Malachi Malachi
Malachi
Introduction
At a Glance
Author: Malachi delivered these prophecies, although they may have been published by others
Audience: The Kingdom of Judah (Persian province of Yehud)
Date: A definitive date is not possible here. The likely period of Malachi’s ministry and the recording of his prophecy lies between the building of the Second Temple and the period of the Ezra-Nehemiah reforms—that is, between 515 BC and 430 BC. Given the similarity between Malachi’s concerns and those of Nehemiah, the latter end of the range is the more likely date.
Type of Literature: Prophecy
Major Themes: Doubting God’s love; contempt for the law; corrupt worship; false teaching; violation of the marriage covenant; injustice and oppression; profaning God’s name; the day of Yahweh; seeing Jesus in the book
Outline:
I. Superscription: author and setting — 1:1
II. Doubting God’s love — 1:2–5
III. Dishonoring God’s name — 1:6–2:9
a. The people dishonor God by bringing him defiled, blemished sacrifices — 1:6–14
b. The priests violate God’s covenant through false teaching and a profane lifestyle — 2:1–9
IV. Disobeying God’s covenant — 2:10–16
a. Judah’s culpable ignorance of their guilt in violating the divine covenant — 2:10
b. First illustration: marrying idol-worshiping pagan women — 2:11–12
c. Second illustration: divorce arising from violations of the marriage covenant — 2:13–16
V. Defaming God — 2:17
VI. Defining the day of God’s coming — 3:1–5
a. God will send his messenger to the temple to prepare the way — 3:1
b. God will appear like a refining fire among the Levites, purifying worship — 3:2–4
c. That day will result in judgment on Judah for their civil, spiritual, and economic transgressions — 3:5
VII. Defrauding God — 3:6–12
a. The people rob God by refusing to bring all their tithes and offerings to the temple — 3:6–9
b. God promises to renew the people’s material prosperity if they stop defrauding him — 3:10–12
VIII. Discerning the wicked and the righteous — 3:13–18
a. The wicked reveal themselves as such by declaring that serving God is futile — 3:13–15
b. The righteous reveal themselves as such by devoutly fearing Yahweh — 3:16–18
IX. Dual destinies on the day of Yahweh — 4:1–6
a. The day of Yahweh will result in the fiery destruction of the wicked — 4:1
b. The day of Yahweh will result in healing and salvation for the righteous — 4:2–3
c. God promises to send “Elijah” the prophet # This “Elijah” is revealed in the Gospels as John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the public ministry of Jesus Christ (Matt. 11:13–14; 17:11–13; Mark 9:12–13; Luke 1:17). as a forerunner to prepare the people for his coming — 4:4–6
About the Book of Malachi
The sun was about to go down on one of the world’s greatest spiritual/literary traditions, Israelite prophecy. Nothing quite like it exists in any of humankind’s written history, and its last embers, which had once reached wildfire levels with Jeremiah and Amos, were growing cold and dark. Prophecy, far from mere “fortune telling,” was a mighty counterweight to the priestly and royal-military powers of the day. The prophets literally spoke for God and could shake any city or nation to its very foundations.
As the prophetic era was eclipsing, the season of scholars, sages, and rabbis emerged to replace the prophets. Footnoters and commentators diluted and obscured the passion of the prophets who spoke the words of Yahweh. A culture of scholastic legalism started taking shape as the prophets went silent for centuries. Malachi was the last in the classical prophetic line, and he tied a bow on the Torah (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah) in Malachi 4:4–5. It is no accident that Jesus met with these two pillars of the Hebrew Bible at his transfiguration.
Malachi was also the last book of the Bible written from start to finish in the earthy and potent Hebrew language. The children of Israel were adopting the languages of their conquerors, Aramaic and eventually Greek. Hebrew, the magnificent and emotionally soaring tongue of King David and the Psalms, was about to go nearly extinct. It was limited mostly to use in synagogues only to be reawakened as the national language of the modern state of Israel over two millennia later.
The book of Malachi is shaped by a series of dialogues, or disputes, between the prophet and those he was addressing. It is not clear whether these dialogues took place or whether they are just a common literary device known as prosopopoeia, used to give a framework to the book. Prosopopoeia is “a figure of speech in which an imaginary or absent person is represented as speaking or acting.” # Merriam-Webster, s.v. “prosopopoeia,” accessed June 2, 2023, www.merriam-webster.com. In Malachi, these “dialogues” begin in 1:2, with God affirming his love for his people: “I have always loved you.” Then the nation of Judah challenged that declaration by asking: “How have you shown us your love?” This is then followed by a detailed divine response. The remaining “dialogues” all begin with God leveling charges of covenant violations against his people, followed by the people questioning those accusations, asking if they’ve really done such things (1:6–7; 2:17; 3:8; 3:13). And each of these is followed by God’s detailed response. Although we do not know for certain whether the responses of God’s people in these various contexts were actual or imagined, we must not underplay the reality of their sinful mindset. The disputations read like an FAQ table, listing the main controversies of Malachi’s day.
Much like the sages and teachers who would replace Malachi and the prophets, Malachi taught in catechetical style. The root word of catechesis is “echo,” and it’s a method that Martin Luther (AD 1500s) used in his Small Catechism. Question and answer. Echo and repeat.
