“Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?” (Malachi 2:10).

The message of Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, was primarily directed to the Jews of the restoration, who already were backsliding after being restored from their Babylonian captivity, and God’s rebuke of their sinful behavior focused on the key to its correction. They needed to remember, first of all, that they were all brothers, because they all had the same Father. This was not a reference to their becoming spiritual children of God by the new birth, but a reminder of the even more basic fact that they had all been specially created by God in the first place. They should therefore be united in God’s great calling of the Jews as God’s chosen people, bearing His message to the whole world.

Although Malachi’s message was primarily for the Jews, it also has all men in view. “For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; . . . saith the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 1:11). There was an earlier covenant than the Mosaic and Levitical covenants—one which God made with all men after the great Flood, which has never been withdrawn.

This Noahic covenant, continuing for perpetual generations, does indeed remind us that all men everywhere are brothers, created by the selfsame Creator, and responsible to Him for their behavior toward one another, and for their stewardship of the earth under His ownership. Thus, Malachi’s rhetorical questions remind us that the only way to resolve problems among the nations of the world is, first of all, to remind and try to convince them that they all were created by the one true “Lord of hosts,” that they must someday answer to Him, and that He still loves them as a father loves his children. HMM