in
the ritual and regards the preservation of its purity as essential to the
religious life of the Judean community. He charges the priests with
failure to observe the ceremonial laws, especially in allowing the people
to bring for sacrifice animals that are blind, lame, and sick. These acts
are evidence of the religious apathy that had seized even the religious
leaders of the people. The prophet declares boldly that under the guise of
religion the priests are robbing Jehovah. Above all they are faithless to
their responsibilities as the appointed teachers of the people. In 2:5-7
he presents the clearest picture extant of the task of the priest as
teacher. His duty was to instruct the people, to help them to overcome
temptation, and to make very clear to them the way of duty. This ideal,
the prophet declares, was realized by earlier priests, but now those who
are the appointed religious guides are misleading the people.

III. The Need of a Great Moral Awakening. The evils which the prophet
denounced were not confined to the priests. The old Semitic law regarding
divorce was exceedingly lax. A husband could lead his wife to the door of
his tent and tell her to be gone, thereby severing their marriage
relation. The Deuteronomic law sought to relieve this injustice by
providing that the husband must place in the hand of his wife, as she
departs, a document stating the grounds on which he had divorced her. By
the middle of the fifth century B.C. divorce had evidently become
exceedingly common in Palestine. The prophet denounced it on the basis of
its injustice and cruelty. He also maintained that marriage was a solemn
covenant before Jehovah between man and wife, and that he who disregarded
it dealt faithlessly and was the especial object of divine displeasure.

Traces of the old heathenism still remained in Judah, and the dependent,
oppressed classes received little pity from the selfish, heartless rulers.
In the face of these evils the prophet declared that Jehovah would
surely send a messenger to punish and to reform priest and people.
The prophecy was evidently based on a clear recognition that Jehovah
was ever working to train and uplift his people, and that a period of
degeneration must surely be followed by a period of reform. In the work
of Nehemiah the prophet's hopes were in part fulfilled, but the larger
fulfilment of the underlying principle was realized in the thorough-going
reformatory work of John the Baptis