Malachi 3:4–4:6 forms the basis for the modern Jewish liturgy of Shabbat Ha-Gadol (Big Sabbath) right before the Passover, perhaps because of its reference to Elijah, whose empty chair at the Seder meal evokes hope for a blessed future. Note that Jewish Bibles and some modern Christian Bibles number verses in Malachi differently from most English-language Bibles. It’s the same content but with different numerical designations.
Malachi seems to fit, in terms of a timeline, between the reforms of Josiah and the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. It is likely that he was very familiar with the same issues as Nehemiah, and perhaps Malachi’s fiery prophecies served to reinforce the concerns of the rebuilder of the city of Jerusalem.
With a dramatic flair, Malachi, in the classic prophetic tradition, brought deep conviction to his rebuke. This book is a literary masterpiece meant to stir the hearts of God’s people and evoke a response.
Purpose
The priceless repository of the canonical prophetic writings of Holy Scripture was forged in countless seasons of great pressure and daunting challenges. Malachi faced these threats with defiance and faith. His general overarching purpose was twofold: First, he determined to record the dire threats to the spiritual vitality of the people of Judah and Jerusalem, warning them that if they refused to mend their ways, catastrophic divine judgment would follow. Second, at the same time as he was issuing these warnings, Malachi also had a clear intention to offer to the postexilic community of God’s people the hope of a blessed future in which God would purify and refine them, renewing and restoring them to a rightly ordered and God-honoring system of worship. They would then subsequently live their lives in an attitude of reverential awe toward their Lord, honoring his name in everything they did. They would also be transformed into a people renowned for their obedience to the divine law. The vehicle that would encapsulate this twofold purpose was the coming day of Yahweh.
Several generations had passed since the Israelite exiles started returning from captivity in Mesopotamia (Babylon and Persia). The mighty kingdom of David and Solomon, with its gleaming temple, had not yet been fully restored as they had hoped. Governors reporting to Persia were in charge. Religious and spiritual life was at a low ebb. The priests were discouraged and corrupt. Israel had been reduced to a struggling little nation, desperately trying to rebuild. People were neglecting their tithes, which were to provide resources for God’s house. “It’s not like it used to be, that’s for sure,” was the going sentiment of Malachi’s times. The hope for a renewed Davidic kingdom had not come to pass, and the newly rebuilt Second Temple in Jerusalem was a shadow of what Solomon’s First Temple had been.
The cultural and spiritual application of the message and purpose of Malachi—given to the postexilic Israelites in the 400s BC—cannot be simplistically and literally equated with contemporary twenty-first century AD new covenant experiences. However, the underlying spiritual principles articulated by Malachi are timeless.
In many ways, the way the people of God felt then is much like how many of us feel about the current condition of church life in Western Europe and North America. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our worship buildings are no longer filled on Sundays, and we may be discouraged when we see old photos of huge post-WWII youth groups and thousands getting baptized in the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Not a few modern churches and key leaders have been rocked by scandals. Churches are hurting for money as the faithful, generous, older believers go to receive their reward. Many Christians are more passionate about partisan political issues than biblical issues and have lost any sense of urgency for reaching the lost. It’s not like it used to be, that’s for sure. Like the ancient Israelites in Malachi’s day, a significant number of new covenant believers have lost sight of the importance of living lives that are consistent with divinely revealed moral, cultural, and spiritual values. The parallels are stark. Skepticism and indifference prevailed in Malachi’s time, and both are very present in our culture today. Thus, reading Malachi seems strangely relevant to us.
Malachi covered an amazing number of big-ticket social issues in a very short book. He was the polar opposite of a one-theme prophet. He went after the whole laundry list of problems in Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside and did not hesitate to use language that pierces the heart.
Malachi intended for his blaring claxon to sound the alarm and wake us up, straighten us out, and fill us with the ultimate hope and promise of God’s future. This is the life message of the Israelite prophetic tradition. Israelite prophecy was a relay race stretching back to the earliest times, and Malachi took the baton to run the anchor leg.
Author and Audience
Malachi was the last of the Old Testament prophets but wrote nothing about himself. He gave us nothing about his ancestry, his call, or his personal life. But such is the way of a messenger. It is the message, not the messenger, that we are supposed to remember. In fact, the name Malachi means “my messenger” (3:1; or “my angel,” as the word for “angel” also means “messenger”). This possible “pen name” has caused some scholars to believe that he was writing as an anonymous prophet or, according to some Talmud and Targum writings, that the author of Malachi was Ezra, the scribe. # For a masterful overview of the authorship of Malachi and varying views, see Joyce Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981), 225–28. Christian scholars are split on what the label Malachi means (much as they are with Luke’s Theophilus, which could either be a proper name or a reference to an unnamed “lover of God” as the Greek word literally denotes). However, even the most critical contemporary Jewish commentators tend to assume that Malachi was the prophet’s given name.
Unlike most prophets, who spread their displeasure around to all the nations of the region, Malachi reserved his ammunition for Israel and was not afraid to use it. Israel was no longer an independent nation with its own king. The nation was now known as Yehud, a province of the Persian Empire ruled by a governor. Estimates of the population are shockingly low, with a few thousand living in Yehud’s capital city of Jerusalem and perhaps twenty thousand in the surrounding countryside.
The temple had been rebuilt, but it didn’t impress anyone. People had stopped providing offerings for the work of the temple, and the priests, under financial stress, resorted to corruption and apathy. The prevailing thought among the priests was, “You pretend to pay us, and we will pretend to work.” Secular thinking was taking root: “If God were real, things would be better.” This led to a weakening of holy fear and respect for God, and people started offering their lame animals and discard produce for sacrifice at the temple, much like the stuff we would donate to a thrift shop or just toss in a dumpster.
