Malachy's Prophecy of the Eucharistic Sacrifice

Rev. E. F. Sutcliffe, S.J., "Malachy's Prophecy of the Eucharistic Sacrifice." Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Fifth Series, Volume XIX. (1922) pp. 503-513.

That the Prophet Malachy wrote about the year 450 B.C. is indicated by the striking similarity between the problems with which he deals and those that occupied Nehemiah.¹ The chief among these are the decadence of the Temple worship, mixed marriages between Jews and pagans, and irregularity in the payment of tithes. It is with the first of these that Malachy opens his short book. Almighty God is represented by the prophet as rebuking the people, and, in particular, the priests, for not requiting His love, and for neglecting His worship: "To you, O priests, that despise My name and have said: Wherein have we despised Thy Name? You offer polluted bread upon My altar, and you say: Wherein have we polluted Thee? In that you say: The temple of the Lord is contemptible. If you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if you offer the lame and the sick, is it not evil?" (1:7-8). Then follows an injunction to turn to God with supplication that He may regard them with favour once more. "And now beseech ye the face of God, that He may have mercy on you (for by your hand hath this been done); if by any means He will receive your faces, saith the Lord of hosts" (1:9).

Then follows the repudiation of the priests and their sacrifices. The Hebrew text reads literally: "Also who among you and he will close the doors and will not light [the fire upon] My altar to no purpose." That is to say: "Oh, that one among you would close the doors, and that you would not light [the fire upon] My altar in vain!" For it was in vain that these careless and unworthy priests offered their polluted sacrifices upon the altar. Almighty God would not accept them at their hands, and therefore He continues: "I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will not receive a gift (minhah) of your hand." Thus Almighty God, by the mouth of His prophet, formally repudiates the sacrifices offered by the Aaronic priesthood at Jerusalem. They were unworthy gifts, offered by a self-seeking priesthood; therefore Almighty God rejects them. And this rejection of the Aaronic sacrifices does not signify the end of sacrifice to the true God "for from the rising of the sunne euen to the going downe, great is my name among the Gentils, and in euerie place there is sacrificing, and there is offered to my name a cleane oblation: because my name is great among the Gentils, sayth the Lord of hosts." So runs this passage in the English Doway version of 1609; it is a faithful translation of the Latin Vulgate. The Revised Version of 1881 translates, "For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of Hosts." The Revised Version also gives the marginal reading, "for my name shall be great among the Gentiles."

It will be seen at once that these translations give substantially the same sense, yet the variation is of sufficient importance to demand some inquiry into the state of the text. The Revised Version agrees almost exactly with the Septuagint, in which dedóxastai represents "is great," and the word used in place of "offering" is thusía, which denotes rather "sacrifice." Turning to the Hebrew text, we find that the Massorete reading is: "and in every place muqtar muggash to My Name, and a pure minhah." Some few remarks must be made on the three words which are here transliterated from the Hebrew. Muqtar and muggash are both passive participles of the hophal, i.e., participles of the causative passive, neither of which occurs in any other place in the Bible. The former is derived from a form qatar, unused in the Qal, or simple form. Its meaning in the piel, or intensive active, is to make sacrifices smoke, to offer them by burning, and it is used sometimes of offering incense; similarly, in the hiphil, or causative active, it signifies to make sacrifices smoke, to cause incense to smoke, to offer incense; and in the hophal, the causative passive, its meaning is to be made to smoke, that is, as a sacrifice. From this root are derived words signifying incense, altar of incense, and censer or thurible.² Taken by itself, this participle may be used as a finite verb, signifying that smoke is made to arise, whether the smoke of incense or of sacrifice; or it may be used as a noun signifying "incense." It was in this latter sense, though possibly not with the Massoretic vocalization, that the word was understood by the Septuagint translators.

The word muggash, also, as has been said, a passive participle of the hophal, is from the verb nagash. This word signifies in its different voices, to draw or come near, to cause to approach or to bring. And as to bring to the altar is to offer, the word took on this latter sense; so Malachy 1:7, 2:12, 3:3. Thus in the hophal its meaning is to be brought near or to be offered.

Coming now to the third word minhah, and following the same lexicon, we find that it bears the following meanings according to the context. All, as will be seen, are closely allied. It signifies a gift, or present, tribute, an offering made to God, of any kind, whether grain or animals, and specifically a grain offering "whether raw, roasted, ground to flour, or prepared as bread or cakes." For the present we may accept the meaning offering, without inquiring whether the context favours this generic sense or the specific meaning of grain offering.

After these explanations, it is clear that the Hebrew text indicated above may signify

(1) In every place incense is offered to My Name, and a pure oblation ; or

(2) In every place [the] smoke [of incense or of sacrifice] is made to arise, an offering is made to My Name, and a pure oblation.

