Annotations for Malachi
1:1 Malachi. Unlike the books of Haggai and Zechariah, the book of Malachi contains no date formulas linking the prophet’s message to the reign of any particular Persian king. Malachi does make reference to the “governor” of Yehud (v. 8) and a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem (v. 10). Thus the book may be dated broadly to the period after the completion of the second temple (515 BC). It seems likely that Malachi addressed the Jews in the province of Yehud during the reign of King Darius I (522–486 BC), making Malachi a slightly later contemporary of Haggai and Zechariah.
1:3 his hill country. Esau’s hill country is Seir (Ge 36:8–9, 21), which was in the eastern Negev. The “hill country of Seir” is mentioned several times in Scripture (e.g., Ge 14:6; Dt 2:1, 5; Jos 24:4). It was most likely a designation for the southern portion of the Edomite state, between the Wadi al-Ghuwayr and Ras en-Naqb.
1:4 Edom. See notes on Jer 49:7; Eze 32:29.
1:8 blind . . . lame or diseased animals. The prophet rebukes the people and the priests for shaming Yahweh with inferior offerings that were considered inappropriate even for the local Persian-appointed governor. The termination of temple funding from the Persian government may have prompted such behavior as a “cost-cutting” measure (see note on 3:8), but it seems more likely that the burden of cultic and imperial taxation became so heavy that compromising the temple sacrificial rituals and ignoring the tithe requirements became a pragmatic solution for maintaining the barest standards of subsistence living in the face of persistent economic depression due to drought and blight (cf. 3:14; Hag 1:6, 10–11; Zec 8:12).
1:12 Lord’s table. This expression is unique to Malachi in the OT. The context suggests the table is synonymous with the altar of burnt offering, since animal and grain sacrifices were figuratively understood as “food” for Yahweh (cf. v. 7; Lev 3:11, 16). The “table” was also a symbol of fellowship in the ancient world, since the meal or “feast” was a part of the covenant ratification ceremony, the sealing of an alliance with a ceremonial meal. The prophet rebukes the people and the priests because the offering of impure sacrifices both profaned the worship of Yahweh and demonstrated contempt for their covenant relationship with him.
2:11 marrying women who worship a foreign god. The difficult Hebrew expression here is used in the collective sense of foreign women who had married into the Hebrew clans of Yehud (in violation of the Israelite practice of endogamy, i.e., marrying within the ethnic group [Dt 7:3–4]). The prophet recognized that in intermarriage of this sort one weds both a foreign woman and a foreign god. The gravity of the situation accounts for Malachi’s unusual language in the larger disputation, insinuating that the adultery of divorcing Hebrew women and marrying foreign women was tantamount to being “unfaithful,” i.e., committing idolatry (vv. 14–16). The practice of deserting and divorcing Hebrew women for the purpose of marrying non-Hebrew women was probably motivated by economics, since intermarriage was a requisite for entering the well-established mercantile guilds of postexilic Palestine already in place when the Hebrews returned from exile.
2:14–16 Mosaic Law permitted a man to divorce his wife for something he finds “indecent” about her (Dt 24:1). Though it is of an unspecified nature, it presumably is misconduct short of adultery, since adultery was a capital offense (Lev 20:10; cf. Mt 19:7–9). The use of the term “hates” in v. 16 is the familiar idiom for a statement of divorce in the ancient Near East. Here it indicates not God’s hate of divorce (as in some translations) but that the husband has invoked the divorce proclamation by stating that he hates his wife. Malachi’s enlightened view of marriage and harsh admonition against divorce apparently had little impact on the postexilic community, as evidenced by the reforms undertaken by Ezra and Nehemiah when they confronted the same abuses some five decades later (Ne 13:23–27). Documents from Elephantine, a sectarian Jewish military colony located near Aswan in Egypt, shed light on Jewish marriage and divorce practices in the Persian period. Unlike Malachi’s understanding of marriage as a covenant (v. 14), the Elephantine community emphasized the contractual nature of marriage, with attention given to the pragmatic legal and economic aspects of the marriage bond (e.g., issues of bride-price, dowry, property rights and inheritance). The union resulting from the marriage contract could be dissolved by either party at will and without delineating any specific grounds for divorce.
3:1 messenger. See note on Isa 6:9.
3:2 refiner’s fire. Malachi borrows from the prophets Isaiah (Isa 1:25), Jeremiah (Jer 6:29; 9:7) and Ezekiel (Eze 22:17–22) the imagery of God refining his people Israel by burning or smelting away the dross of their evil ways. A shift has been detected in the use of the metal refining motif from the destructive aspects of divine judgment in preexilic prophecy to a stress on purification in the postexilic prophets (cf. Zec 13:1). The refining and smelting of metals was accomplished in one of two types of furnaces: (1) the kiln or “blast furnace,” in which there is direct contact between the fuel and the ore, yielding an oxidizing or reducing reaction, or (2) the “crucible furnace,” which protects the ore or metal from direct contact with fuel of the fire or the products of its combustion and achieves separation of precious metals by means of both oxidation and amalgamation. Malachi may be referring to a metallurgy process known as cupellation. Such refinement of silver required exposure of the ores to high temperatures in a blast of the air (from a bellows) that resulted in the oxidation of unwanted metals and other impurities. The purified silver was retrieved in a cupel, or a small cup-like mold, made of a porous material like bone ash or clay. See notes on Isa 48:10; Jer 6:28; 11:4. soap. The Hebrew term (borit) occurs in the OT only here and Jer 2:22. The word describes an alkaline salt or soda powder derived from the ice plant (found in Mesopotamia but not Syro-Palestine) and used as a laundry detergent in the ancient world. Most scholars understand that Malachi appeals to the imagery of two common trades, the smelter and the fuller, or launderer, to demonstrate the pattern of divine judgment as both testing and cleansing (cf. Ps 66:10; Da 11:35; 12:10). Others interpret the expression against the backdrop of smelting metals since lye or potash may be used as a reagent in separating the dross from the precious metal. If so, then the prophet makes reference to a two-stage metallurgy process of smelting and purifying the crude lead.