This was the world in which Malachi lived, and such was the malaise that he felt led by God to confront. The most challenging assertion of the local people at the time was that God did not love them. And that’s where Malachi opened his book.
Major Themes
Doubting God’s Love. The book of Malachi opens with this theme, and in one sense, Judah’s doubting of God’s love may be said to pervade the entire prophecy. God began by declaring that he had loved his people. But then, in the first of several exchanges that are either real or imagined, # See the discussion about the dialogue format in About the Book of Malachi. the postexilic remnant community of Judah questioned that declaration by asking, “How have you shown us your love?” (1:2). The clear implication is that they genuinely doubted that God’s love for them was real. This had, and will have, disastrous consequences—potential and actual—for their ongoing relationship with Yahweh. These consequences will be further examined in the discussion of the themes that follow.
Contempt for the Law. This is a pillar of the book that has several subthemes, all of which are of equal significance and discussed over the next four Major Themes. In reality, the sinful behaviors of corrupt worship, false teaching, violation of the marriage covenant, and injustice and oppression are the outward workings of an inner utter contempt for the law of God that banned such actions and attitudes. Each of these five behaviors shatters a key element of the law. It may be argued that such contempt was at least in part triggered by a sense of disillusionment and disappointment in the hearts and minds of the remnant community. After returning from captivity perhaps as much as one hundred years prior to the prophetic ministry of Malachi, the elation of that release had all but worn off, as the promised revival of the kingdom of Israel and Judah had not yet materialized. Furthermore, the size of their territory and population was miniscule compared to the nation’s former glory days. The people had lost heart and were genuinely wondering if God had abandoned them. Such disappointment does not excuse their contempt for the law, although it may help to explain it. In essence, the Judean community had dropped their bundle and lost all interest in maintaining obedience to God’s covenant statutes. Such a stance would draw down dire warnings and judgment from God via his servant-prophet Malachi.
Corrupt Worship. The first indication of the community’s contempt for the law centered on its corrupted worship, which expressed itself in three areas. The first of these was the people’s presentation of defiled offerings (1:6–14)—food that had been desecrated by priests who had physical defects or disease. Consequently, they were ceremonially unclean and therefore prohibited from accepting food and offering it to Yahweh at the altar (Lev. 21:8, 21). Their corrupt worship also included the offering of diseased animals, which was also forbidden under the law (see Deut. 15:21). Such violations reflected a couldn’t-care-less attitude, and that indifference revealed, at its heart, contempt for the worship of Yahweh.
The second expression of the people’s contempt for the practice of God-honoring worship was their withholding of tithes, a mandatory, nonnegotiable element of Israelite law. Failing to tithe was tantamount to robbing God (Mal. 3:7–9), who had designed the tithe to provide tangible, material support for the priests and Levites who served him in the temple. Again, this behavior illustrates the people’s utter disregard for the sacred worship of Yahweh.
The final expression of the nation’s contempt for divinely mandated worship is found in the brief mention of sorcery in 3:5. Participating in sorcery would certainly bring God’s punishment. Sorcery was, and still is, forbidden because it is an illegitimate, demonic attempt to open a door, totally independent of God, to the spirit world and access secret knowledge and skills. Yahweh alone is the sole, legitimate source of spiritual knowledge, and any attempt to bypass him in this way is an act of blasphemy. Once again, the Israelite people demonstrated their contemptible disregard for the God-ordained sanctity of worship by participating in a practice that attempted to sideline God, and they did this without any trace of godly fear, that awesome reverence that is his due whenever his people step into his presence to worship him.
False Teaching. We see the second example of the people’s contempt for God’s law in the behavior of the priesthood. Responsibility for instructing the Israelite people accurately and appropriately in the full dictates of the law lay wholly with the priests and Levites. They are referred to in Malachi, in an ideal sense, as the messengers of Yahweh, who rules over all (2:7). However, in 2:1–9, God condemned the priests for totally failing to carry out the solemn responsibility of teaching the people the sacred laws and statutes of the covenant. Instead of building the people up in their faith and knowledge of Yahweh, the priests turned their backs on these truths and perpetrated false teaching—their own ideas, in effect—and caused many to stumble in their relationship with God. The root cause of this contemptible violation of the Levitical covenant was their callous indifference to the sanctity of God’s law. It simply did not matter to them.
Violation of the Marriage Covenant. The third illustration of the people’s contempt for the law lay in their toleration and wholesale acceptance of marriage with idol-worshiping pagan women. Malachi rightly voiced God’s scathing disapproval of this blatant disregard for the sacred institution of the marriage covenant.
To begin with, Deuteronomy 24:1–4 gives a lot of latitude for divorce, allowing a man to issue a certificate of divorce to his wife after he had found something indecent about her. However, there is a caveat to this latitude, which Jesus made clear during his teaching ministry. Malachi also took a much more restrictive view to the Deuteronomic statute and urged men to stay with the wives of their youth. Theologians and Bible scholars have speculated that the men of Jerusalem were marrying young to Jewish women but that as the men grew older, they were then adding to their harem women from other cultures with other gods, often discarding their first wives in the process. This is exactly what got King Solomon into trouble. For this tiny, rebuilding nation to survive, the men of Israel would have to avoid such marriages and the resulting assimilation of the Jews into the much larger surrounding empires and kingdoms.
