Description
Preview
What you get in the Casual English Bible's Malachi Bible Atlas are
- 5 high definition maps in 3D style, for immediate download as PDFs.
Sample map in the Malachi Bible Atlas
Malachi is not a gentle touch. He might sound like a yeller when he quotes God about:
Diseased animal sacrifices
“People, you bring me blind animals. That’s your sacrifice, your gift to me. Blind animals. And crippled critters. Diseased, as well….Try giving animals like that to your governor. Would he be happy with you? Would he say, ‘Thank you very much for all these sick animals, I gratefully accept them’” (1:8)?
Priests with bad attitudes toward God
“Priests…If you don’t start showing me respect and honoring my name when you use it….I’m going to punish you in a way that will affect you and future generations of your family. The shame you’ll have to live with will be like walking around with manure on your faces” (2:1-3).
Cheapskating around the tithe
“So, you think it’s okay to rob God? …You’re robbing me of tithes and offerings….Bring all the tithe to the Temple so we have food here at my house. Test me. Do it. Then watch what happens. I’ll open the windows of heaven and dump a barrel of blessing all over you” (3:8, 10).
TIMELINE
Best guess: Malachi lived in the 400s BC, about a century after Jews returned to their homeland, which Babylonian invaders had decimated in 586 BC. They erased Israel from the world map. Babylonians had leveled Jerusalem and deported most of the survivors, banning them from returning home to rebuild their rebellious nation.
But Persians from what is now Iraq defeated Babylon and freed the political prisoners, including Jews. Many Jews returned home and rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple by 515 BC. Some clues of the timeline:
—A governor ruled Israel (1:8). Persians allowed Jews to rebuild their nation, but only as the Persian Empire’s province of Palestine. Persian-appointed governors ruled from 536-332 BC.
—Jews sacrificed in the Temple again (1:7). There was no Temple for 70 years after 586 BC.
—Jews were possibly marrying non-Jews (footnote for 2:14). This was a problem Ezra viciously attacked in the mid-400s BC (Ezra 9—10; Nehmiah 13).
LOCATION
The scenes probably took place in the Persian province of Yehud, which is translated Judah or Judea. It was roughly a 40-mile-wide square plug of ground (60 km), in territory that became known as Palestine. The Jewish province included Jerusalem and beyond, into what are now central parts of Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories. Jerusalem is where Jews sacrificed animals to God. And this was a topic Malachi covered with emotion and blunt words.
In addition to the Malachi Bible Atlas
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