If Edom says, "We are shattered, but we will return and rebuild [the] ruins," Yahweh of hosts says this: "They may build, but I will tear down; and they will be called a territory of wickedness, and the people [with] whom Yahweh is angry forever."

"A son honors his father and a servant his master. So if I'm a father, where is my honor? And if I'm a master, where is my respect?" says the LORD of the Heavenly Armies to you priests who are despising my name. "But you ask, "How have we despised your name?'

[You are] presenting defiled food on my altar! But you ask, 'How have we defiled you?' By saying [that] the table of Yahweh is despised!

"But you [are] profaning it by saying the table of the Lord [is] defiled, and its fruit--its food--is despised!

If you will not listen, and if you will not {take it to heart} to give glory to my name," says Yahweh of hosts, "then I will send the curse on you, and I will curse your blessings; moreover I have [already] cursed them because {you are not taking it to heart}.

But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith Jehovah of hosts.

"And in turn I have made you despised and humbled before all the people, inasmuch as you [are] not keeping my way, but are {favoring your own instruction}."

{Do we not all have} one father? Has not one God created us? Why [then] are we unfaithful {to one another}, profaning the covenant of our ancestors?

Ye grieve the LORD with your words, and yet ye say, 'Wherewithal have we grieved him?' In this, that ye say: 'All that do evil are good in the sight of God, and such please him.' Or else where is the God that punisheth?

"Look! I [am] going to send my messenger, and he will prepare [the] way {before me}. And the Lord whom you [are] seeking will come suddenly to his temple, and the messenger of the covenant, [in] whom you [are] taking pleasure--look!--[he is] about to come," says Yahweh of hosts.

And I will come near to you for judging; I will quickly be a witness against the wonder-workers, against those who have been untrue in married life, against those who take false oaths; against those who keep back from the servant his payment, and who are hard on the widow and the child without a father, who do not give his rights to the man from a strange country, and have no fear of me, says the Lord of armies.

For I Jehovah change not, and ye, sons of Jacob, are not consumed.

"Ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and since the time of your forefathers have ye not kept them. Turn you now unto me, and I will turn me unto you, sayeth the LORD of Hosts. Ye say, 'Wherein shall we turn?'

Will a human [dare to] rob God? Yet you [are] robbing me! And you say, 'How have we robbed you?' In the tithes and the contributions!

You [are] being cursed with curse, for you [are] robbing me, the whole nation [of you]!

And declared you happy have all the nations, For ye are a delightful land, said Jehovah of Hosts.

“Your words against Me are harsh,” says the Lord.

Yet you ask: “What have we spoken against You?”

And now we [are] calling [the] arrogant blessed! Not only do those who do wickedness prosper; they also test God and they escape!'"

“For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant (proud, self-righteous, haughty), and every evildoer shall be stubble; and the day that is coming shall set them on fire,” says the Lord of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.

And ye have trodden down the wicked, For they are ashes under the soles of your feet, In the day that I am appointing, Said Jehovah of Hosts.