Without stricter rules, the Jews would dissolve into the whirlpool of ancient Near Eastern nations, and their heritage and the revelations God made through them would be lost. Thus, the covenant with Yahweh, the superordinate principle that defined the people of Israel, had to be cleansed from outside influences, renewed, and reformed on a regular basis. Malachi found himself in a low ebb between the earlier covenant reforms of Josiah and those of Ezra and Nehemiah. He had an uphill struggle in front of him to convince the people that their decision—whether or not to be faithful to the covenant—meant life or death for their national identity. Because of Malachi and others, Second Temple Judaism not only survived but flourished.
All three Synoptic Gospels include Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce: In Matthew 5:31–32, Jesus cited the Mosaic teaching on the subject but then added his own authoritative “codicil” to replace that provision by stating that the only grounds for divorce were marital unfaithfulness. Then in Matthew 19:7–9, Jesus explained that Moses had allowed for divorce as a concession to the people’s hardness of heart, and then he added that God originally designed marriage as a lifelong covenant bond between a man and a woman and that only marital infidelity could break that bond while both husband and wife were alive. There is no doubt that Jesus would have upheld Malachi’s passionate defense of the sanctity of the marriage covenant, a position made abundantly clear in Malachi 2:13–16. The people’s obvious abandonment of this covenant bond through their unquestioning acceptance of marriage with pagan women is yet another reflection of their contempt for God’s sacred law.
Injustice and Oppression. The fourth illustration of the people’s contempt for God’s law is the brief but powerful indictment in 3:5. Here the prophet condemned the people for their flagrant spiritual, moral, social, and economic abuses. In particular, the latter two offenses relate to defrauding workers of their wages, oppressing widows and orphans, and denying justice to vulnerable aliens (or immigrants) who were sheltering in their land. These offenses demonstrate the people’s brutality, lack of compassion, and disregard for justice and righteousness. Maintaining the two latter virtues, justice and righteousness, and shunning oppression of any kind were central elements in the ethos of the law. The postexilic community’s rank dismissal of these statutes yet again highlights their unmitigated contempt for the law of God.
Profaning God’s Name. The sinful action of profaning God stems from the same place as contempt for the divine law. To profane someone is to treat that person as if they are not worthy of respect. The remnant community of Judah and Jerusalem had reached the point where they no longer had respect for God or his character. In this context, the people of God no longer regarded him as holy or righteous and therefore attributed to him actions and attitudes characteristic of fallible human beings.
In 2:17, God accused the people of wearying him with their words, including their claim that those who were evil were seen as good in the eyes of God and alleging that God had no interest in maintaining justice. Similarly, in 3:13–15, the people claimed that serving God was a waste of time, that evildoers prospered, and that those who challenged God with their wrongdoing escaped punishment. In short, the action of profaning God attempted to strip him of his deity and his moral perfections and treated his holy name with contempt.
The Day of Yahweh. The Hebrew word yom, which we translate as “day,” is richly symbolic and complex when associated with the person of Yahweh and not just a twenty-four-hour chronometer measurement. The prophets make frequent use of the phrase the day of Yahweh (or the day of the Lord), and it always reflects a manifestation of divine judgment and blessing. It is a prophetic motif with many levels of fulfillment throughout the prophetic canon of Scripture. This warning announces bad news for the bad people, when the cosmic checkbook will be balanced and justice will be done. On the other hand, such a day is good news for the faithful remnant, for they shall inherit all the promises of God.
One can misapply the message of the “day of Yahweh” by overspeculating about the exact time this will occur. Even Jesus warned against this. However, what we can confidently affirm is that the day of Yahweh came to its first climactic fulfillment in the earthly ministry of Jesus the Messiah. The final words of Malachi’s prophecy (4:1–6) anticipated this fulfillment when God announced via his prophet that he would send “the prophet Elijah” to prepare the way for his coming. The second, and absolute, fulfillment of this day is still to come: the consummation of divine judgment in the manifestation of the new heavens and the new earth at the end of time, when Jesus returns. Meanwhile, the whole idea is that we live our lives today, trusting that God’s justice will be done and that he will keep his promises to his faithful followers. In Malachi’s time, this trust was eroding, and the survival of what was left of Israel was hanging in the balance because of it.
Seeing Jesus in the Book. The key to understanding where the prophetic anticipation of the coming of Jesus the Messiah lies in the book of Malachi is in the motif of the day of Yahweh. This has already been mentioned in the preceding discussion of that theme. The complexity of this motif has also been noted. There is no doubt that the day of Yahweh reached a climactic fulfillment in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His death on the cross signaled the final doom of Satan and his followers, when sin and death were destroyed in principle. In addition, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, along with his resurrection from the dead, accomplished the total forgiveness of sin and the eternal salvation of all those who put their faith and trust in him as their Savior and Lord. And there is still the consummate climax of the day of Yahweh to come, the ushering in of the eternal kingdom of heaven with God on the throne, the risen Lamb of God beside him, and all wrongs righted.
All this is implicit not only in the final chapter of Malachi’s prophecy (4:1–6) but also in those passages that speak of the coming renewal and restoration of the people of God, after they have been purified and refined through God’s fiery judgment (see 1:11; 3:1–4, 10–12, 16–18).
