Malachi 2:9
Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.
Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base,.... When their city and temple were destroyed by the Romans, and they were carried captive by them, and became a taunt and a proverb in all places where they came:
before all the people; the nations of the world, among whom they were scattered:
according as ye have not kept my ways; neither those which the law directed to, either moral or ceremonial; nor what the Gospel directed to, the ordinances and institutions of Christ, particularly baptism, which the Jews rejected against themselves, Luke 7:30:
but have been partial in the law; in the observance of it, attending to the lesser, and taking no notice of the weightier matters of it, as the Jews are charged by Christ, Matthew 23:23 and in the interpretation of it, restraining its sense only to outward actions, for which they are reproved, Matthew 5:1 or "received faces", or "accepted persons in the law" {x}; in matters of the law they were concerned in, they had respect to the persons of men, by giving the sense of it, and pronouncing judgment, in favour of some, to the prejudice of others, wrongly.
{x} hrwtb Mynp Myavwnw "et accepistis faciem in lege", Pagninus; "assumentes facies", Montanus; "suscipitis faciem", Piscator; "accipitis faciem", Cocceius; "et ferentes faciem in lege", Burkius.