The prophet Malachi —the name means "The Messenger" and probably refers to his function and is not his real name—lived in a time of religious laxness. The problem begins with the clergy—as usual. The Jerusalem temple had been rebuilt and sacrifices were being offered, but the ritual was lax and the priests were careless and badly trained. As a result, the people had grown indifferent, offering blemished animals for sacrifice and fudging on their tithes. The glorious prophecies of other prophets like Zechariah remained unfulfilled and cynical and irreligious comments were made openly. In this context The Messenger appears to call for the reform of the clergy and to summon the people to recommit themselves to the covenant God made with them.
Malachi begins in the manner of earlier prophets, by laying out God's case before the people. God loves the children of Israel faithfully and steadfastly, but the blessings promised in prophecies of Zechariah have not materialized. Now the people ask--"How have you loved us?" (1:2). Malachi recounts Israel's pre-history to illustrate how loving means choosing. He recalls the story of the twins Jacob (Israel) and Esau. God chose Jacob and rejected Esau. Esau became the ancestor of the Edomites (Genesis 36:1), traditional enemies of Israel. The two peoples remained forever at odds. "I have loved Jacob but I have hated Esau," says the LORD. That choice may seem arbitrary to us, but for Israel it is an expression of grace—God's undeserved favor. The LORD is "angry forever" with Israel's neighbor Edom (1:4); in the end all its efforts to him are futile. They are forever outside the covenant of grace. The LORD may be angry with Israel—and frequently is--but he has chosen and he will therefore always forgive the children of Israel if they repent.
Other earlier prophets had a tendency to dismiss temple worship and its round of sacrifices as superfluous to the people's relationship to the LORD. But Malachi's oracle treats those temple sacrifices with great seriousness as a sign of the people's covenant faithfulness and their neglect as evidence of moral and spiritual decline. A dialogue, like one that might take place in a courtroom trial, is set up. God accuses the temple priests of despising his name (1:6), and they protest—"How have we despised your name?" He then makes his charges specific. They have laid polluted food on his altar (1:7), and offered blind and gimpy animals for sacrifice (1:8). "Try presenting [such sub-standard offerings] to your governor," God challenges them, and see what happens. They treat the Almighty as one who can be duped with shoddy seconds—that is the reason that God is deaf to their prayers. In fact, it would be better for them to "shut the temple doors" and close up shop forever, rather than "kindle fire on [the LORD's] altar in vain" (1:10).
The LORD's name is exulted "among the nations" and "in every place incense is offered in [his] name" (1: 11). Only in Jerusalem is his name treated carelessly. The laxness of his priests has been communicated to their people, who now routinely bring blemished offerings when they have better among their flocks. But the problem is first and foremost the attitude of the priests. If they do not listen and mend their ways, the LORD warns that he "will send the curse on [them] and [he] will curse [their] blessings" (2:2). The work of the temple priests was to bless the sacrifices the people bring. But God says that he will curse the priests themselves and blight their ritual duties. He will "spread dung on [their] faces, and dung on [their] sacrifices" (2:3)—in order to get the proper emphasis of this we might use a modern and less polite word for "dung"—making them loathsome and unclean.
Malachi refers to a covenant God made with the priestly tribe of Levi--a "covenant of life and well-being" (2:5). (This covenant is never made explicit, but Numbers 25:11-13 speaks of the "covenant of peace" the LORD makes with the descendents of Phineas.) The LORD's covenant with the priests—the "covenant of Levi"—was contingent upon their faithful discharge of their priestly duties, which included not only blessing the sacrifices, but also giving "true instruction" and living lives of "integrity and uprightness" (2:6). The priests of Malachi's day have failed to do any of these things; they have "turned aside from the way" and "have corrupted the covenant of Levi" (2:8) with their laxity and unfaithfulness. Therefore the LORD is determined to "abase [the house of Levi] before all the people" (2:9) because they have "shown partiality in [their] instruction."
The house of Judah—the remnant of God's covenant people—have also proved "faithless." The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, as we recall, are filled with condemnations of intermarriage with foreign women and the apostasy that follows. When Malachi says that Judah "has married the daughter of a foreign god" (2:11), he is probably joining them condemning marriage outside the people of the promise. (After the exile in Babylon the Jews began to think of themselves in racial and not just religious terms. They became a much more closed and exclusive community defined by birth as well as upon covenant relationship with the LORD. Before that any male person could become a member of the community by submitting to circumcision and declaring his willingness to follow the Law of Moses—his spouse and family came with him. Now barriers built upon race and birth were erected. Jesus, by the way, was deeply critical of this development.)
The people, Malachi says, "cover the LORD's altar with tears," but he pays no attention to their prayers and offerings (2:13). And no wonder! Judah has been "faithless" to his "wife by covenant" (2:14)—the covenant the people of Israel made with the LORD at Mount Sinai. God made that covenant—"flesh and spirit are both his" (2:15)—and from it he hopes for "godly off-spring" (2:15)—children who will faithfully keep his covenant, expressed in the Law. Now they are leaving that covenant to marry these daughters of a foreign god. The LORD speaks to the covenant community when he says—"Do not let anyone be faithless to the wife of his youth" –in other words, do not let anyone forsake the community of the covenant to pursue foreign women and the foreign gods they bring with them.
