Introduction to Malachi

Title and authorship

The book is headed by one word, Malachi, and that word means my messenger. No father is named, no town, no office — unusual even among the prophets, and it leaves a real question: is this a personal name or a description of the speaker's function?

The text does not settle it, and nothing in the book depends on the answer. What the text does do is use the same word twice more, at the two hinges of its argument. The priest is the messenger of Yahweh of Armies and has failed at it Malachi 2:7; and God will send his messenger to prepare the way, followed by the messenger of the covenant Malachi 3:1. Three appearances, and the whole book runs between them: a messenger speaks, the appointed messengers have corrupted their charge, and a messenger is coming who will not.

Date

The book dates itself by its circumstances rather than by a king. A temple is standing and its altar in daily use Malachi 1:10, so this is after the rebuilding that Haggai and Zechariah pressed. The civil authority is a governor rather than a king Malachi 1:8, which is the arrangement of the Persian province.

The abuses named are the same ones Nehemiah found and fought: priests who had corrupted the covenant of Levi, marriages to foreign wives, and tithes left unbrought so that the temple staff had to scatter to their fields Nehemiah 13:10–11 Nehemiah 13:23–29. That places Malachi in the middle of the fifth century before Christ, near Nehemiah's governorship. Scripture supplies no year.

Backgrounds

The generation Malachi addresses had received what an earlier generation was promised. The temple stood, finished under the preaching Haggai had delivered a century before, and the latter glory promised for that house Haggai 2:9 had not visibly arrived. No king sat in Jerusalem . The nation was a small province, and Edom  next door was making its own plans to rebuild Malachi 1:4.

What that produced was not rebellion but exhaustion. The offerings continued and the sacrifices were made — from the flock's blind, lame, and sick Malachi 1:8. Worship had not been abandoned; it had been economized. And the mood behind it is quoted directly: serving God is pointless, keeping his charge gains nothing, and the arrogant are the ones who prosper Malachi 3:14–15.

The book answers this in a form of its own. Six times God makes an assertion, the people's objection is quoted back — how have you loved us, how have we despised your name, how shall we return — and the objection is answered with evidence. It is an argument conducted with people who believe they have a case.

Theology and purpose

Malachi's subject is a covenant that both sides are accused of neglecting, and the accusation runs in only one direction once the evidence is in. God begins by asserting love and is asked to prove it Malachi 1:2. He ends by promising to spare his own as a man spares a son who serves him Malachi 3:17.

Between those, the demand is on the priesthood first. The covenant with Levi was one of life and peace, kept by a man who stood in awe and turned many from iniquity Malachi 2:5–6; the priest's lips were to guard knowledge because he is a messenger Malachi 2:7. The charge is that the guardians of the covenant became the chief means of its corruption, and everything else in the book follows from that failure.

The answer is a coming. Someone will prepare the way; then the Lord whom they seek will come suddenly to his temple — and the question that follows is not celebratory but sobering: who can endure the day of his coming Malachi 3:2? The refiner sits down at the fire, and the first metal into it is the sons of Levi.

Then the last words of the Old Testament, and they are deliberately unfinished: remember the law of Moses, and expect Elijah before the great and dreadful day Malachi 4:4–5. The canon closes facing forward, with a law behind and a prophet still to come.

Additional notes

Note — "Esau I hated." The opening argument sets Jacob against Esau and says outright that God loved the one and hated the other Malachi 1:2–3, a sentence Paul later quotes Romans 9:13. Two things in the text control how it is read.

First, the subject is nations rather than individuals. The proof offered is not Esau's spiritual state but Edom's ruined hill country and its frustrated rebuilding Malachi 1:3–4, and the promise made to Rebekah before either child had done anything concerned two peoples Genesis 25:23.

Second, Hebrew uses love and hate for preference and rejection in covenant settings, without the emotional freight the English words carry. Leah is called hated in a sentence whose own context means she was the less loved of two wives Genesis 29:30–31. The Lord uses the same idiom when he requires a disciple to hate father and mother Luke 14:26, which cannot mean malice, since he also commands honoring them.

So the verse states a choice, not a grudge — and Scripture is candid that the choice fell on the younger, the smaller, and the undeserving as a matter of policy Deuteronomy 7:7.

Outline

---

Read Malachi · About this commentary