Malachi
The Messenger of Yah
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Malachi Malachi: TPT
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The Passion Translation ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಇನ್ನಷ್ಟು ತಿಳಿಯಿರಿMalachi Malachi
Malachi
Introduction
At a Glance
Author: Malachi delivered these prophecies, although they may have been published by others
Audience: The Kingdom of Judah (Persian province of Yehud)
Date: A definitive date is not possible here. The likely period of Malachi’s ministry and the recording of his prophecy lies between the building of the Second Temple and the period of the Ezra-Nehemiah reforms—that is, between 515 BC and 430 BC. Given the similarity between Malachi’s concerns and those of Nehemiah, the latter end of the range is the more likely date.
Type of Literature: Prophecy
Major Themes: Doubting God’s love; contempt for the law; corrupt worship; false teaching; violation of the marriage covenant; injustice and oppression; profaning God’s name; the day of Yahweh; seeing Jesus in the book
Outline:
I. Superscription: author and setting — 1:1
II. Doubting God’s love — 1:2–5
III. Dishonoring God’s name — 1:6–2:9
a. The people dishonor God by bringing him defiled, blemished sacrifices — 1:6–14
b. The priests violate God’s covenant through false teaching and a profane lifestyle — 2:1–9
IV. Disobeying God’s covenant — 2:10–16
a. Judah’s culpable ignorance of their guilt in violating the divine covenant — 2:10
b. First illustration: marrying idol-worshiping pagan women — 2:11–12
c. Second illustration: divorce arising from violations of the marriage covenant — 2:13–16
V. Defaming God — 2:17
VI. Defining the day of God’s coming — 3:1–5
a. God will send his messenger to the temple to prepare the way — 3:1
b. God will appear like a refining fire among the Levites, purifying worship — 3:2–4
c. That day will result in judgment on Judah for their civil, spiritual, and economic transgressions — 3:5
VII. Defrauding God — 3:6–12
a. The people rob God by refusing to bring all their tithes and offerings to the temple — 3:6–9
b. God promises to renew the people’s material prosperity if they stop defrauding him — 3:10–12
VIII. Discerning the wicked and the righteous — 3:13–18
a. The wicked reveal themselves as such by declaring that serving God is futile — 3:13–15
b. The righteous reveal themselves as such by devoutly fearing Yahweh — 3:16–18
IX. Dual destinies on the day of Yahweh — 4:1–6
a. The day of Yahweh will result in the fiery destruction of the wicked — 4:1
b. The day of Yahweh will result in healing and salvation for the righteous — 4:2–3
c. God promises to send “Elijah” the prophet # This “Elijah” is revealed in the Gospels as John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the public ministry of Jesus Christ (Matt. 11:13–14; 17:11–13; Mark 9:12–13; Luke 1:17). as a forerunner to prepare the people for his coming — 4:4–6
About the Book of Malachi
The sun was about to go down on one of the world’s greatest spiritual/literary traditions, Israelite prophecy. Nothing quite like it exists in any of humankind’s written history, and its last embers, which had once reached wildfire levels with Jeremiah and Amos, were growing cold and dark. Prophecy, far from mere “fortune telling,” was a mighty counterweight to the priestly and royal-military powers of the day. The prophets literally spoke for God and could shake any city or nation to its very foundations.
As the prophetic era was eclipsing, the season of scholars, sages, and rabbis emerged to replace the prophets. Footnoters and commentators diluted and obscured the passion of the prophets who spoke the words of Yahweh. A culture of scholastic legalism started taking shape as the prophets went silent for centuries. Malachi was the last in the classical prophetic line, and he tied a bow on the Torah (Moses) and the prophets (Elijah) in Malachi 4:4–5. It is no accident that Jesus met with these two pillars of the Hebrew Bible at his transfiguration.
Malachi was also the last book of the Bible written from start to finish in the earthy and potent Hebrew language. The children of Israel were adopting the languages of their conquerors, Aramaic and eventually Greek. Hebrew, the magnificent and emotionally soaring tongue of King David and the Psalms, was about to go nearly extinct. It was limited mostly to use in synagogues only to be reawakened as the national language of the modern state of Israel over two millennia later.
The book of Malachi is shaped by a series of dialogues, or disputes, between the prophet and those he was addressing. It is not clear whether these dialogues took place or whether they are just a common literary device known as prosopopoeia, used to give a framework to the book. Prosopopoeia is “a figure of speech in which an imaginary or absent person is represented as speaking or acting.” # Merriam-Webster, s.v. “prosopopoeia,” accessed June 2, 2023, www.merriam-webster.com. In Malachi, these “dialogues” begin in 1:2, with God affirming his love for his people: “I have always loved you.” Then the nation of Judah challenged that declaration by asking: “How have you shown us your love?” This is then followed by a detailed divine response. The remaining “dialogues” all begin with God leveling charges of covenant violations against his people, followed by the people questioning those accusations, asking if they’ve really done such things (1:6–7; 2:17; 3:8; 3:13). And each of these is followed by God’s detailed response. Although we do not know for certain whether the responses of God’s people in these various contexts were actual or imagined, we must not underplay the reality of their sinful mindset. The disputations read like an FAQ table, listing the main controversies of Malachi’s day.
Much like the sages and teachers who would replace Malachi and the prophets, Malachi taught in catechetical style. The root word of catechesis is “echo,” and it’s a method that Martin Luther (AD 1500s) used in his Small Catechism. Question and answer. Echo and repeat.
