Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 206 · July 25
The Windows of Heaven
“Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”
The people this promise speaks to are a whole nation. The verse just before it says, "Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation." In Hebrew every "you" after that is plural, and the subject is farming. The promised result is good weather and good crops: "he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field." The closing line describes a country: "And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land."
So it is worth saying plainly what the verse leaves out, because getting it wrong costs people money. There is no promise here of a money return to match one person's gift. Nobody in Malachi is making a deposit and drawing interest. Here the windows of heaven open onto fields, and the blessing falls as rain on a land, under a covenant that had set out those terms long before.
What the verse does say is harder than the version printed on an offering envelope. God calls holding back robbery, and He names Himself as the one who is robbed: "Will a man rob God?" The words "prove me now herewith" are startling, because elsewhere the same law forbids putting God to the test: "Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God." When the New Testament talks about giving, it keeps the relationship and drops the formula: "God loveth a cheerful giver." The church it holds up as the example is in Macedonia, where "their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality."
So here is the warning, and it cuts both ways. When a promise made to a nation is sold to one person, it becomes a lever, and the person who ends up under it is nearly always the one who can least afford it. Yet you should not throw this passage away as out of date either. The charge of robbery stands. It was brought against people who still came to the temple and still kept the feasts, while they quietly held back what was never theirs to keep. And the same chapter holds God's open door: "Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts." What He wants most is His people back, and He promises to meet them when they come.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 206 is God So Near (Deuteronomy 4:7).