MALACHI 1 — "I HAVE LOVED YOU": GOD'S LOVE AND THE PRIESTS' CONTEMPT FOR HIS ALTAR

Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament in the Christian canon and the last of the twelve Minor Prophets. The name Malachi means "my messenger" in Hebrew, and it may be the prophet's personal name or a title, since the same word appears in 3:1 for the messenger who prepares the way. The Septuagint renders it as a title, but there is no strong reason to deny that it is a name, and this commentary treats it as one. Nothing is known about the prophet's background. The book is set in the post-exilic period, after the temple had been rebuilt in 516 BC (Ezra 6:15), when worship was taking place at the altar (1:7–10), and when a Persian governor ruled Judah (1:8). The abuses that Malachi describes, including careless sacrifices, corrupt priests, marriages to foreign women, divorce, withholding of tithes, and doubts about God's justice, closely parallel the problems that Nehemiah addressed in his second term as governor, around 432 BC (Nehemiah 13). Most scholars date Malachi between about 460 and 430 BC, probably close to the time of Nehemiah, and this commentary follows that range. The people of Judah had returned to the land with high hopes. They had heard the promises of Haggai and Zechariah that God would bless a rebuilt temple, but the glory had not come as expected. Judah was a small province, poor, under foreign rule, and surrounded by neighbors, and the prophets' great promises seemed unfulfilled. In that environment, the people's faith had grown tired. The book reflects this mood through a distinctive literary form, the disputation. In each section, God makes a statement, the people respond with a skeptical question (often "How have we...?" or "How have you...?"), and God answers with evidence and a further charge. There are six such disputations in the book (1:2–5; 1:6–2:9; 2:10–16; 2:17–3:5; 3:6–12; 3:13–4:3), followed by a closing exhortation (4:4–6). This style has the feel of a conversation or a courtroom exchange, and it captures the way people argue with God. A note on versification: the English Bible divides Malachi into four chapters, with the last chapter containing six verses (4:1–6), and the Hebrew Bible has three chapters, with the verses of English 4:1–6 numbered as 3:19–24. This commentary follows the English numbering.

Malachi's picture of the post-exilic community corresponds to what is known of Judah in the Persian period. The reference to a governor (peḥâ) in 1:8 matches the Persian administrative system, in which Judah (Yehud) was a small province in the satrapy of Across-the-River. Seal impressions and coins from Yehud, along with a bulla naming a governor, confirm the existence of this administration, and the Elephantine papyri, from a Jewish community in Egypt in the fifth century BC, include a letter in 407 BC addressed to Bagavahya, the governor of Judah, which shows that a Persian governor was in charge of the province. The priestly abuses that Malachi describes also appear in the account of Nehemiah, which records that the priest Eliashib had allowed a room in the temple to be used by an outsider and that the Levites had not been supported (Nehemiah 13:4–14). The similarity of the two sources, written from different perspectives, supports the historicity of both. The oracle against Edom fits the situation in the fifth century BC, when the Edomites were being pushed from their territory by the Nabateans, an Arab people who established their capital at Petra. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Edomite settlements in the highlands east of the Arabah declined in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, and the Edomites moved west into southern Judah, an area later called Idumea. This agrees with the book's picture of Edom's land as desolate while the Edomites continued to plan to rebuild. Fragments of Malachi are preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the scroll of the Twelve Prophets from Qumran and the Greek scroll from Nahal Hever, and they agree closely with the traditional Hebrew text. The prophecy of the Gentile worship of the LORD from sunrise to sunset is also notable in historical terms, since the worship of the God of Israel has spread to every continent, and it is one of the most visible fulfillments of the prophets' vision of the nations.