I will punish your descendants and splatter your faces with the manure from your festival sacrifices, and I will throw you on the manure pile.
Parallel translations
- WEB Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and will spread dung on your faces, even the dung of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it.
- KJV Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.
- BSB Behold, I will rebuke your descendants, and I will spread dung on your faces, the waste from your feasts, and you will be carried off with it.
- NKJV “Behold, I will rebuke your descendants And spread refuse on your faces, The refuse of your solemn feasts; And one will take you away with it.
- NASB Behold, I am going to rebuke your descendants, and I will spread dung on your faces, the dung of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God threatens severe humiliation on the priests, smearing the refuse of their own sacrifices on their faces and removing them in disgrace.
Overview
Using vivid, deliberately shocking imagery, God promises to disgrace the priests with the dung of the very feast offerings they corrupted. The judgment fits the crime: those who defiled holy worship will themselves be defiled. The passage underscores how seriously God regards the integrity of those who lead His people in worship.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Nah 3:6I will throw abominable filth on you, and make you vile, and will set you a spectacle.
- Mal 2:9“Therefore I have also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according to the way you have not kept my ways, but have had respect for persons in the law.
- Job 20:7yet he shall perish forever like his own dung. Those who have seen him shall say, ‘Where is he?’
- Joel 1:17The seeds rot under their clods. The granaries are laid desolate. The barns are broken down, for the grain has withered.
- Exod 29:14But the meat of the bull, and its skin, and its dung, you shall burn with fire outside of the camp: it is a sin offering.
- 1 Kgs 14:10therefore, behold, I will bring evil on the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam everyone who urinates on a wall, he who is shut up and he who is left at large in Israel, and will utterly sweep away the house of Jeroboam, as a man sweeps away dung, until it is all gone.
- 1 Sam 2:29–30Why do you kick at my sacrifice and at my offering, which I have commanded in my habitation, and honor your sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel my people?’
- 1 Cor 4:13Being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all, even until now.
- Ps 83:10who perished at Endor, who became as dung for the earth.
- 2 Kgs 9:36–37Therefore they came back, and told him. He said, “This is Yahweh’s word, which he spoke by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, ‘The dogs will eat the flesh of Jezebel on the plot of Jezreel,
- Jer 8:2and they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the army of the sky, which they have loved, and which they have served, and after which they have walked, and which they have sought, and which they have worshiped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried, they shall be for dung on the surface of the earth.
- Luke 14:35It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Resources, by level
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The messenger who prepares the way, the sun of righteousness rising with healing, and the Lord suddenly coming to his temple set the stage for the gospel that opens with John and Jesus.
How Malachi 2:3 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.