Tithing

Will a man rob God?

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In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we often use or hear Malachi 3:8–11 in lessons and sermons on tithing.

Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation.

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.

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts.

This scripture is used to teach that if we don’t pay our tithing, we’re robbing God.

But there is some context missing when we isolate these 4 verses and proof text them onto our modern day tenets.

You see, the Lord isn’t speaking to the broader people in these verses. In first verse of the previous chapter, we read: “And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.”

At no point in the 16 other verses of chapter 2 or the first 7 verses of chapter 3 does Malachi ever change the person he’s addressing.

These verses, then, seem to be indicating that the Lord is rebuking the priests for robbing the Lord. And with this context, it seems that this verse isn’t saying that the priests are robbing God by not paying their tithing. Rather, it seems as though they’re robbing God by using the tithing for something other than filling the storehouse.

A modern-day parallel would be a church that collects a tithe and then using it for purposes other the Lord’s purposes. For example, maybe they pay their leaders high salaries while not running soup kitchens. Or maybe they invest in profit-generating endeavours instead of setting up homeless shelters.

It would do us all well to keep this scripture in mind, not just as motivation for paying our own tithing but to help us keep our leaders accountable.

Published by

Kim Siever

Queer Mormon poet with radical political views. I have been married 27 years, and we have 6 children. Sunday school president. Served in the Utah Provo Mission.