Malachi 3:4–4:6 forms the basis for the modern Jewish liturgy of Shabbat Ha-Gadol (Big Sabbath) right before the Passover, perhaps because of its reference to Elijah, whose empty chair at the Seder meal evokes hope for a blessed future. Note that Jewish Bibles and some modern Christian Bibles number verses in Malachi differently from most English-language Bibles. It’s the same content but with different numerical designations.
Malachi seems to fit, in terms of a timeline, between the reforms of Josiah and the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. It is likely that he was very familiar with the same issues as Nehemiah, and perhaps Malachi’s fiery prophecies served to reinforce the concerns of the rebuilder of the city of Jerusalem.
With a dramatic flair, Malachi, in the classic prophetic tradition, brought deep conviction to his rebuke. This book is a literary masterpiece meant to stir the hearts of God’s people and evoke a response.
Purpose
The priceless repository of the canonical prophetic writings of Holy Scripture was forged in countless seasons of great pressure and daunting challenges. Malachi faced these threats with defiance and faith. His general overarching purpose was twofold: First, he determined to record the dire threats to the spiritual vitality of the people of Judah and Jerusalem, warning them that if they refused to mend their ways, catastrophic divine judgment would follow. Second, at the same time as he was issuing these warnings, Malachi also had a clear intention to offer to the postexilic community of God’s people the hope of a blessed future in which God would purify and refine them, renewing and restoring them to a rightly ordered and God-honoring system of worship. They would then subsequently live their lives in an attitude of reverential awe toward their Lord, honoring his name in everything they did. They would also be transformed into a people renowned for their obedience to the divine law. The vehicle that would encapsulate this twofold purpose was the coming day of Yahweh.
Several generations had passed since the Israelite exiles started returning from captivity in Mesopotamia (Babylon and Persia). The mighty kingdom of David and Solomon, with its gleaming temple, had not yet been fully restored as they had hoped. Governors reporting to Persia were in charge. Religious and spiritual life was at a low ebb. The priests were discouraged and corrupt. Israel had been reduced to a struggling little nation, desperately trying to rebuild. People were neglecting their tithes, which were to provide resources for God’s house. “It’s not like it used to be, that’s for sure,” was the going sentiment of Malachi’s times. The hope for a renewed Davidic kingdom had not come to pass, and the newly rebuilt Second Temple in Jerusalem was a shadow of what Solomon’s First Temple had been.
The cultural and spiritual application of the message and purpose of Malachi—given to the postexilic Israelites in the 400s BC—cannot be simplistically and literally equated with contemporary twenty-first century AD new covenant experiences. However, the underlying spiritual principles articulated by Malachi are timeless.
In many ways, the way the people of God felt then is much like how many of us feel about the current condition of church life in Western Europe and North America. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our worship buildings are no longer filled on Sundays, and we may be discouraged when we see old photos of huge post-WWII youth groups and thousands getting baptized in the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Not a few modern churches and key leaders have been rocked by scandals. Churches are hurting for money as the faithful, generous, older believers go to receive their reward. Many Christians are more passionate about partisan political issues than biblical issues and have lost any sense of urgency for reaching the lost. It’s not like it used to be, that’s for sure. Like the ancient Israelites in Malachi’s day, a significant number of new covenant believers have lost sight of the importance of living lives that are consistent with divinely revealed moral, cultural, and spiritual values. The parallels are stark. Skepticism and indifference prevailed in Malachi’s time, and both are very present in our culture today. Thus, reading Malachi seems strangely relevant to us.
Malachi covered an amazing number of big-ticket social issues in a very short book. He was the polar opposite of a one-theme prophet. He went after the whole laundry list of problems in Jerusalem and the surrounding countryside and did not hesitate to use language that pierces the heart.
Malachi intended for his blaring claxon to sound the alarm and wake us up, straighten us out, and fill us with the ultimate hope and promise of God’s future. This is the life message of the Israelite prophetic tradition. Israelite prophecy was a relay race stretching back to the earliest times, and Malachi took the baton to run the anchor leg.
Author and Audience
Malachi was the last of the Old Testament prophets but wrote nothing about himself. He gave us nothing about his ancestry, his call, or his personal life. But such is the way of a messenger. It is the message, not the messenger, that we are supposed to remember. In fact, the name Malachi means “my messenger” (3:1; or “my angel,” as the word for “angel” also means “messenger”). This possible “pen name” has caused some scholars to believe that he was writing as an anonymous prophet or, according to some Talmud and Targum writings, that the author of Malachi was Ezra, the scribe. # For a masterful overview of the authorship of Malachi and varying views, see Joyce Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1981), 225–28. Christian scholars are split on what the label Malachi means (much as they are with Luke’s Theophilus, which could either be a proper name or a reference to an unnamed “lover of God” as the Greek word literally denotes). However, even the most critical contemporary Jewish commentators tend to assume that Malachi was the prophet’s given name.
Unlike most prophets, who spread their displeasure around to all the nations of the region, Malachi reserved his ammunition for Israel and was not afraid to use it. Israel was no longer an independent nation with its own king. The nation was now known as Yehud, a province of the Persian Empire ruled by a governor. Estimates of the population are shockingly low, with a few thousand living in Yehud’s capital city of Jerusalem and perhaps twenty thousand in the surrounding countryside.
