Malachi4chapter 4

Malachi 4:1

The day of the Lord is pictured as a furnace: the proud and the wicked go in as stubble, catching first and burning fastest. The oven image reverses Israel's exodus memory of the furnace of affliction, since here the furnace consumes evil itself, and the finality is total, neither root nor branch, no seed and no growth left behind. Henry and Gill both note that the same fire has two edges in this chapter, since the burning against the wicked in verse 1 is answered by the healing sun for the righteous in verse 2, one day producing opposite ends for the two groups the whole book has been dividing since chapter 3.

Malachi 4:2

For those who fear the Lord's name the same day that burns the proud brings healing instead, the Sun of righteousness rising with wings that heal rather than scorch. Malachi 3:6 had already declared the Lord unchanging, and here the sunrise answers that constancy with fresh mercy for the reverent remnant marked out in 3:16 as those who feared the Lord and spoke often one to another. Calves of the stall going forth and growing up completes the picture, animals let out of winter confinement into open pasture, which the commentators read as the book's own note of spring after a long dark oracle. The church has long read this verse of Christ himself, a reading the bench carries without dispute, since the sun with healing in its wings became one of the classic Christmas and Epiphany texts even though the New Testament nowhere quotes the verse directly.

Malachi 4:3

The healed and the burned change places under the same sun, calves released to pasture in verse 2 becoming the very feet that tread the ashes of the proud in verse 3. Ashes under the soles is the after picture of verse 1's fire completed, nothing left of the wicked but what a foot can grind further, and the reversal answers the disputers of chapter 3 who had asked what profit there was in serving God. Gill and Clarke both connect the image to Joshua's promise that Israel's enemies would be put under their feet, the day of the Lord finishing what the conquest began.

Malachi 4:4

Before naming Elijah the book turns back to Moses, the two figures the Gospels will later set beside Christ at the transfiguration. Remembering the law given at Horeb, with its statutes and judgments, is the last positive command the Old Testament gives Israel, closing four hundred years of prophetic silence by pointing back to Sinai rather than forward to something new. Wesley and Henry read the verse as a summary charge, that whatever else the disputers of this book had questioned, the law itself remained settled and binding until the messenger named at 3:1 and again in verse 5 should come.

Malachi 4:5

I will send you Elijah the prophet: The last prophet of the Old Testament names the next one by name, Elijah, before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. The Lord Jesus identifies John the Baptist as the fulfillment at Matthew 11:14 and Matthew 17:11-13, and Luke 1:17 has the angel tell Zacharias that his son will go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elias, a reading the exposition states as the New Testament's own. Alongside it stands the older Jewish expectation, kept alive in the synagogue's practice of setting a cup and an empty chair for Elijah at Passover, and a further Christian reading that looks for a future forerunner ministry yet to come, both held by the bench without a verdict pressed on the reader.

Malachi 4:6

The last sentence of the Hebrew canon's arrangement turns on relationship and its opposite, Elijah's ministry to turn the heart of fathers to children and children to fathers, or the Lord comes and smites the earth with a curse. The Old Testament as English Bibles order it ends on that word, curse, four hundred years of silence before the New Testament opens with a genealogy, the record of the very fathers and children this verse names, tracing Jesus Christ's descent from Abraham and David. The synagogue reading tradition takes note of the ending too, repeating verse 5 aloud after verse 6 so that the public reading never stops on the word curse, a practice the commentators record as evidence of how heavily the verse has always been felt. Keil reads the turning of hearts as revival preparing a people to receive their Messiah rather than a bare family reconciliation, the last word before four centuries of silence and then the announcement of Gabriel to Zacharias.