The book of Malachi

At a glance

Chapters

4

Author

Malachi, or possibly a title meaning "my messenger"

Written

Fifth century BC

Written for

A community that had rebuilt the temple and gone flat

Themes

disputation, half-hearted worship, covenant faithfulness, the messenger

What it is about

Malachi is built on a distinctive rhetorical pattern: God makes a charge, the people respond with a question — how have we done that? — and the charge is then spelled out. It happens six times, and the effect is of a dispute rather than a sermon.

The complaints concern blemished sacrifices, faithless divorce, wearying God with words, and withholding what belongs to the temple. The community is not in crisis; it has simply gone through the motions for long enough that the motions are all that is left.

It ends the Old Testament with a promise of a messenger to come, and four hundred years of silence follow it in the Christian ordering.

Where to start

Chapter 3, which contains the tithe passage and the promise of the messenger.

The chapters worth knowing

• Malachi 1 — Blemished animals offered to God and the challenge to try them on the governor.
• Malachi 2 — The passage on faithless divorce, and the line about God hating it.
• Malachi 3 — The tithe passage, and the messenger who will come suddenly to his temple.

What people get wrong about it

That the tithe passage is a general promise of financial return. It is addressed to a specific community withholding food from the temple stores, in a covenant with specified terms, and the storehouse in question held provisions for priests.

Questions