The temple had been rebuilt, but it didn’t impress anyone. People had stopped providing offerings for the work of the temple, and the priests, under financial stress, resorted to corruption and apathy. The prevailing thought among the priests was, “You pretend to pay us, and we will pretend to work.” Secular thinking was taking root: “If God were real, things would be better.” This led to a weakening of holy fear and respect for God, and people started offering their lame animals and discard produce for sacrifice at the temple, much like the stuff we would donate to a thrift shop or just toss in a dumpster.
This was the world in which Malachi lived, and such was the malaise that he felt led by God to confront. The most challenging assertion of the local people at the time was that God did not love them. And that’s where Malachi opened his book.
Major Themes
Doubting God’s Love. The book of Malachi opens with this theme, and in one sense, Judah’s doubting of God’s love may be said to pervade the entire prophecy. God began by declaring that he had loved his people. But then, in the first of several exchanges that are either real or imagined, # See the discussion about the dialogue format in About the Book of Malachi. the postexilic remnant community of Judah questioned that declaration by asking, “How have you shown us your love?” (1:2). The clear implication is that they genuinely doubted that God’s love for them was real. This had, and will have, disastrous consequences—potential and actual—for their ongoing relationship with Yahweh. These consequences will be further examined in the discussion of the themes that follow.
Contempt for the Law. This is a pillar of the book that has several subthemes, all of which are of equal significance and discussed over the next four Major Themes. In reality, the sinful behaviors of corrupt worship, false teaching, violation of the marriage covenant, and injustice and oppression are the outward workings of an inner utter contempt for the law of God that banned such actions and attitudes. Each of these five behaviors shatters a key element of the law. It may be argued that such contempt was at least in part triggered by a sense of disillusionment and disappointment in the hearts and minds of the remnant community. After returning from captivity perhaps as much as one hundred years prior to the prophetic ministry of Malachi, the elation of that release had all but worn off, as the promised revival of the kingdom of Israel and Judah had not yet materialized. Furthermore, the size of their territory and population was miniscule compared to the nation’s former glory days. The people had lost heart and were genuinely wondering if God had abandoned them. Such disappointment does not excuse their contempt for the law, although it may help to explain it. In essence, the Judean community had dropped their bundle and lost all interest in maintaining obedience to God’s covenant statutes. Such a stance would draw down dire warnings and judgment from God via his servant-prophet Malachi.
Corrupt Worship. The first indication of the community’s contempt for the law centered on its corrupted worship, which expressed itself in three areas. The first of these was the people’s presentation of defiled offerings (1:6–14)—food that had been desecrated by priests who had physical defects or disease. Consequently, they were ceremonially unclean and therefore prohibited from accepting food and offering it to Yahweh at the altar (Lev. 21:8, 21). Their corrupt worship also included the offering of diseased animals, which was also forbidden under the law (see Deut. 15:21). Such violations reflected a couldn’t-care-less attitude, and that indifference revealed, at its heart, contempt for the worship of Yahweh.
The second expression of the people’s contempt for the practice of God-honoring worship was their withholding of tithes, a mandatory, nonnegotiable element of Israelite law. Failing to tithe was tantamount to robbing God (Mal. 3:7–9), who had designed the tithe to provide tangible, material support for the priests and Levites who served him in the temple. Again, this behavior illustrates the people’s utter disregard for the sacred worship of Yahweh.
The final expression of the nation’s contempt for divinely mandated worship is found in the brief mention of sorcery in 3:5. Participating in sorcery would certainly bring God’s punishment. Sorcery was, and still is, forbidden because it is an illegitimate, demonic attempt to open a door, totally independent of God, to the spirit world and access secret knowledge and skills. Yahweh alone is the sole, legitimate source of spiritual knowledge, and any attempt to bypass him in this way is an act of blasphemy. Once again, the Israelite people demonstrated their contemptible disregard for the God-ordained sanctity of worship by participating in a practice that attempted to sideline God, and they did this without any trace of godly fear, that awesome reverence that is his due whenever his people step into his presence to worship him.
False Teaching. We see the second example of the people’s contempt for God’s law in the behavior of the priesthood. Responsibility for instructing the Israelite people accurately and appropriately in the full dictates of the law lay wholly with the priests and Levites. They are referred to in Malachi, in an ideal sense, as the messengers of Yahweh, who rules over all (2:7). However, in 2:1–9, God condemned the priests for totally failing to carry out the solemn responsibility of teaching the people the sacred laws and statutes of the covenant. Instead of building the people up in their faith and knowledge of Yahweh, the priests turned their backs on these truths and perpetrated false teaching—their own ideas, in effect—and caused many to stumble in their relationship with God. The root cause of this contemptible violation of the Levitical covenant was their callous indifference to the sanctity of God’s law. It simply did not matter to them.
Violation of the Marriage Covenant. The third illustration of the people’s contempt for the law lay in their toleration and wholesale acceptance of marriage with idol-worshiping pagan women. Malachi rightly voiced God’s scathing disapproval of this blatant disregard for the sacred institution of the marriage covenant.
To begin with, Deuteronomy 24:1–4 gives a lot of latitude for divorce, allowing a man to issue a certificate of divorce to his wife after he had found something indecent about her. However, there is a caveat to this latitude, which Jesus made clear during his teaching ministry. Malachi also took a much more restrictive view to the Deuteronomic statute and urged men to stay with the wives of their youth. Theologians and Bible scholars have speculated that the men of Jerusalem were marrying young to Jewish women but that as the men grew older, they were then adding to their harem women from other cultures with other gods, often discarding their first wives in the process. This is exactly what got King Solomon into trouble. For this tiny, rebuilding nation to survive, the men of Israel would have to avoid such marriages and the resulting assimilation of the Jews into the much larger surrounding empires and kingdoms.
