Background and Theme of Malachi
The Lord elected Israel out of all the people and made a covenant with them. According to this covenant, he would be their God and they would be his people and live according to his ways. The people of Israel were warned about being taken into exile by foreign nations if they did not obey the Lord, and this was the case, but this is not the end. The people of Israel are brought back into their land, but the heart of man has not changed. The writing of Malachi is a series of six rebukes against the people of Israel in the post-exilic era.Methodoloxy
The study of the text of Malachi for this paper is done with the three standard, scholarly tools Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar. The study of the biblical text has helped to identify the main theme of the writing, and the different sections that it is made up of.
The text will be studied section by section, on the level of individual clauses. The poetic and prophetic genres will be taken into account. The meaning of the clauses will be taken in the greater context of the section, the writing of Malachi, the book of The Twelve, the Prophets and the Old Testament canon. To complement my study with the three standard tools cited above, my main source for information are the lectures of Dr. Jordan Scheetz,[1] various commentaries, and other early witnessed to a pre-Masoretic text.
The Different Sections
Opinions differ on the outline of Malachi. We can assume the author did not start writing with an outline.[1] Malachi brings rebuke after rebuke, so apart from dealing with the the prescript (1:1) and epilogue (3:22-24) separately, I am dividing the body of the writing by topic of rebuke. The first section is about Israel’s failure to see that the Lord loves them (Malachi 1:2-5). In the second section, the priests are being rebuked because they are despising the Lord (1:6-2:9). This section is larger than the other sections. Some have argued that it should be split in two (1:6-17, 2:1-9) and this is not a problem because Malachi 1:6-17 does have a specific flow with the repetition of seven repetition of “אָמַר יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת”[2] which is not found in Malachi 2:1-9. There is also a different emphasis on how the Priest are despising the Lord, first, because of their polluted offerings, and then because of their failure as ministers of God’s word. I am keeping these two sections together because they are both addressed to the same people, the priests, and deal with them despising the Lord. The third section is a rebuke of the people’s treacherous acts (2:10-16). The fourth is about the coming of the Lord, rebuking them for doubting that the Lord is just (2:17-3:5). The fifth section contains a rebuke concerning tithing (3:6-12). The final and sixth section contains a rebuke similar to fourth one. The people are being rebuked for doubting that God deals rightly with the righteous and the wicked (3:13-22).
As well as being separated by theme, every section contains a verbal exchange, which introduce every section except the third one. The verbal exchanges take a smaller form in sections 1, 3, 4 and 6, and a longer form in section 2 and 5. The shorter form is made up of an introductory statement by the Lord, followed by the people’s objection and the Lord’s second statement. The longer form has an extra objection and the Lord gives a third statement.[3]
[1]
Robert L. Alden, “Malachi,” in The
Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Daniel and the Minor Prophets, ed. Frank E.
Gaebelein, vol. 7 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 708.
[2]
David A. Dorsey, The Literary Structure
of the Old Testament: A Commentary on Genesis–Malachi (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Academic, 2004), 322.
[3]
Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old
Testament, 321.
Poetic Prophecy
There are different reasons why God would communicate to us through poetry. Robert Alter makes the point that “poetry is our best human model of intricately rich communication, not only solemn weighty and forceful but also densely woven with complex internal connections, meanings and implications” so it would make sense that poetry would be used for divine speech.[1] Ray Lubeck mentions the more personal aspect of speaking through poetry. It is effective to touch us and move us. Poetry is denser with its concepts and forces us to slow down. Rather than making arguments it creates mental images and experiences that we would have new perceptions.[2]
The kind of prophecy that we find in the prophets is different from that of the Psalms. It is not characterized by the strong rhythmic and compact style that is found in the Psalms.[3] One of the strong distinctive between Prophetic and other kinds of Biblical Poetry is its powerful vocative character. It is a direct address to a real historical audience.[4] Poetry uses different literary devices such as parallelism, and figures of speech such as similes, ellipses, and metaphors. Understanding these devices will also help in our understanding of the text. Given the poetic nature, we cannot take everything literally.
[1] Robert Alter, The Art of
Biblical Poetry (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2011), 176.
[2] Ray Lubeck, Read the Bible for a Change: Understanding and
Responding to God's Word (Federal Way, Washington: World Vision 2005), 122-23.
[3] Alter, The Art of Biblical
Poetry, 171.
[4] Alter, The Art of Biblical
Poetry, 174.
Malachi in the Bible as a Whole
Malachi has a very special place in the Bible, and for such a small writing, it has and important disproportionate influence on the New Testament.The Hebrew Bible is made up of three sections: The Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Along with Rendtorff, I will not be talking about the “book” of Malachi, but one of the twelve writings that make up the book of “The Twelve”.[1] The writing of Malachi is placed in a very special place in the Canon. It is placed at the end of the book of The Twelve, which is at the end of the Prophets which is the second part of the Hebrew Bible. Malachi finds its place in The Twelve showing continuity with the theme of the Day of the Lord in Zechariah, the writing just preceding it, but also echoing themes from Hosea marriage and infidelity to create an inclusio in The Twelve. At the end of Malachi we also find an inclusio with the beginning of the Prophets in Joshua 1:7, with the emphasis on keeping the Law of Moses. The ends of Malachi 3 and Deuteronomy 34 hold key positions, connecting the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings, together. The theme of the separation of the righteous from the wicked which is the main point of the first Psalm echoes well one of the themes of Malachi, in the chapter that follows it in the Canonical order of the Hebrew Bible. We can see that the Bible is carefully put together.
Malachi has a disproportionate influence on the New Testament. It is only made up of three chapters, but the references to it in the gospel are very significant when it comes to John the Baptist’s ministry, but also in the letter to the Romans, when Paul writes about God’s unchangeable election, he quotes Malachi.
Malachi in The Twelve
The Twelve is made up of twelve distinct writings written from as early as the middle of the eight century in the pre-exilic period to the time of the return and the restoration at the end of the sixth century.[2] The first six writings focus on Israel and the nation's sin, the next three emphasize the punishment of sin on the Day of the Lord, and the last three talks about the restoration of Israel and their neighbors.[3] The Twelve are connected to each other through the themes they present, but also they each have personal qualities, adding their own individual contribution to the book as a whole. The most important theme in the Twelve is “the Day of the Lord”. It is talked about in different ways and the prophets help understand what it means, how Israel and the other nations are concerned, what they must do, how God will respond to their attitudes. At the end of The Twelve, the problems of the reconstruction and consolidation of the community after the exile are addressed, along with how they must live as God’s people until the “Day of the Lord”. The rules are the same as before, so the last books of The Twelve connect how our eschatological hope affects our life in the “here and now.”[4]
Malachi fits in the last group of three writings, relating more to the theme of the restored people of God. Zechariah had a strong emphasis on the end times, while Malachi is dealing in his present time with how people are to live then. The writing is a conversation between the Lord’s messenger (Malachi) and his contemporaries. The problems are clearly those of the post-exilic community: the new built temple, foreign nations.[5] The writing deals with the current struggles and sins the nation is dealing with, also seen in Ezra/Nehemiah.
[1] Rolff Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible (Leiden: Deo Publishing, 2005), 264.
[2] Rolff Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible: (Leiden: Deo Publishing, 2005), 264.
[3] House, Paul R.; Mitchell, Eric, Old Testament Survey (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2007), 232.
[4] Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible, 313-14.
[5] Rendtorff, The Canonical Hebrew Bible, 309.
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