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.
Behold, I will corrupt your seed - "corrupt" х go`eer (H1605) 'et (H854) hazera` (H2233)], literally, 'rebuke,' answering to the opposite prophecy of blessing (Malachi 3:11). Instead of rebuking your seed, 'I will rebuke the devourer.' [To rebuke the seed is to forbid its growing. But Buxtorf, Drusius, and Tarnovius, remark that when gaa`ar (H1605) has this sense (rebuke), it is construed with bª-. When it is without bª-, and the accusative follows, its meaning is to corrupt, or destroy. Besides, to 'rebuke the devourer' (Malachi 3:11), is a natural expression, but to 'rebuke the seed' is an unnatural one. I therefore prefer the secondary meaning of the Hebrew verb to the literal one: especially since no bª- follows.] Translate, therefore, as the English version. Of course, in the original there is a play on the double sense of the word, Malachi 3:11, alluding to the same expression, used in a different sense, in Malachi 2:3, in the way of contrast.
Your, х laakem (H3807a)] - literally, 'for you' - i:e., to your hurt.
And spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts - the dung in the maw of the victims sacrificed on the feast days; the maw was the perquisite of the priests (Deuteronomy 18:3) which gives special point to the threat here. You shall get the dung of the maw as your perquisite, instead of the maw.
And one shall take you away with it - i:e., ye shall be taken away with it; it shall cleave to you wherever ye go (Moore). Dung shall be thrown on your faces, and ye shall be taken away (i:e., removed out of the way) as dung would be, dung-begrimed as ye shall be (1 Kings 14:10: cf. Jeremiah 16:4; Jeremiah 22:19)