Commentary on Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah and Malachi John Calvin (continued)
JOHN CALVIN
fact that God is the founder of marriage. Testified has Jehovah, he says, between thee and thy wife 385 He intimates in these words, that when a marriage takes place between a man and a woman, God presides and requires a mutual pledge from both. Hence Solomon, in Proverbs 2:17, calls marriage the covenant of God, for it is superior to all human contracts. So also Malachi declares, that God is as it were the stipulator, who by his authority joins the man to the woman, and sanctions the alliance: God then has testified between thee and thy wife, as though he had said, ``Thou hast violated not only all human laws, but also the compact which God himself has consecrated, and which ought justly to be deemed more sacred than all other compacts: as then God has testified between thee and thy wife, and thou now deceivest her, how darest thou to come to the altar? and how canst thou think that God will be pleased with thy sacrifices or regard thy oblations?''
He calls her the wife of his youth, because the more filthy is the lust when husbands cast away conjugal love as to those wives whom they have married in their youth. The bond of marriage is indeed in all cases inviolable, even between the old, but it is a circumstance which increases the turpitude of the deed, when any one alienates himself from a wife whom he married when a girl and in the flower of her age: for youth conciliates love; and we also see that when a husband and his wife have lived together for many years, mutual love prevails between them to extreme old age, because their hearts were united together in their youth. It is not then without reason that this circumstance is mentioned, for the lust of the priests was the more filthy and as it were the more monstrous, because they forsook wives whom they ought to have regarded with the tenderest love, as they had married them when they were young: Thou hast dealt unfaithfully with her, he says, though she was thy consort and the wife of thy covenant
He calls her a consort, or companion, or associate, 386 because marriage, we know, is contracted on this condition --- that the wife is to become as it were the half part of the man. As then the bond of marriage is inseparable, the Prophet here goads the priests, yea, touches them to the quick, when he reproves them for being unmindful of what was natural, inasmuch as they had blotted out of their minds the memory of a most sacred covenant. The wife of thy covenant is to be taken for a covenanted wife, that is, ``The wife who has been united to thee by God's authority, that there might be no separation; but all integrity is violated, and as it were abolished.'' He then adds
Malachi 2:15
15. And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
385Or, "a witness has Jehovah been between thee and thy wife." But Theodoret, Cyril, and Jerome, and also Cocceius, refer this to God's testimony in the first institution of marriage, in Genesis 2:24. More suitabele to the context no doubt is to consider God as a witness to the marriage contract; and this is the view taken by Drusius, Henry, Scott, Newcome, and Henderson. — Ed.
386"{Κοινωνός} --- partner,'' by the Septuagint; ``{ὁμόσαρκος} --- of the same flesh,'' by Cyril; ``particeps --- partner,'' by Jerome; ``companion,'' in our version, and by Newcome and Henderson. The word comes from ,{}חברto conjoin, to couple, to fit together. ``Partner'' perhaps would be the most appropriate term. --- Ed.