Against the first rendering may be urged that it is unlikely that two adjacent words of the same form should be understood, the one as a noun, the other as a verb. This objection is by no means decisive; Pere Lagrange,³ with Canon van Hoonacker, avoids it altogether by suggesting that the true vocalization is miqtar, with the same meaning of "incense." This is a possible reading, though the word is not found with this meaning.

Against the second rendering there is the obvious objection of tautology. This difficulty would be removed by suppressing "and." Kittel's edition of the Massoretic text suggests that this omission should be made. The conjunction is lacking in twenty-one of the MSS. of Kennicott and de Rossi, as also in the Syriac and Vulgate versions.⁴ Without "and" the sense would be

(3) In every place [the] smoke [of incense or of sacrifice] is made to arise, there is offered to My Name a pure oblation.

This asyndeton is quite possible. The Syriac and Vulgate, however, read "and" before "there is offered."

The objection raised against (2) may be met in another way. The conjunctive participle in Hebrew sometimes has the force of "even" or "and indeed." This usage is suggested in the present instance by Corluy.⁵ He compares Zacharias 9:9, "riding upon an ass, even upon a colt, the foal of an ass"; Jeremias 15:13, "even in all thy borders"; Daniel 1:3, "even of the king's seed and of the princes." The translation will then be

(4) In every place [the] smoke [of incense or of sacrifice] is made to arise, an offering is made to My Name, even a pure oblation.

Here we may leave the question of translation, without attempting for the present to decide whether muqtar refers to the smoke of incense or of sacrifice, as we have for the present left the question whether minhah refers specifically to a grain offering or not. In any case, all the terms of the passage are strictly sacrificial. Almighty God declares through His prophet that He will not receive the polluted sacrifices of the Aaronic priesthood, for from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, that is, throughout the whole world, His Name is great among the Gentiles, and a pure sacrifice is offered to His Name.

What is this pure offering? Are the Prophet's words to be understood literally of the time of speaking? of offerings made at the very time when Malachy wrote? Various explanations have been put forward on the assumption that such is the meaning. First, there is the theory advocated, for example, among the Jews, by the celebrated Rabbi Isaac ben Abraham, and among rationalists by Wellhausen, namely, that the pure oblation Yahweh now regards with favour is identical with the sacrifices offered by the non-Jewish races to their supreme gods, by the Romans to Jupiter, by the Greeks to Zeus, by the Persians to Ahura Mazda. These races may never have identified their supreme deity with the one true God worshipped by the Jews; but inasmuch as the nations paid cult each to a supreme being, they were paying unconscious worship to Yahweh.

Against this syncretistic view there is the grave difficulty that it is entirely against the spirit of the Old Testament. The people of Israel were warned to take no part in the worship of the peoples around them, for, in the words of the Psalmist (Ps 95(96):5) "all the gods of the Gentiles are devils." And St. Paul is speaking in entire accord with Jewish tradition when he writes to the Corinthians (1 Cor 10:20): "The things which the heathen sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God" (cf. Deut 32:17). Moreover, Malachy himself is far from showing this toleration of foreigners. His book opens with stern words about the Edomites; and he rebukes marriages with non-Jews precisely because they worshipped strange gods: "Juda hath trangressed, and abomination hath been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: for Juda hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god " (Mal 2:11). Moreover, Almighty God says: "My Name is great among the Gentiles"; and if stress may be laid on the "Name," it is far from true that the name of Yahweh was great among the Gentile nations. For the most part it was not even known.

Another theory finds the key to a solution in the recently discovered papyrus fragments of Elephantine. The view is held by several of whom we may take Dr. J. M. Powis Smith as the representative.⁶ These documents may be conveniently studied in the admirable edition published by A. Cowley.⁷ The very existence of the Jewish military colony at Elephantine was previously unsuspected. We now know that it existed in the time of Cyrus, and probably goes back to Psammetichus II, who reigned from 595-590 B.C. It had its temple to Yahu or Jahô, about the form of whose name there is some doubt, but who is certainly to be identified with Yahweh. This temple was served by a body of priests, who, of course, were responsible for the cult; and we read of meal-offerings, incense, and sacrifices. In explanation of Malachy 1:11, Dr. Powis Smith writes: "In any case, it is quite evident that the writer of this prophecy may have shared the views of the colonists as to the legitimacy of sacrificial worship upon foreign soil, and may have had such shrines as that at Elephantine in mind when he wrote." And again: "There is no necessity for supposing that the action of these colonists in erecting a temple on foreign soil was unique. It is altogether probable that similar shrines were erected in other Jewish centres. The later temple at Heliopolis is a case in point. The same longings and needs that caused the building of the temple at Elephantine existed in many other regions, and may easily have resulted in similar action."

