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Previous disputations had charged the priesthood with negligent worship and condemned Israelite men for their pagan marriages. Those prophetic messages were harsh and pointed. Still, the restored community remained obnoxiously unaware of their shortcomings. In Malachi’s fourth disputation, he used his prophetic pulpit to explain why God was withholding his blessings. In a balanced message of hardship before hope, Malachi predicted a messenger who would prepare the way for the Messiah.
The fourth disputation follows the basic structure of the others. Malachi made an assertion, which was followed by a counter-inquiry. God interjected with a warning about the implications of their disobedience.
Remnant fatigue
The disputation addressed the general community. Israel was guilty of wearying the Lord with their words. God’s patience with his wayward people had worn thin. Malachi reflected their poor mindset by putting words in their mouths. The people asked, “How have we wearied him?” Tongue-in-cheek, Malachi added, “By saying, ‘All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them,’ or by asking, ‘Where is the God of justice?’” (2:17). Malachi accused the people of letting their cynicism go beyond complaining and border on blasphemy.
Before we jump on the judgment train, however, it is important to empathize with the demanding situation of the returnees. Their fatigue is understandable. We know from Haggai that poverty was commonplace, and harvests were failing (Hag. 1:6). Even though they had returned to their rightful land, Judah was still subject to the Persian Empire and forced to pay tribute to fund the king’s wars. We know from Nehemiah that the people lacked any sense of security while Jerusalem’s city walls were still in disrepair. From their vantage point, their prayers were going unanswered.
Still, they should not have based their measure of God’s justice and mercy on their temporary suffering. According to Malachi, they blamed God for defaulting on his covenant promises instead of evaluating their own covenant faithfulness. Their sense of election once again blocked their self-awareness.
They were hungry for God’s system of retribution. When they did not see their enemies punished, they accused God of hating good and delighting in evil. They questioned if God was present in an overturned world. As Malachi pointed out, they were living as if their evil actions had no consequence.
Dialoguing with God
Certainly, the Bible provides examples of prophets and patriarchs dialoguing with God and pleading with him to show mercy and enforce divine justice. Abraham bargained with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18). Moses stopped God from destroying the idol-worshiping Israelites at Mount Sinai (Ex. 32:9-14). Job questioned the purpose of his existence (Job 3). The prophet Habakkuk asked God, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?” (1:2).
The returnees’ questions did not mirror the same pious struggle with God that is clear in the lives of Moses, Abraham, Job, and Habakkuk. Instead, their jaded questions accused God of vanishing and not paying attention. Denying his closeness permitted them to ignore his commands. Struggling with God is a core privilege of being in relationship with God, but demonstrating ambivalence towards God was an act of rebellion.
In response to the people’s reproach, God announced he would intervene surprisingly with a two-stage plan. First, God would send a messenger, and second, he would purge the community of the unrighteous. Yahweh said, “I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me” (3:1). Commentaries note the similarities between the messenger of Malachi and the angel of Exodus. In biblical Hebrew, angel and messenger are the same word—malak— so the translation choice is based on context.
In Exodus, the angel went before the Israelites to guard them as they entered Canaan. God had told the people to listen to the angel, obey his direction, and not to rebel against him because God’s name “is in him” (Ex. 23:20). The angel cleared the physical obstacles for the people’s safe passage. He was not an invisible force, but a visible, divine messenger.
In Malachi, God would send another malak, or messenger, and this messenger’s job was to clear the path. God commanded, “prepare the way before me,” but then the point of view shifts to third person: “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple” (3:1). Malachi did not use God’s covenant name Yahweh but used his title HaAdon or the Lord. Was the messenger preparing the way for God or for someone else? Either way, the agent was divine. For Christians who believe in the triune God, we see the passage as an Old Testament glimpse of the Trinity.
In the ancient Near East, a visiting king would often send a messenger before his arrival, so his subjects would have adequate time to prepare for the royal procession. They would clear the road of obstacles beforehand. The king’s arrival had to be without incident. Malachi’s description of a coming messenger to prepare the way for the king was an analogy familiar to his listeners.
Messenger of the covenant
Besides the messenger who would prepare the way, Malachi foresaw a second malak. Malachi called him “the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight” (3:1). Another way interpreters translate the phrase is “the messenger of the covenant whom you are seeking.” Scholars propose that the first messenger and the messenger of the covenant are identical because the latter title is not found elsewhere in the scriptures.
For Jewish readers without the New Testament frame of reference, the “messenger of the covenant” is Yahweh because he is the enforcer of the original covenant. Christians, however, see Jesus as Malachi’s “messenger of the covenant.” Jesus is the one God sent to bring about the “new covenant.” Jeremiah had foretold that God would put the law within his people and write it on their hearts, so he could “forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:33).
