Note 344 — LECTURE VII.
Reading edition
Professor Kuenen discovers a similar idea in the words placed in the mouth of Jehovah by the prophet Malachi, i. 14: "For I am a great King, and my name is feared among the heathen." "The reference," he says, "is distinctly to the adoration already offered to Yahweh by the people, whenever they serve their own gods with true reverence and honest zeal.(A1) Even in Deuteronomy the adoration of these other gods by the nations is represented as a dispensation of Yahweh. Malachi goes a step further, and accepts their worship as a tribute which in reality falls to Yahweh—to Him, the Only True. Thus the opposition between Yahweh and the other gods, and afterward between the one true God and the imaginary gods, makes room here for the still higher conception that the adoration of Yahweh is the essence and the truth of all religion." "Hibbert Lectures," p. 181.
A1: There is, we believe, not the slightest authority for reading Malachi in this way; any reader of the Old Testament is competent to judge for himself.—Am. Pubs.