"I hate divorce!" God says emphatically (2:16). The LORD deplores the unfaithfulness that has caused Judah to leave "the wife of his youth" and go after foreign gods. It is because they have been unfaithful to their covenant with the LORD, here pictured as a marriage, that God has hidden his face from his people and will not hear their cries for justice anymore. They "have wearied the LORD with [their] words" (2:17), not because he is unfair or indifferent, as they contend, but because they have abandoned him.
Malachi--The Messenger—foretells the coming of another messenger--the "messenger of the covenant" sent by God "to prepare [his] way" (3:1). (This last portion of Malachi is important to the New Testament stories surrounding the figure of John the Baptist.) This Elijah figure is not identified by name, but he will have as his agenda the purification of the temple worship (3:3), which is Malachi's chief concern.
Fullers' soap is used to bleach stained garments. Intense heat is used to purify precious metals. Malachi's messenger will sit, like "a purifier of silver," and "purify the descendents of Levi"—the temple priests—until they are able to "present offerings to the LORD in righteousness" (3:3). And when his reform is complete the LORD will "suddenly come to his temple," and will again attend to "the offering of Judah and Jerusalem" as he did "in the days of old and as in former years" (3:4).
In that day the LORD himself will take an active role in cleansing society and punishing those who live outside the pale of his Law. They are something of a mixed bag of offenders—sorcerers, adulterers, perjurers, and those "who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan" (3:5). To "thrust aside the alien" is made equal to lacking fear of the LORD of hosts"; the Old Testament prophets are united in saying that the fear of God demands social justice.
At the same time God remains faithful to his people. Society may be corrupt, and may go from bad to worse, but the LORD does not change and that is reason that people have not been destroyed (3:6). Because of his steadfast love, a remnant will endure, in spite of the failure of the majority to keep his statutes and laws. The LORD keeps his covenant even when his people do not, and he has not abandoned them even when they break his covenant. Instead by his own faithfulness he calls them to repent and return to him.
But the people have strayed so far they don't know the way back; "How shall we return?" they ask (3:7). The prophet Malachi's answer is plain and practical. They should stop trying to rob the LORD and return the "tithes and offerings" that they have been withholding. But if they do that, the LORD's response will be immediate and overwhelming. If the people "bring a full tithe into the storehouse" and thus "put [him] to the test," the LORD promises to "open the windows and heaven for [them] and pour down for you and overflowing blessing" (3:10). Pests—locusts—will be kept at bay, and their vine "will not be barren" and because of their prosperity "all nations will call them, blessed" (3:13).
Some of the people have openly expressed their cynicism and lack of faith. "We count the arrogant happy," they say; "evildoers not only prosper, but when they put God to the test they escape" (3:15). But the Lord is merciful, not indifferent. He keeps a "book of remembrance" in which are written the names of those who "revere" him and think on his name (3:16). A literal book is not meant here, of course, but rather a "permanent record" imprinted in the mind of God. And on the great day when he acts, the LORD will remember those whose names are written in his book and will treat them kindly, like his obedient children, which is indeed what they are. Then those who doubt will clearly see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, which had been lost on them before.
On that great day "all the arrogant and all the evildoers" will be burned up like stubble, leaving "neither root nor branch" (4:1). The wicked shall be obliterated, but "the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing on its wings" (4:2) for those who are obedient and think on the LORD's name. They will rejoice, "leaping like calves from the stall." These last verses of Malachi combine an apocalyptic vision of the future with a reminder of the covenant God made long ago with his chosen people at Mount Sinai. The prophet calls upon the people to remember "the statutes and ordinances" of the Law and keep them, in order that they may rejoice on the great "day" that is coming.
And God promises to send a messenger of the covenant, "the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes" (4:5) to prepare his way. Elijah may seem a strange choice until we remember that according to 2 Kings 2:11 this first of Israel's classic prophets did not die, but was carried away bodily into heaven. Elijah boldly called Israel's corrupt rulers to task, and Elijah, like Moses, had met God on Mount Horeb (Sinai)—see 1 Kings 19:4-18. Who better could the LORD send to herald his coming day of visitation and to call for the reconciliation of generations--the old to the young, the young to the old. Unless that reconciliation takes place the Lord will "strike the land with a curse" (4:6).
In the Gospel of Matthew John the Baptist, whose coming fulfills Malachi's prophecy of the return of Elijah, is a bridge figure between the old covenant established through Moses and the new covenant mediated by Jesus Christ. Matthew and Mark explicitly identify Elijah with John the Baptist, although the message of the returned Elijah in the Gospels is one of personal repentance and remission of sins, not reform of the sacrificial system as in Malachi. Nevertheless in all the Gospels, John the Baptist effects the reconciliation between the old and the new, recalling the prophecies of the Old Testament and pointing to their ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. So the Old Testament ends in anticipation of the New, and even as the sun sets, a new day is dawning.
