 1 Now, O priests, this command is for you. 2 If you will not hear, and if you will not set it on your heart to give glory to my name, says the Lord of hosts, then I will send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings. And indeed I have cursed it, because you do not set it on your heart. 3 Behold, I am rebuking your descendants. And I will spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your appointed feasts. And one will lift you up to it. 4 Then you will know that I have sent this command to you to be my covenant with Levi, says the Lord of hosts. 5 My covenant with him was life and peace and I gave them to him for fear. Then he feared me and he is awed before my name. 6 The law of truth was in his mouth and iniquity was not found in his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness and turned away many from iniquity. 7 For the priest's lips should guard knowledge and they should seek the law at his mouth. For he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. 8 But you have turned out of the way. You have caused many to stumble at the law. You have corrupted the covenant of Levi, says the Lord of hosts. 9 Therefore I have also made you despised and low before all the people, just as you have not kept my ways but are lifting up faces in the law. 10 Is there not one father to us all? Has not one God created us? Why do we act deceitfully, each man with his brother, to profane the covenant of our fathers. 11 Judah has dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the holy place of the Lord that He loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. 12 The Lord will cut off from the tents of Jacob the man who does it. Stirring and answering. Or offering a food offering to the Lord of hosts. 13 This is a second thing you have done, covering the altar of the Lord with tears, weeping, and groaning, yet not facing toward the food offering, and taking it with delight from your hand. 14 Yet you say, Why? Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously. Yet she is your companion and your covenant wife. 15 Did He not make you one? Yet with a reflection+ of the Spirit. And why one? So that He might seek godly children. Then guard your spirit and do not act treacherously with the wife of your youth. 16 The Lord, the God of Israel, says He hates sending away. And to cover with violence on his garment, says the Lord of hosts. Then guard your spirit, and do not act treacherously. 17 You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, In what have we wearied Him? When you say, Every evildoer is good in the eyes of the Lord, and He delights in them. Or, Where is the God of justice?
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