God charges the generation of Israel in Malachi's day of deserting his service and robbing him of His due. As Matthew Henry says: "They had not only run away from their Master, but had run away with their Master's goods"! The offences reached back a long way. "Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them," verse 7. Keeping the ordinances of God is the sum and substance of our business. How failure and rebellion marked their ways, Jer 7:23-26. Worse still, they defied God's accusation and challenged His charge against them. "But ye said, Wherein shall we return?" verse 7. They considered themselves to be guiltless and in need of no repentance, Luke 16:15; 18:11-12. Guiltless they may have deemed themselves and confident of their spotlessness but the Lord soon presents the evidence of their sin. "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," verses 8-9. Consider this charge of failing to tithe to God.