Brenton’s English reads the Greek of this passage quite fairly: “Because even among you the doors shall be shut, and one will not kindle the fire of mine altar for nothing”.

In the Hexapla of Origen, while some versions offer a reading closer to that which is found in the King James Version, we will nevertheless base our commentary on the version found in the Septuagint, with which the version in the Hexapla agrees, because even if it were the priests “shutting the doors for nought”, if their sacrifices are in vain then only Yahshua Christ can open or shut the door for them. That is because the doors mentioned here are the access point between man and God, the separation of the inner chamber of the temple into which the high priest went once a year to make propitiation for sin, with the presence of Yahweh descending upon the mercy seat. Paul explained this in Hebrews chapters 9 and 10, where he also stated that now such propitiation is found only in Christ.

So in this regard we have the words of Yahshua Christ in the Revelation: “7 And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; 8 I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.” This is the door spoken of here in Malachi, and it is the door of this message to the assembly at Philadelphia in the Revelation as well. Then in the Gospel of Luke, in chapter 13 we read the words of Christ where He said “24 Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. 25 When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: 26 Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. 27 But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.”

Philadelphia means brotherly love, and for that reason the church there was used as an example of one which could do no wrong, as it was not criticized. So for them the open door could not be shut. Ostensibly, Christ not knowing the “workers of iniquity”, or where they came from, they are not merely Israelites who had sinned, for whom He has promised forgiveness, but rather, they are not Israelites at all. Where Malachi says in the latter part of this verse, omitting the added words, “and will not kindle mine altar for nothing”, the reference is to sacrifices which are being made in vain. In Luke chapter 13 we see likewise, that there are men who ate and drank in the presence of God, and were shut out of the Kingdom for reason that He never knew them. This is indeed related to the shutting and opening of the door to the Kingdom of Heaven, because to practice brotherly love with Christ, one must first be of the brethren of Christ.

As the Word of Yahweh says to the children of Israel in Amos chapter 3: “You only have I known of all the families of the earth”, the apostle Paul wrote in Romans chapter 8 that “whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate… whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified”. So with Yahweh God knowing aforetime the children of Israel alone, then only the children of Israel can be predestinated, called, justified and glorified. The door is shut for all others. Where it says here in Malachi “even among you the doors shall be shut”, it shows that some of the priests are bastards who will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

While these priests are supposedly the priests of Yahweh, of the tribe of the Levites, reading on further in Malachi the meaning of the oracle shall indeed become evident, as to why their sacrifices are in vain, and why they are not offered any opportunity for repentance here. Malachi continues in verse 10 where the Word of Yahweh says to the priests:

… I have no pleasure in you, saith the LORD of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.

Here it seems that for their disdain of Yahweh, He will not accept an offering from them at all. It also seems that Yahweh is not even giving these priests an opportunity to repent. They are ostensibly beyond repentance, as Esau also was, according to Paul of Tarsus in Hebrews chapter 12: “16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. 17 For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”

The first person to contend to act as a priest and whose offering Yahweh rejected was Cain, who had no brotherly love and slew Abel, whose offering had been accepted. Cain was “of the wicked one”, and in spite of that Yahweh challenged him to do good, yet Cain immediately went and killed Abel, proving that he could not do good because “sin lieth at the door”. Soon Malachi will reveal for us the similar nature of these priests. Only the historical details which we have presented explain why this is so. Next we see a statement which implies the ultimate disposal of this Levitical priesthood, as other prophecies also have, where Malachi continues and says:

Malachi 1:11 For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles [or nations]; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen [or nations], saith the LORD of hosts.

Three times the King James Version adds the words shall be to the text. The Septuagint Greek has the perfect tense, and the Latin Vulgate the present, where Yahweh is insisting that His Name had already been magnified among the nations. But this may be interpreted to mean that the truth of the prophecy already given is inevitably going to be fulfilled, as we shall see from Isaiah just how the magnification of His Name was prophesied to happen.

Here the King James Version translated the same Hebrew word goy (Strong’s # 1471, goyim in the plural) in two different ways: as Gentile and as heathen, in spite of the fact that they appear in the same context. Speaking of the children of Israel who had been taken into captivity by the Assyrians, Yahweh explained through the prophet Isaiah how His Name would be magnified among the nations, where He said, in Isaiah chapter 66: “19 And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles [nations].” Isaiah is describing the scattering of the children of Israel throughout the nations of the Near East and Europe. But in that passage Isaiah is also explaining how the promises to Abraham and Jacob were fulfilled, and furthermore, Isaiah explains how this verse of Malachi is fulfilled. Abraham was promised that his seed, or offspring, would become many nations, and Jacob inherited that promise. The word for nations in those promises is this same word, goy, or goyim in the plural. In Romans chapter 4 Paul asserted that the promise to Abraham was fulfilled, that his seed became many nations, according to the declaration – “so shall thy seed be”. Isaiah shows that Paul is correct in his assessment of history and Scripture, because Paul went to those same places Isaiah had mentioned, bringing with his the Gospel for the Lost Sheep. The fact that White European Christians have worshipped this God of this Bible for so many centuries, and that the apostles of Christ brought His gospel to Europe, in itself proves that all of these things which we claim are true.

