SUMMARY
The prophet condemns two kinds of unfaithfulness to God through marriage: 1) marriage with foreigners that leads to idolatry, and 2) divorce that harms women.
ANALYSIS
In the postexilic community, marriage with foreigners was a massively important issue. EzraScribe who helped establish Jewish practices in Jerusalem after the exile. More (10:1-5) and NehemiahThe governor of Jerusalem who rebuilt the city walls after the exile. More (13:1-3) argue for divorce and family separation to prevent Jews from slipping into idolatry because of their foreign wives (see 1 Kings 11 and Numbers 31:16). On the other hand, the book of RuthThe great-grandmother of David. More was probably written around this same time to push back on a totalizing view of foreign women as dangerous to covenantal faithfulness to the God of Israel. Malachi seems to offer a mediating position and warns of the dangers of both abandoning the covenantA covenant is a promise or agreement. In the Bible the promises made between God and God's people are known as covenants; they state or imply a relationship of commitment and obedience. More with God and abandoning the covenant with spouses. Just as JudahJudah was the name of Jacob's fourth son and one of the 12 tribes. More should not prove faithless to God by entering a relationship with those who worship other gods, so Judahites should not prove faithless to their wives by divorcing them to enter into relationships with other women. The issues are deeply connected for the prophet: do not abandon covenantal faithfulness to God or spouses. This breaking of faith is the divorce that God hates (Malachi 2:16).
Readers should be careful to note this is not a totalizing prohibition on divorce, but rather targeted at divorce as treacherous treatment of a spouse who had done nothing wrong. The Hebrew is a bit unclear as to whether it is God who hates divorce, or if it is the husband who hates and divorces his wife. In either case, the issue is the abuse of a wife, rather than divorce in isolation.