Without stricter rules, the Jews would dissolve into the whirlpool of ancient Near Eastern nations, and their heritage and the revelations God made through them would be lost. Thus, the covenant with Yahweh, the superordinate principle that defined the people of Israel, had to be cleansed from outside influences, renewed, and reformed on a regular basis. Malachi found himself in a low ebb between the earlier covenant reforms of Josiah and those of Ezra and Nehemiah. He had an uphill struggle in front of him to convince the people that their decision—whether or not to be faithful to the covenant—meant life or death for their national identity. Because of Malachi and others, Second Temple Judaism not only survived but flourished.
All three Synoptic Gospels include Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce: In Matthew 5:31–32, Jesus cited the Mosaic teaching on the subject but then added his own authoritative “codicil” to replace that provision by stating that the only grounds for divorce were marital unfaithfulness. Then in Matthew 19:7–9, Jesus explained that Moses had allowed for divorce as a concession to the people’s hardness of heart, and then he added that God originally designed marriage as a lifelong covenant bond between a man and a woman and that only marital infidelity could break that bond while both husband and wife were alive. There is no doubt that Jesus would have upheld Malachi’s passionate defense of the sanctity of the marriage covenant, a position made abundantly clear in Malachi 2:13–16. The people’s obvious abandonment of this covenant bond through their unquestioning acceptance of marriage with pagan women is yet another reflection of their contempt for God’s sacred law.
Injustice and Oppression. The fourth illustration of the people’s contempt for God’s law is the brief but powerful indictment in 3:5. Here the prophet condemned the people for their flagrant spiritual, moral, social, and economic abuses. In particular, the latter two offenses relate to defrauding workers of their wages, oppressing widows and orphans, and denying justice to vulnerable aliens (or immigrants) who were sheltering in their land. These offenses demonstrate the people’s brutality, lack of compassion, and disregard for justice and righteousness. Maintaining the two latter virtues, justice and righteousness, and shunning oppression of any kind were central elements in the ethos of the law. The postexilic community’s rank dismissal of these statutes yet again highlights their unmitigated contempt for the law of God.
Profaning God’s Name. The sinful action of profaning God stems from the same place as contempt for the divine law. To profane someone is to treat that person as if they are not worthy of respect. The remnant community of Judah and Jerusalem had reached the point where they no longer had respect for God or his character. In this context, the people of God no longer regarded him as holy or righteous and therefore attributed to him actions and attitudes characteristic of fallible human beings.
In 2:17, God accused the people of wearying him with their words, including their claim that those who were evil were seen as good in the eyes of God and alleging that God had no interest in maintaining justice. Similarly, in 3:13–15, the people claimed that serving God was a waste of time, that evildoers prospered, and that those who challenged God with their wrongdoing escaped punishment. In short, the action of profaning God attempted to strip him of his deity and his moral perfections and treated his holy name with contempt.
The Day of Yahweh. The Hebrew word yom, which we translate as “day,” is richly symbolic and complex when associated with the person of Yahweh and not just a twenty-four-hour chronometer measurement. The prophets make frequent use of the phrase the day of Yahweh (or the day of the Lord), and it always reflects a manifestation of divine judgment and blessing. It is a prophetic motif with many levels of fulfillment throughout the prophetic canon of Scripture. This warning announces bad news for the bad people, when the cosmic checkbook will be balanced and justice will be done. On the other hand, such a day is good news for the faithful remnant, for they shall inherit all the promises of God.
One can misapply the message of the “day of Yahweh” by overspeculating about the exact time this will occur. Even Jesus warned against this. However, what we can confidently affirm is that the day of Yahweh came to its first climactic fulfillment in the earthly ministry of Jesus the Messiah. The final words of Malachi’s prophecy (4:1–6) anticipated this fulfillment when God announced via his prophet that he would send “the prophet Elijah” to prepare the way for his coming. The second, and absolute, fulfillment of this day is still to come: the consummation of divine judgment in the manifestation of the new heavens and the new earth at the end of time, when Jesus returns. Meanwhile, the whole idea is that we live our lives today, trusting that God’s justice will be done and that he will keep his promises to his faithful followers. In Malachi’s time, this trust was eroding, and the survival of what was left of Israel was hanging in the balance because of it.
Seeing Jesus in the Book. The key to understanding where the prophetic anticipation of the coming of Jesus the Messiah lies in the book of Malachi is in the motif of the day of Yahweh. This has already been mentioned in the preceding discussion of that theme. The complexity of this motif has also been noted. There is no doubt that the day of Yahweh reached a climactic fulfillment in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His death on the cross signaled the final doom of Satan and his followers, when sin and death were destroyed in principle. In addition, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, along with his resurrection from the dead, accomplished the total forgiveness of sin and the eternal salvation of all those who put their faith and trust in him as their Savior and Lord. And there is still the consummate climax of the day of Yahweh to come, the ushering in of the eternal kingdom of heaven with God on the throne, the risen Lamb of God beside him, and all wrongs righted.
All this is implicit not only in the final chapter of Malachi’s prophecy (4:1–6) but also in those passages that speak of the coming renewal and restoration of the people of God, after they have been purified and refined through God’s fiery judgment (see 1:11; 3:1–4, 10–12, 16–18).
Malachi
The Messenger of Yah
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