Whereas Edom says, "We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places;" thus says the LORD of hosts, "They shall build, but I will throw down; and men will call them 'The Wicked Land,' even the people against whom the LORD shows wrath forever."

"A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? Says the LORD of hosts to you, priests, who despise my name. You say, 'How have we despised your name?'

"Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain. I have no pleasure in you," says the LORD of hosts, "neither will I accept an offering at your hand.

"But the deceiver is cursed, who has in his flock a male, and vows, and sacrifices to the Lord a blemished thing; for I am a great King," says the LORD of hosts, "and my name is awesome among the nations."

The LORD will cut off, to the man who does this, him who wakes and him who answers, out of the tents of Jacob, and him who offers an offering to the LORD of hosts.

Yet you say, 'Why?' Because the LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion, and the wife of your covenant.

For I hate divorce," says the LORD, the God of Israel, "and him who covers his garment with violence." says the LORD of hosts. "Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.

You have wearied the LORD with your words. Yet you say, 'How have we wearied him?' In that you say, 'Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the LORD, and he delights in them;' or 'Where is the God of justice?'

"Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, behold, he comes." says the LORD of hosts.

"But who can endure the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like launderer's soap;

I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against the perjurers, and against those who oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and who deprive the foreigner of justice, and do not fear me," says the LORD of hosts.

Now we call the proud blessed; indeed, those who work wickedness prosper. They even tempt God and escape.'

Then those who feared the LORD spoke one with another; and the LORD listened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him, for those who feared the LORD, and who honored his name.

They shall be mine," says the LORD of hosts, "my own possession in the day that I make, and I will spare them, as a man spares his own son who serves him.

Then you shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who doesn't serve him.

"For, behold, the day comes, it burns as a furnace; and all the proud, and all who work wickedness, will be stubble; and the day that comes will burn them up," says the LORD of hosts, "that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

But to you who fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings. You will go out, and leap like calves of the stall.