Malachi

What Malachi is about

Malachi is written as an argument. God makes a statement, the people answer back — how have we? — and God supplies the evidence. Six of these exchanges make up the book, and the format captures its subject exactly: a community that has stopped being hostile to God and started being unimpressed by him.

The complaints are concrete. Priests are offering blind, lame, and diseased animals on the altar — Malachi suggests they try presenting the same to the governor and see how it goes. Men are divorcing the wives of their youth, and God says he hates it. Tithes are being withheld, and here comes the one invitation in scripture to put God to the test: bring the full tithe and see whether he will not open the windows of heaven. And people are saying, out loud, that serving God is pointless because the arrogant seem to prosper.

The answer given is not an argument but a promise. A messenger will come to prepare the way, and the Lord they are seeking will suddenly come to his temple — though the book asks who can endure the day of his coming. Meanwhile a book of remembrance is written for those who feared the LORD and spoke with one another; they will not be forgotten.

Where it sits in the story

Malachi closes the Old Testament, roughly a century after the return from exile. The temple is rebuilt, the walls are up, and the disappointment has set in: this is not the restoration the prophets seemed to promise. The books that follow it in this table — the deuterocanonical writings — come from the centuries after, and 1 and 2 Maccabees are the main surviving account of what happened next.

Its final verses look for Elijah before the great and awesome day, and the New Testament opens with John the Baptist in exactly that role. Between Malachi’s last line and Matthew’s first lie about four hundred years.

Why it is worth reading

Because boredom with God is a more common condition than rebellion, and Malachi is the book that addresses it head-on. It is also the best possible preparation for the Gospels: it ends with a people waiting, and tells them what to watch for.