In Dr. Smith's own translation the text on which he is commenting is "And in every place, smoke is made to arise to My Name, and a pure offering." The explanation of a text that refers to every place is surely on a weak foundation when it can refer with certainty to but one contemporary and one later instance. The estimation of probabilities, of course, involves the personal equation; but it is difficult to follow Dr. Smith in his opinion. It cannot be said to be altogether improbable that similar shrines existed elsewhere; but it seems very unlikely that they existed in "many other regions." And unless they did exist in many other regions, they do not explain the text. Had they existed in many centres, several at least would have left traces of their existence. Moreover, had they existed in many other regions, the custom of offering sacrifices to Yahweh would not, in all probability, have perished among the Jews, and there would have been some evidence of the practice, especially after the destruction of Jerusalem. It is very doubtful, too, whether Jewish sacrifices offered outside Jerusalem could be regarded as pure oblations, as, by the Deuteronomic law, such sacrifices were strictly forbidden.⁸ Again, Malachy opposes to the rejected sacrifices of the Jews sacrifices offered to Yahweh among the Gentiles, and, therefore, in view of the antithesis, offered also by the Gentiles.

As representatives of yet a third view which understands Malachy to be speaking of his own day, we may consider the opinion of Dr. Kirkpatrick.⁹ He favours the explanation that "the Jews of the Dispersion, scattered throughout the world in the midst of the Gentiles, rendered by their offerings of prayer and praise a more acceptable service to Jehovah than the careless priests in the Temple at Jerusalem by their heartless and contemptible sacrifices, and that thereby Jehovah's Name was being magnified among the heathen." He adds in a note: "Probably some of the Jews at Jerusalem despised the Jews of the Dispersion (cf. Ezek 11:15), and refused to recognize their worship in heathen countries as true worship. They are rebuked by the emphatic declaration that in every place Jehovah can be acceptably worshipped, and that, while His Name is despised in the city of His choice by His own people, it is magnified among the heathen. The words are an anticipation of John 4:21."

This explanation of the passage, as referring to the prayer and praise offered by the Jews of the Diaspora was long ago rejected by St. Justin.¹⁰ It is open to the same objection as the last, namely, that the antithesis favours sacrifices offered not merely among the Gentiles, but by the Gentiles. Moreover, the antithesis suggests that to the real sacrifices of the Jews are opposed the real material sacrifices offered throughout the world. It is inconceivable that the Jews at Jerusalem and in Palestine regarded the spiritual worship offered by their dispersed brethren as being unwelcome to God. In the short time that had elapsed since the return from the Babylonian captivity, the idea could hardly have arisen among the Jews of Palestine that God could not be truly worshipped outside the borders of their country. The idea is the less likely that, as the rebukes of Malachy show, the Jews of Palestine held the Temple worship in small honour. The victims offered were blemished and unworthy, and tithe was not regularly paid. Moreover, the assumption of this interpretation appears to be that by "incense" and "a pure offering" a Hebrew writer such as Malachy could signify a spiritual offering of "prayer and praise." This assumption is quite unwarranted by the Old Testament. There incense is never used in its later metaphorical sense, nor is minhah ever used in a purely spiritual sense. It always represents some material offering.

There is still a fourth explanation which supposes that the Prophet is speaking of his own time. According to this view, Malachy refers to the Gentile proselytes, who had turned from their pagan cult, and worshipped the one true God. It is unnecessary to spend time in the refutation of this suggestion, as it is doubtful whether it is held by any scholar at the present day. We have no reason for supposing that there were such numerous proselytes in the fifth century B.C.; and in any case several of the objections urged above are applicable here also.

If the arguments adduced above are valid, it follows that Malachy cannot be speaking of his own time; for the hypotheses enumerated seem to exhaust the possible contemporary references. If the Prophet is not speaking of the pagans, nor of the Jews of the Diaspora, nor of the Gentile proselytes of his day, his point of reference must be in the future. This interpretation is suggested, moreover, by the acceptance of sacrifice from the Gentiles. Their inclusion is one of the best-known traits of the Messianic kingdom, and of the prophecies that refer to it (Isa 49:6; Ps 21(22):27-28; Ps 71(72):8-11). Grammatically the Hebrew may be understood of the present, as in the text of the Revised Version, or of the future, as in the Authorized Version. If the text is understood grammatically of the present, this passage is another instance of the futurum instans¹¹ of which Malachy himself makes use more than once (2:3, 3:1). The Prophet has the picture of the future so vividly before him that he speaks of it as present and accomplished fact (cf. Isa 7:14). To sum up, then, the sense requires the future, and the grammar allows it.

