Malachi2:16

Whichever translation option you prefer, the following statements should be agreeable to everyone:

• God is not pleased with divorce, rather it goes against His design for us.
• Divorce is at type of violence
• God wants all men to be faithful to their wives.

The message of these verses was that they could not use divorce as a loophole to legally commit adultery. They had invented a category one could call “legally permissible adultery,” but God refused to acknowledge their invention. In fact it was the reason God was no longer pleased with their sacrifices in general.

A: YHVH, the God of Israel, says that he hates divorce. This rendition takes the original Hebrew sentence structure, which was common and well understood, and twists it around. The common Hebrew structure I am referring to would start with a quote, (it would be put in quotation marks in English) indicating what God said, followed by the statement – says the Lord. Those that espouse this rendering twist it around in order to make more sense of a difficult statement.

B: “I hate divorce,” says YHVH, the God of Israel.  The verb “hate” is third person singular (he), not first person (I). Those who choose to render it “I hate divorce” assume that the original verb was actually a first person, and that a pronoun was dropped changing it to third person. It is an assumption based only on the supposed need for something to be different.

C: “He who hates [his wife], and divorces [her],” says YHVH, the God of Israel, “covers his garments with violence.” There is no “and” in the original Hebrew. This rendition also ignores the first word of the sentence which is a conjunction and usually means “when, if, for if, since, because, but.” It seldom means “for” in what we would consider a normal sense.

D: The one who hates divorce, YHVH, the God of Israel, says: “it covers ones garments in violence,” says the Lord… Just like option A, the construction of the sentence does not seem to fit well. Here the English has moved the word “says” from the place it usually occupies, to be in a place that is not as natural. The second “says the Lord” is made awkward as well.

E: “He hates divorcing” says YHVH, the God of Israel, “for it covers his garments in violence,” says the YHVH of hosts, therefore take heed …”

Here the problem is that the meaning does not make sense. Who does “He” at the beginning of the sentence refer to? Is it some unknown person? Is it God himself? If it were God, then why does He not say “I” the way He usually does? If it were God speaking, the use of “he” does not seem to fit the rest of the statement.

F: The previous verse is the words of the prophet who is speaking about God in the third person. He ends that verse saying, “Let no man act deceitfully toward the wife of his youth.” Maybe the writer switches part way through and begins to express the statements as coming from God Himself, rather than about God, and the transition happens between our verse 15 and verse 16. It would read like this, “let no man act deceitfully toward the wife of his youth, for he hates divorce, says YHVH, the God of Israel, for it covers one’s garments with violence, says the YHVH of hosts.” However, if one were quoting God, it would be more natural to say “I hate divorce,” says YHVH, rather than “he hates divorce.” Once again the way the sentence is constructed makes this option a poor one and that exact moment is the wrong place to make such a transition.

G: According to Gill’s commentary, Rabbi Yochanan, who lived after the time of Jesus, offers us yet another option for Malachi 2:16: “Putting away (divorcing) [of a wife] is hateful,” says YHVH, the God of Israel, “for it covers one’s garments with violence,” says the YHVH of hosts. For this to work the main verb is rendered as a passive verb (it receives the action), rather than an active verb (he did the action). This changes the form of the verb because it was not a passive verb in the original Hebrew that has been handed down to us.

H: God may have been saying, “go ahead and do what you want, but there will be serious consequences.” This option would read something like this, “if he hates her, put her away” or, “If he hates [his wife] he should send [her] away.”

The rendering, “if he hates her, put her away” has strong support in antiquity, including – the Jonathan Targum, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Latin Vulgate, the Septuagint, the Arabic and Aramaic versions, both Talmuds, and all the English translations prior to the King James of 1611 (this includes Wycliffe {with a variation}, Coverdale, Rheims-Douay, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishop’s Bible). The King James Version of 1611 broke away from that translation tradition.

Kyle Pope says, “In Hebrew, the three letters used in the root meaning ‘send away’ can represent the infinitive ‘to divorce’ (or ‘to send away’), the imperative ‘send away!’, or the masculine third-person singular ‘he sends away.’ Therefore, an imperative is one of three viable options (https://focusmagazine.org/he-hates-or-god-hates-the-text-of-malachi-216.php).

This option does not have any serious problem; the only thing that is seen as a problem by some is that they prefer the infinitive or simple verb form over the imperative. The Masoretic text of the Hebrew Old Testament has this word pointed as an infinitive and most people today rely on the Masoretic text. But it could also be pointed as an imperative or a simple verb.

The thing that makes it possible for these three letters to be an infinitive, an imperative or a third person masculine singular is that Hebrew did not write the vowels, only the consonants (called Radicals). The vowel markings were added several hundred years after Jesus to help non-Hebrew speakers. They appear as some of the dots and dashes that are visible below and above the Hebrew consonants in what is called “pointed Hebrew.” The Hebrew form of writing that the Jews still use does not have that pointing system. The three letters that make up this word must have vowel sounds added to them to make a word and people that fully understand Hebrew usually know from context which vowels need to be inserted. In this case, the issue is debated because context is not conclusive, and the meaning can go different directions and each one has a degree of support.

The option with the smallest degree of problems and with the highest degree of support in ancient times is if he hates her, put her away.

It sounds strange for that to be coming from the “lips” of God himself, but strangeness does not negate its possibility. God could have been repeating what their leaders were saying, or He could have been exposing what was in the hearts of wicked men before turning their actions against them.