1“Look, I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord, whom you are seeking, will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, yes, he is coming!” says Yahweh of Armies.
2“But who can survive the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refining fire and like laundry soap.
3He will sit like someone refining and purifying silver and gold. He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present offerings to Yahweh in a righteous way.
4Then the offerings from Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to Yahweh, as they were in ancient times, in years past.
5I will come to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, adulterers, perjurers, and against those who cheat laborers out of their wages, oppress widows and orphans, and deny justice to foreigners—because they do not fear me,” says Yahweh of Armies.
6“For I, Yahweh, do not change; therefore you, the descendants of Jacob, have not been completely destroyed.
7Since the days of your ancestors, you have turned away from my laws and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says Yahweh of Armies. “But you ask, ‘How should we return?’
8“Will a person rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you ask, ‘How have we robbed you?’ In tithes and offerings.
9You are suffering under a curse, because you—the whole nation—are robbing me.
10Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse so there will be food in my house. Test me in this,” says Yahweh of Armies, “and see if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you won’t have enough room for it.”
11I will protect your crops from pests, so they won't destroy the food from your land. Your grapevines will not drop their fruit before it's ready in the field,” says Yahweh, the Lord of Armies.
12“Then all nations will call you blessed, because your land will be a delight,” says Yahweh, the Lord of Armies.
13“You have spoken harsh words against me,” says Yahweh. “Yet you ask, ‘What have we ever said against you?’
14You have said, ‘Serving God is pointless. What did we gain by following his instructions and by walking around sadly before Yahweh, the Lord of Armies?’
15Now we say that arrogant people are happy. Those who do evil succeed; they even test God and get away with it.”
16Then those who respected Yahweh spoke with each other. Yahweh listened and heard them. A book of remembrance was written before him for those who respected Yahweh and honored his name.
17“They will be my people,” says Yahweh, the Lord of Armies, “my special possession on the day I act. I will spare them, just as a father spares his own son who serves him.
18Then you will again see the difference between righteous people and wicked people, between those who serve God and those who do not.