Malachi built upon the people’s existing knowledge of the messianic profile from the law and the prophets. He also added new expectations to the profile. Malachi was the first prophet who predicted a forerunner before the Messiah. People had anticipated an earthly king as the Messiah, but Malachi added divine authority to his qualifications. Malachi also mixed his arrival with the day of the Lord. He asked, “who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (3:2).
The prophets corrected Israel’s expectations of triumph on the day of the Lord. If the people were faithful, the prophets anticipated the day of the Lord would destroy their enemies and bless Israel with abundance. Due to their covenant unfaithfulness, the day of the Lord would be a mix of judgment and purification (3:2,5). Separating the righteous from the unrighteous through testing was the only solution to the impasse.
As the community stood, they were not acceptable before Yahweh. The job of the messenger was to act as a “refiner’s fire and like washer’s soap” (3:3). Fire and soap divided the impure from the pure. They would purge all the stains and dross infecting the community. Malachi described God as the silversmith, sitting near the furnace “as a refiner and purifier of silver” (3:3). Malachi provided a fresh perspective on an old prophetic metaphor by describing God as the patient silversmith instead of the usual reference to a purging, unquenchable fire. Ultimately, it was the silversmith’s expertise that determined the end of the purification process.
Word of hope
Like prophets often do, Malachi set aside his eschatological lens and spoke a word for the present. Prophets often glanced toward the future or looked over their shoulder to the past, but their primary message was for the present community. The Levites were first in line for purification. God would weed out the priests who continued to permit unacceptable offerings at the temple (1:6-14). Malachi warned that God would “purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness” (3:4).
Malachi’s focus on proper offerings had nothing to do with the wealth or status linked with the temple. When priests ignored the laws of sacrifice, they were doing so out of indifference to God and ambivalence to the community they represented. God desired people who gave out of contrite hearts and free spirits that were drawn to him. Compliance was a byproduct of proper motivation.
Malachi closed the loop on his disputation by giving a chilling answer to the people’s question, “where is the God of justice?” (2:17). God warned, “I will draw near to you for judgment” (3:5). The people accused God of loving evil because their enemies went unpunished. To quote a New Testament idiom, they failed to see the plank in their own eyes (Matt. 7:3). As a result, God was drawing near to pluck it out.
List of transgressions
Malachi listed the categories of their transgression. They were guilty of practicing sorcery, committing adultery, swearing falsely, withholding wages, oppressing widows and orphans, and mistreating foreigners. Sorcery and adultery were sins punishable by death, according to the law (Lev. 20:10, 27). Perhaps one of the reasons Malachi took marriages to pagan women seriously is that such marriages invited sorcery and adultery into the restored community. The people’s rejection of God was shown through pervasive sins. Even Gentile nations in the ancient Near East understood that a society with basic decency had to protect widows and orphans. God’s laws were specific in how to provide for society’s most vulnerable (Deut. 10:18; 14:29; 16:11). This last offense summarized the root of the problem. God said, they “do not fear me” (3:6).
Malachi’s fourth disputation attracts scholarly attention, mostly because of the debates over the identity of Malachi’s two messengers. The answer would be an interpretative guessing game, but the New Testament provides Christians with a decoder ring. In the gospels, Jesus mentions twice that John the Baptist fulfilled Malachi’s prophecy of a coming messenger (Matt. 11:10; Luke 7:27). John the Baptist was, by God’s design, the forerunner to Messiah Jesus.
Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you’” (Matt. 11:7-10).
The gospel of Mark also identifies John the Baptist as a fulfillment of prophecy, but Mark quotes a prophecy in Isaiah. John the Baptist made “straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Isa. 40:3). Christians believe that God’s son on earth required a clearing of obstacles, which were not physical, but spiritual. John the Baptist preached individual revival, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:5). Preaching the need for a Messiah was essential to prepare the way for someone greater than John the Baptist, someone who would baptize the people, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8).
The gospel writers interpreted the Hebrew scriptures through the lens of Jesus. Christians receive a tradition that removes the shroud from prophecy and reframes it with specificity. John the Baptist was the messenger of Malachi because Jesus said so. Only with the sacrificial death of Jesus was the plan fully exposed beyond hints and prophecies. The prophets are an unfolding narrative that point to the mission of Jesus.
Prophets are grounded in their own story and location. Malachi had one eye on the future coming of the Messiah, but he spends the bulk of his book naming the sins of his contemporaries. This is the prophets’ cryptic method of threading between history, theology, and eschatology.