They shall not offer wine [offerings] to the LORD, neither shall they be pleasing unto him: their sacrifices [shall be] unto them as the bread of mourners; all that eat thereof shall be polluted: for their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the LORD.
Ver. 4. They shall not offer wine offerings unto the Lord] Non libabunt, multo minus litabunt, they shall not have wherewith to offer sacrifice, when they are in their banishment, Hosea 3:4, much less to serve God with cheerfulness, to exhilarate his heart with their wine offerings, Judges 9:13, to cheer up themselves with the wine and olive offerings, Numbers 15:5, which were symbols and signs of the merit and spirit of Christ (for the ceremonial law was their gospel, it was Christ in figure), and the deprivation of them threatened the deprivation of grace and glory. Now, therefore, since such a sad condition and such sinking of spirits abode upon this people, what reason had they to rejoice with joy as others.
Neither shall they be pleasing, to him] Heb. they shall not be sweet or mingled; for as sweet and sour maketh the best sauce, so the mixture of things of divers qualities maketh the sweetest confections, and most pleasing to the palate; but so shall not be these men's wine offerings to God, if any they should present; but sour and savourless. He is now resolved to take another course with them, to glorify himself in their calamity, and to give unto them another while the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath, Revelation 16:19, that is, to delight as much in their misery as a man would do in drinking of a bowl of generous wine.
Their sacrifices shall be unto them as the bread of mourners] i.e. as funeral feasts (whereof read Jer 16:7-8 Eze 24:17), made ad levandum luctum (αρτος πενθους νεκροδειπνον), eaten in heaviness by those that were polluted by the dead, and therefore altogether unfit for sacrifice; since God loveth a cheerful service, and will not have any of his come off heavily. See Lev 10:19 Deuteronomy 13:7; Deuteronomy 26:14 Malachi 2:13, where those unkind husbands are blamed for causing their wives, when they should have been cheerful in God's service, to cover the Lord's altar with tears, with weeping and with crying out, so that he regarded not the offering any more. So Ezra, Ezra 9:5, that holy man, though till then he sat astonished at the sins of the people, yet he arose from his heaviness at the evening sacrifice; for he knew that even sorrow for sin might be a sinful sorrow, if unseasonable and sullen; for it sours a man's spirit, and makes his services unacceptable to God.
For their bread for their soul shall not come into the house of the Lord] Their bread, that is, their meat offering or other sacrifices Mal 1:7 See Trapp on " Mal 1:7 " for their soul, that is, for themselves (soul is oft put for the whole person), shall not come, rightly and in due manner, unto divine acceptation, "into the house of the Lord": it should not have come into the temple while it stood, and the Levitical service was performed in an orderly way; how much less shall it be accepted now in a strange land, being the bread of mourners. Others by the "bread for their souls" understand their natural and necessary sustenance. He speaks, say they, of that meatoffering, Leviticus 2:5, appointed for a spiritual use, yet called here the bread for their life or livelihood, because God esteemed it none other than common meat. Tarnovius by the house of the Lord here understandeth the Church, as Hosea 8:1; Hos 9:5 2 Timothy 2:20. The door of this house, saith he, is Christ, John 10:9, the doorkeeper the Holy Spirit, ibid. John 10:3, the foundation and corner stone Christ, Ephesians 2:20, the wall is God, Zechariah 2:5, the stewards the ministers, those of the household the saints, 1Co 4:1 Ephesians 2:19 .