3:5 sorcerers. The Hebrew term refers to those who practice divination or fortune telling by means of occult magic and witchcraft to influence people or events for either their own gain or that of their clients. See note on Isa 2:6.
3:8 tithes and offerings. The tithe, or a tenth part, from the produce of the land (including grain, fruit, and flocks and herds) was required by Mosaic Law (Lev 27:30–33; Dt 12:6, 11). The tithes were given to support the Levites “as their inheritance in return for the work they [did] while serving at the tent of meeting” (Nu 18:21; cf. Dt 14:22–29). The “offerings” may refer to the “tithe of the tithe” or the tithe-tax that the Levites were required to present as the Lord’s offering (Nu 18:26). In effect, Malachi upbraids the people for not bringing their tithes to the temple and rebukes the Levitical corps for not presenting the tithe-tax to Yahweh on what they did receive. The prophet’s promise of rainfall yielding an abundance of food (see note on v. 10) is contingent not upon the ritual of tithing but upon the posture of repentance that motivates the act of giving (v. 7). Distinctions between tithes and taxes were blurred in the Biblical world since collection and redistribution of resources for the maintenance of the administrative structures of society (whether civil or religious) was commonplace. The shift in Persian royal policy may have had some impact on the tithing practices of postexilic Judah, since reforms of temple funding under Xerxes meant a loss of revenue for temple cults across the empire.
3:10 floodgates of heaven. A poetic expression for drenching rainfall (Ge 7:11; 8:2; Isa 24:18; cf. the Septuagint, the pre-Christian Greek translation of the OT: “the sluices [or torrents] of heaven”). Some commentators draw inferences regarding Hebrew cosmology from the prophet’s reference to the “windows” of heaven. Usually Malachi’s language is understood as an appeal to commonly known features of ancient Near Eastern cosmology; namely, the heavenly vault above which there is water, which may fall down through openings known as windows (see the articles “The ‘Vault’ and ‘Water Above,’ ” “Cosmic Geography.”
3:16 scroll of remembrance. The metaphor of God as “the divine bookkeeper” is attested elsewhere in the OT (e.g., Ex 32:32; Ps 56:8; 69:28; 87:6; 139:16; Isa 4:3; 65:6; Eze 13:9). The idea of deities keeping heavenly tablets upon which were recorded the deeds and destinies of individuals and nations extends from Sumerian to Talmudic times. Malachi’s divine register contrasts with that of the prophet Jeremiah, who warned that those turning away from Yahweh would be “written in the dust” (Jer 17:13; translated “registered in the underworld” in the NJB). The concept of heavenly books is also well documented in later extra-Biblical Jewish literature. A similar heavenly book containing the deeds of individuals as a record for divine judgment is also found in the Persian religion of Zoroaster (see the article “Zoroastrianism”). Although not a heavenly book, the “book of the chronicles” mentioned in Est 6:1 offers a parallel example of a book or scroll recording the good deeds of loyal subjects. Following Persian tradition, Malachi’s “scroll of remembrance” was both a catalog of names and a record of events. Yahweh’s scroll was apparently an ongoing account of the words and deeds of the God-fearers in postexilic Yehud—a memorializing scroll that permits Yahweh to identify those who belong to him.
4:1 furnace. A fixed or portable beehive-shaped earthenware oven or stove used especially for baking bread.
4:2 sun of righteousness. This expression is unique to Malachi in the OT. It may be a solar epithet for Yahweh or simply a figurative description of the eschatological day of the Lord (see notes on Joel 2:1; Am 5:18). It is possible that the source for Malachi’s solar epithet was the winged sun disk, pervasive in ancient Near Eastern iconography (see notes on Ex 10:22; Job 31:26; 38:15; Ps 9:20; 104:2, 28; Isa 2:10; 9:2; Eze 8:16; Jnh 4:2; Hab 3:4; see also the article “The Great Hymn to Aten”). This icon depicting (falcon or eagle) wings against a full sun represented the guardianship of the deity, an emblem of divine effulgence as well as protection and blessing for those peoples overshadowed by the “wings” of the deity.
4:4 Horeb. The place-name Horeb functions synonymously as an alternative designation for Mount Sinai (cf. Ex 33:6; 1Ki 19:8) or it may refer to the desolate region bordering Mount Sinai (e.g., Ex 17:6; Dt 1:19). See the article “Mount Sinai.”