Nothing is known about the author except his name. The book emphasizes the message rather than the messenger; God is the speaker in about forty-seven of the fifty-five verses. The one prophesied in 3:1 to “clear the way” for God to come to his temple is identified as (Hb) malakiy, “my messenger,” a word identical to the name of the book’s author.
Although the book is not dated by a reference to a ruler or a specific event, internal evidence, as well as its position in the canon, favors a postexilic date. Reference to a governor in 1:8 favors the Persian period when Judah was a province or sub-province of the Persian satrapy Abar Nahara, which included Palestine, Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and, until 485 BC, Babylon. The temple had been rebuilt (515 BC) and worship reestablished there (1:6-11; 2:1-3; 3:1,10). But the excitement and enthusiasm for which the prophets Haggai and Zechariah were the catalysts had waned. The social and religious problems that Malachi addressed reflect the situation portrayed in Ezra 9 and 10 and Nehemiah 5 and 13, suggesting dates not long before Ezra’s return to Judah (ca 460 BC) or Nehemiah’s second term as governor of Judah (Neh 13:6-7; ca 435 BC). Linguistic data favors the earlier date.
Malachi was the last prophetic message from God before the close of the OT period. This book is a fitting conclusion to the OT and a transition for understanding the kingdom proclamation in the NT. Malachi spoke to the hearts of a troubled people whose circumstances of financial insecurity, religious skepticism, and personal disappointments were similar to those often experienced by God’s people today. The book contains a message that must not be overlooked by those who wish to encounter God and his kingdom and to lead others to a similar encounter. We have a great, loving, and holy God, who has unchanging and glorious purposes for his people. Our God calls us to genuine worship, fidelity to himself and to one another, and to expectant faith in what he is doing and says he will do in this world and for his people.
God’s love is paramount. It is expressed in Malachi in terms of God’s election and protection of Israel above all the nations of the world. Since God had served the interests of Judah out of his unchanging love, he required Judah to live up to its obligations by obedience, loyalty, and sincere worship. This love relationship between God and Judah is the model for how people were expected to treat other members of the redeemed community. They were required to be faithful in all their dealings with one another.
As a community devoted to God, his people enjoy his protection and provision. But failure to live right before God and one another will bring God’s judgment. Thus, God’s people could not expect the joy of his blessings if they continued to fail in their duties to him and to one another. Before God would hold Judah in the balance of judgment, he would grant one last call for repentance. A forerunner would precede the fearsome day of the Lord and herald the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.
Malachi’s message is communicated in three interrelated addresses. Each address contains five sections arranged in a mirror-like repetitive structure surrounding a central section (a-b-c-b-a). The first two addresses begin with positive motivation or hope (1:2-5; 2:10a) and end with negative motivation or judgment (2:1-9; 3:1-6). In between is God’s indictment (1:6-9 and 1:11-14; 2:10b-15a and 2:17) surrounding his commands (1:10; 2:15b-16). The final climactic address begins and ends with commands to repent (3:7-10a; 4:4-6). In between are sections of motivation (3:10b-12; 3:16–4:3) surrounding the indictment (3:13-15).
Behold, the promised One has come. He whom Israel sought suddenly appeared in his temple as the messenger of the covenant. Glad were the eyes of Simeon, Anna, and all those who waited for him, and glad today are our voices as we proclaim that the Messiah has appeared.
1A pronouncement:
The word of the LORD to Israel through Malachi. A
2 “I have loved you,” says the LORD.
Yet you ask, “How have you loved us? ”
“Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother? ” This is the LORD’s declaration. “Even so, I loved Jacob, 3 but I hated Esau. I turned his mountains into a wasteland, and gave his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
4 Though Edom says: “We have been devastated, but we will rebuild B the ruins,” the LORD of Armies says this: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called a wicked country and the people the LORD has cursed C forever. 5 Your own eyes will see this, and you yourselves will say, ‘The LORD is great, even beyond D the borders of Israel.’
6 “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. But if I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is your fear of me? says the LORD of Armies to you priests, who despise my name.”
Yet you ask: “How have we despised your name? ”
7 “By presenting defiled food on my altar.”
“How have we defiled you? ” you ask.
When you say: “The LORD’s table is contemptible.”
8 “When you present a blind animal for sacrifice, is it not wrong? And when you present a lame or sick animal, is it not wrong? Bring it to your governor! Would he be pleased with you or show you favor? ” asks the LORD of Armies. 9 “And now plead for God’s favor. Will he be gracious to us? Since this has come from your hands, will he show any of you favor? ” asks the LORD of Armies. 10 “I wish one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would no longer kindle a useless fire on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the LORD of Armies, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.
