Covering Violence: How Sin Hides Beneath False Garments

For one covereth violence with his garment.—Malachi 2:16

Sin indulged gathers terrible momentum. The oozing stream from a bursting reservoir becomes a torrent; the torrent becomes a deluge. Lust leads to treachery, treachery to cruelty, cruelty to violence. This is human energy diabolically directed.

The Jews who divorced their wives drove them from their houses with violence, yet appealed to the Mosaic law of divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1) to hide their transgression. They wove truth into a garment of sophistries. Yahweh, however, saw beyond their coverings.

Men employ four methods to conceal evil: First, they pervert Scripture itself, distorting its teachings and wrenching injunctions from context. Second, they offer subterfuges and false explanations, hoping their real characters remain unknown. Third, they shelter themselves behind the vices of the great—the lower classes making garments of upper-class immorality, forgetting individual responsibility. Fourth, they manufacture endless excuses (logismoi—reasonings) for their passions.