My Messenger

In context

Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament in Protestant and Catholic Bibles, speaks to the people back in the land after the temple was rebuilt. It opens, “I have loved you,” says the Lord, and the people answer, “How have you loved us?” (Malachi 1:2), the first of many such questions in the book. The priests have been offering blind, lame and sick animals on the altar (1:6–8), and the book’s warnings are stern, among them a day “burning like a furnace” (4:1).

The Lord warns the men, “let no one deal treacherously against the wife of his youth” (2:14–15). He promises, “I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me,” words Jesus applied to John the Baptist (3:1; Matthew 11:10). “For I, Yahweh, don’t change,” he says, and “Return to me, and I will return to you” (Malachi 3:6–7).

Those who fear the Lord speak together, and “a book of memory was written before him” (3:16). For them “shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in its wings” (4:2). The book ends with the promise, “I will send you Elijah the prophet,” who “will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children” (4:5–6); Luke says John the Baptist would come “in the spirit and power of Elijah” to do it (Luke 1:17).