11 “My name will be great among the nations, from the rising of the sun to its setting. Incense E and pure offerings will be presented in my name in every place because my name will be great among the nations,” F says the LORD of Armies.
12 “But you are profaning it when you say: ‘The Lord’s table is defiled, and its product, its food, is contemptible.’ 13 You also say: ‘Look, what a nuisance! ’ And you scorn G it,” H says the LORD of Armies. “You bring stolen, I lame, or sick animals. You bring this as an offering! Am I to accept that from your hands? ” asks the LORD.
14 “The deceiver is cursed who has an acceptable male in his flock and makes a vow but sacrifices a defective animal to the Lord. For I am a great King,” says the LORD of Armies, “and my name will be feared among the nations.
B 1:4 Or will return and build
F 1:11 Or is great . . . are presented . . . is great
2“Therefore, this decree is for you priests: 2 If you don’t listen, and if you don’t take it to heart to honor my name,” says the LORD of Armies, “I will send a curse among you, and I will curse your blessings. In fact, I have already begun to curse them because you are not taking it to heart.
3 “Look, I am going to rebuke your descendants, and I will spread animal waste J over your faces, the waste from your festival sacrifices, and you will be taken away with it. 4 Then you will know that I sent you this decree, so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the LORD of Armies. 5 “My covenant with him was one of life and peace, and I gave these to him; it called for reverence, and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. 6 True instruction was in his mouth, and nothing wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and integrity and turned many from iniquity. 7 For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should desire instruction from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the LORD of Armies.
8 “You, on the other hand, have turned from the way. You have caused many to stumble by your instruction. You have violated A the covenant of Levi,” says the LORD of Armies. 9 “So I in turn have made you despised and humiliated before all the people because you are not keeping my ways but are showing partiality in your instruction.”
10 Don’t all of us have one Father? Didn’t one God create us? Why then do we act treacherously against one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? 11 Judah has acted treacherously, and a detestable act has been done in Israel and in Jerusalem. For Judah has profaned the LORD’s sanctuary, B which he loves, and has married the daughter of a foreign god. C 12 May the LORD cut off from the tents of Jacob the man who does this, whoever he may be, D even if he presents an offering to the LORD of Armies.
13 This is another thing you do. You are covering the LORD’s altar with tears, with weeping and groaning, because he no longer respects your offerings or receives them gladly from your hands.
14 And you ask, “Why? ” Because even though the LORD has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, you have acted treacherously against her. She was your marriage partner and your wife by covenant. 15 Didn’t God make them one and give them a portion of spirit? What is the one seeking? D Godly offspring. So watch yourselves carefully, E so that no one acts treacherously against the wife of his F youth.
16 “If he hates and divorces his wife,” says the LORD God of Israel, “he G covers his garment with injustice,” says the LORD of Armies. Therefore, watch yourselves carefully, H and do not act treacherously.
17 You have wearied the LORD with your words.
Yet you ask, “How have we wearied him? ”
When you say, “Everyone who does what is evil is good in the LORD’s sight, and he is delighted with them, or else where is the God of justice? ”
B 2:11 Or profaned what is holy to the LORD
C 2:11 = a woman who worshiped a foreign god
E 2:15 Lit So guard yourselves in your spirit
G 2:16 Or The LORD God of Israel says that he hates divorce and the one who
3“See, I am going to send my messenger, and he will clear the way before me. Then the Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the Messenger of the covenant you delight in — see, he is coming,” says the LORD of Armies. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming? And who will be able to stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire and like launderer’s bleach. I 3 He will be like a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. 4 And the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will please the LORD as in days of old and years gone by.
5 “I will come to you in judgment, and I will be ready to witness against sorcerers and adulterers; against those who swear falsely; against those who oppress the hired worker, the widow, and the fatherless; and against those who deny justice to the resident alien. They do not fear me,” says the LORD of Armies. 6 “Because I, the LORD, have not changed, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed. A
QUOTE 3:6
The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy that can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom we call Father.
7 “Since the days of your fathers, you have turned from my statutes; you have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD of Armies.
Yet you ask, “How can we return? ”
8 “Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me! ”
“How do we rob you? ” you ask.
“By not making the payments of the tenth and the contributions. 9 You are suffering under a curse, yet B you — the whole nation — are still robbing me. 10 Bring the full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house. Test me in this way,” says the LORD of Armies. “See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure. 11 I will rebuke the devourer C for you, so that it will not ruin the produce of your land and your vine in your field will not fail to produce fruit,” says the LORD of Armies. 12 “Then all the nations will consider you fortunate, for you will be a delightful land,” says the LORD of Armies.