So this verse of Malachi (1:11) by itself is also a Messianic prophecy, which means nothing without the coming of Christianity to Europe, and it came without Levitical priests. Where it says that “in every place incense shall be offered unto my name”, the fulfillment of this prophecy came about from the 4th century forward, when Christianity became the religion of the Roman world, as it was already taking hold in Britain and among the Germanic tribes, and Christ replaced the idols of Europe, the pagan temples being converted for Christian use.

So from this point, speaking through the prophet Malachi to the priests in Judaea, Yahweh gives them no room for repentance from their errors, and informs them that in spite of them, His Name will be glorified among the Nations – meaning these many nations of Israel outside of Judaea. Next, He chastises them for profaning His Name, telling them that the result of it will be that His Name will be glorified among the Nations, because they profaned His table and His altar:

Malachi 1:12 But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the LORD is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.

Here we see that Yahweh had never planned to restore Jerusalem to its former glory. The second temple was doomed to failure from the outset, but it was successful only because its failure was the plan of Yahweh God for the temple all along. These things were also prophesied earlier, in Daniel chapter 9 for example, and in Zechariah chapter 11. Yahweh did not make a mistake by choosing the Jews, as the denominational churches like to imagine. The Jews were never chosen in the first place. His plan was to use Jerusalem as the starting point for His glorification among the nations, as we have read in Isaiah, something which is also evident in Zechariah, Daniel, and others of the prophets. Judaea became a mixed race nation producing nothing but contention and strife, while the glorification of Yahweh was fulfilled when the nations of scattered Israel turned to Christ, who had been slain by His enemies in the midst of His own countrymen.

Here the priests are portrayed as having purposely profaned the temple by offering unworthy sacrifices, and we would also assert that the sacrifices are only being used as an analogy for the deeper problems found among the priesthood. Malachi continues where the Word of Yahweh repeats the charges against the priests in an exhortation:

Malachi 1:13 Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith the LORD of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the LORD.

The rhetorical question has already been answered, where Yahweh has already told them that He would not accept their offerings. Here the charges are merely being repeated, and while it is evident that they rather purposely profaned the sacrifices, the implication of the first clause seems to be that it was too burdensome for them to keep the law, and for that reason the priests have objected. So they purposely set aside the law and short-changed Yahweh in His offerings. And if the law was burdensome to keep in this respect, what more important matters of the law were the priests neglecting to keep, not wanting to be burdened?

So perhaps with this it begins to become apparent how it was that the Edomites and other Canaanites were so easily subsumed into the Judaean religion and culture only a few short centuries after Malachi, and no more than three hundred years after even if Malachi wrote as early as the time of Ezra. We think it possible that he wrote a little later than that, even as late as the fourth century BC, since he was always counted among the minor prophets of the Septuagint which was made early in the third century BC, but that is not really all that important.

Malachi 1:14 But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen [nations].

The deceiver here is the priest who purposely sacrifices the blemished animal, while holding back a healthy one. [Sounds just like something a Jew would do, attempting to short-change God as they short-change men in all of their transactions.] The priests disdained God, but they continued to act in a capacity as priests. So they were serving the temple with lip service, purposely going through the motions under a pretense of righteousness, ignoring the substance of the law and operating only for their own gain.

Later on, talking to their direct successors, Christ had said in the Gospel, in various places in Matthew chapter 23: “Woe to you, blind guides who say 'He who should swear by the temple, it is nothing. But he who should swear by the gold of the temple, he is obligated.' [so they had greater care for the gold] And 'He who should swear by the altar, it is nothing, but he who should swear by the gift upon it, he is obligated.' [having greater care for the gifts] … Because you give a tenth of the mint and anise and cumin, and neglect the weightier matters of the law: judgment and mercy and faith. Yet it is necessary to do these things, and not neglecting those others…. you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but the insides are filled from rapine and incontinence!… you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outside, but inside are full of the bones of corpses and all uncleanness! Thusly indeed you also outside appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness!” Like the priests here in Malachi, Christ accused those of His Own time, where everything they did was done under a pretense of righteousness, and for their own gain.

But Christ also upbraided them and later in that same chapter had said: “33 Serpents! Race of vipers! How could you escape from the judgment of Gehenna? 34 For this reason, behold! I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall flog in your assembly halls and persecute from city to city! 35 Thusly should come upon you all the righteous blood poured out upon the earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharios who had been murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I say to you, all these things shall come upon this race!”

The priests who opposed Christ in Jerusalem had no opportunity to repent, and the priests being addressed prophetically here in Malachi have no such opportunity either. Now when we discuss Malachi chapter 2, the prophet will make it evident as to why they were corrupt and why they could not repent. Yahshua Christ laid on them the blood of Abel, something which only the descendants of Cain could be accused of, and Malachi explains that here as well.