‘This is what Jehovah of armies has said, “Ask, please, the priests as to the law, saying:

Haggai 2:10-12.

4. According to Malachi 2:7, why should those priests have been able to answer that test question, and yet what may have affected them?

⁴ The “law” here spoken of is the divine law given through the prophet Moses and has reference to ceremonial matters and to the priests who would be the ones that carried “holy flesh.” Of course, the priests should have been familiar with the Mosaic law, for it is said by the later prophet Malachi: “The lips of a priest are the ones that should keep knowledge, and the law is what people should seek from his mouth; for he is the messenger of Jehovah of armies.” (Malachi 2:7) Reasonably, then, the priests should have been able to answer correctly the test question put to them by means of Haggai. Or had their familiarity with the law been affected by seventy years of desolation of the land of Judah during which the Jews had been exiles in the land of Babylon, and also by the troublous seventeen years that had elapsed since the return of the faithful remnant to their homeland?