13 “Your words against me are harsh,” says the LORD.
Yet you ask, “What have we spoken against you? ”
14 You have said: “It is useless to serve God. What have we gained by keeping his requirements and walking mournfully before the LORD of Armies? 15 So now we consider the arrogant to be fortunate. Not only do those who commit wickedness prosper, they even test God and escape.”
16 At that time those who feared the LORD spoke to one another. The LORD took notice and listened. So a book of remembrance was written before him for those who feared the LORD and had high regard for his name. 17 “They will be mine,” says the LORD of Armies, “my own possession on the day I am preparing. I will have compassion on them as a man has compassion on his son who serves him. 18 So you will again see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.
3:3 “He will be like a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver. Then they will present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.” This is spoken of as one of the results of the coming of the Lord—he would test and try all things, destroy the false and the evil, and make those pure whom he permitted to remain. Behold, the promised One has come. He whom Israel sought suddenly appeared in his temple as the messenger of the covenant. Glad were the eyes of Simeon, Anna, and all those who waited for him, and glad today are our voices as we proclaim that the Messiah has appeared. The glorious Son of God, the anointed of the Most High has been among men, and faithful witnesses have testified concerning him: “We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).
His ministry tried the religion and orthodoxy of the period, and because it revealed the hollowness of the whole profession of the day, it awakened all the enmity of the religious classes. Those who were the leaders of the so-called religious thought of the age were awakened to hate the Lord Jesus and to take delight in nailing him to the cross, for his teaching was so true and good they could not endure it. Our Lord, when he came, sat as a refiner and tested the age then present, and ever since then his gospel in the world, his Spirit, his teaching, and the fact of his life have been a test, a trial, a sort of gold standard among men.
3:6 “Because I, the LORD, have not changed, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed.” Alexander Pope said that “the proper study of mankind is man.” I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God. The proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy that can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom we call Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the divinity. It is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity—so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb line cannot sound its depth and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought that “we were born only yesterday and know nothing” (Jb 8:9). No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind than thoughts of God.
But while the subject humbles the mind, it also expands it. He who often thinks of God will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe. He may be a naturalist, boasting of his ability to dissect a beetle, anatomize a fly, or arrange insects and animals in classes with well-nigh unutterable names. He may be a geologist, able to discourse on the plesiosaurus and all kinds of extinct animals. He may imagine that his science, whatever it is, ennobles and enlarges his mind. I dare say it does, but after all, the most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ and him crucified and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity. And while humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatory. There is in contemplating Christ a balm for every wound. In considering the Father, there is a comfort for every grief, and in the influence of the Holy Spirit there is a salve for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea—be lost in his immensity. And you will come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow—so speak peace to the winds of trial—as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.
4“For look, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and everyone who commits wickedness will become stubble. The coming day will consume them,” says the LORD of Armies, “not leaving them root or branches. 2 But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall. A 3 You will trample the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day I am preparing,” says the LORD of Armies.
QUOTE 4:2
But suddenly a wondrous light has surprised them—their dying bed has become a throne of glory.
QUOTE 4:2
Whatever gloom may surround your departure from the earth, the sun of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings, and one day you will find him rise even upon your mortal bodies.
4 “Remember the instruction of Moses my servant, the statutes and ordinances I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel. 5 Look, I am going to send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise, I will come and strike the land B with a curse.”
4:2 “But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall.” This promise has also had a practical fulfillment in the deathbed experiences of God’s people. Tortured with disease, they have been lying in the darkness and gloom of death. Perhaps fears have come in and physical infirmity has been the platform that Satan has planted his heavy guns of temptation. But suddenly a wondrous light has surprised them—their dying bed has become a throne of glory. They have found themselves arrayed in royal garments as though it were their coronation rather than their departure out of this world. They have been enabled to sit upright in the bed and to tell others that they had beheld the brightness of the coming glory and that they had experienced in their souls the foretaste of unspeakable and divine joys even before their bodies were released from infirmity and pain. Though the body has been bound fast with cords, the soul has mounted up as on the wings of eagles, in sacred rapture and holy bliss. The sun of righteousness has risen upon them. Before their earthly sun went down, the heavenly sun lit up their sky with a sacred high, eternal noon. And unto you who fear the name of the Lord, whatever gloom may surround your departure from the earth, the sun of righteousness will arise with healing in his wings, and one day you will find him rise even upon your mortal bodies.