Malachi

Malachi addressed a post-exilic community that had built the second temple but was now spiritually lethargic — priests offering blemished sacrifices, men divorcing their wives to marry pagan women, tithes unpaid, cynicism about God's justice. The book is structured as six dialogic disputations in which Malachi speaks YHWH's charge, the people respond with cynical question, and YHWH answers. The book's most important Christological text is 3:1: "Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple" — applied to John the Baptist and Jesus (Mark 1:2, Matt 11:10). The closing promise (4:5-6) is the return of Elijah "before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes" — applied to John the Baptist (Matt 11:14; 17:12). Malachi closes the Hebrew Bible on the note of anticipated prophetic return. Between Malachi and Matthew, the canonical prophets fall silent for some four hundred years.