The argument so far may be stated thus: Malachy foretells a real sacrifice in the future, offered by the non-Jewish races, and acceptable to Yahweh. In place of the Aaronic sacrifices is to be substituted a non-Aaronic sacrifice; in place of the sacrifices offered by the Jews sacrifice offered by the Gentiles; and in place of their polluted offerings a clean oblation which is to be offered no longer in Jerusalem alone, but throughout the world, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. This sacrifice can be none other than the sacrifice of the Mass. No other is to be found which fits the prophecy.

Hence the Church, through the Council of Trent, declares in its teaching on the Mass: "Haec quidem illa munda oblatio est, quae nulla indignitate aut malitia offerentium inquinari potest; quam Dominus per Malachiam nomini suo, quod magnum futurum esset in gentibus, in omni loco mundam offerendam praedixit."¹²

As St. Augustine has pointed out in another connexion¹³ that which is obscure in a prophetic utterance is rightly interpreted in the light of that which is clear. This principle indicates the solution of the two questions which were left unanswered in the earlier part of this paper. These two questions were whether minhah refers specifically to a grain offering, and whether muqtar refers to the smoke of incense or of sacrifice. Once it is established that the prophecy foretells the world-wide and necessarily pure oblation of the sacrifice of the Mass, which is offered under the species of bread and of wine, the answer to the first question cannot remain in doubt. This does not mean to say that the word explicitly connotes a grain offering. In itself it is undetermined, and can be determined only by the context. This specific meaning of "grain offering" is not here necessarily indicated by the wording of the text, but the fulfilment of the prophecy in history shows what is the nature of the offering intended.

The second question likewise receives its solution from the fulfilment of the prophecy in history. Throughout the world, whenever the ritual of the Holy Sacrifice is solemnly celebrated, the use of incense is an integral portion of the service. Hence, relying on St. Augustine's principle, which, indeed, does not require authority for its support, we are justified in seeing in the word muqtar a prediction of the use of incense in the central act of Christian worship. So Father Knabenbauer¹⁴: "Prophetia ad literam impletur. Si autem talis est impletio, cur eandem esse praedictionem asserere dubitabis?"

Of course it does not follow from the prophecy of Malachy that the use of incense and the pure oblation will always be combined in the same service. The passage certainly suggests that the use of incense will accompany the offering of the pure oblation, but there is nothing in the passage to suggest that it will always be so, and that the two cannot be separated. Again, we know from the historic fulfilment of the prophecy that the use of incense is not restricted to the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice. Indeed, it is quite possible that the use of incense was introduced, for example, in the burial service before it was introduced in the Mass. The early evidence is not sufficiently clear to allow of a certain answer to the question whether incense was used in the ritual of the first three centuries. Cardinal Bona is of opinion that the liturgical use of incense has its origin in Apostolic tradition, and its pattern in the services of the Jewish Temple. However, this opinion is not generally adopted; and the prophecy of Malachy does not necessarily imply that the new sacrifice and the use of incense in the new cult are to be instituted at the same time.

Edmund Sutcliffe, S.J.

[1] A. van Hoonacker, Les Douze Petits Prophètes, 1908, pp. 695-9.

[2] Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1907.

[3] Revue Biblique, 1906, p. 80.

[4] De Rossi, Variae Lectiones Vet. Test.; Parma, 1786.

[5] Spicilegium Dogmatico-Biblicum, 1884, ii. p. 402.

[6] A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Malachi, 1912, pp. 30-33, in one of the volumes of the International Critical Commentary.

[7] Jewish Documents of the Time of Ezra, London, 1919.

[8] The Louvain Professor, Canon A. van Hoonacker, in the Schweich Lectures for 1914, Une Communauté Judéo-Araméenne à Éléphantine, en Égypte, aux VI^e et V^e siècles av. J.C. (London, 1915, pp. 60 ff), argues that the law prohibiting sacrifice outside Jerusalem had in view only the land of Canaan: "On comprend que le souci de la conduite à suivre en dehors du territoire de Canaan devait être ici entièrement étranger au législateur." He holds, however, that the cult celebrated at Elephantine was irregular on another ground, as going contrary to "le principe traditionnel qui, indépendamment de toute loi écrite, s'opposait à l'offrande de sacrifices à Jahvé en terre étrangére, à raison de l'impureté de cette terre."

[9] The Doctrine of the Prophets, ed. 3, London, 1915.

[10] Dial. cum Tryph. n. 117.

[11] Cf. Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley, Hebrew Grammar, § 116 p.

[12] Sess. 22, cap. 1.

[13] De Civ. Dei, xvii. 17.

[14] Commentarius in Proph. Min., 1886, ii. p. 440.