Elijah, Daniel, and Miracles
Malachi ends his book with the pronouncement that Elijah the prophet would come before the great and terrible day of the Lord (Mal 4:5-6). This prophecy stumped the disciples of Jesus who were at the transfiguration. They saw Jesus in blazing white, flanked by Moses and Elijah (Mat 17:1-12). Afterward, they were puzzled at the appearance of Elijah, realizing that he was prophesied to return. They had just seen him, but then he had disappeared again, and Jesus begun to talk of his own death. The angel who announced the birth of......
I Will Rebuke the Devourer
As part of God’s effort in Malachi 3 to bring the Israelites back to true worship, he told them to test him and see if he would not reward faithfulness. “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows. Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it may not destroy......
He Will Sit as a Smelter
Malachi uses the word picture of a metal refiner to describe how God will separate those who are truly his own from those who are not. “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. And He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness” (Malachi 3:2-3).......
Shut the Door!
In Malachi 1:10, God laments the half-hearted service of the priests. He says, “Oh that there were one among you who would shut the doors, that you might not kindle fire on my altar in vain!” (ESV). We normally think of shutting the doors or gates as a way to protect a house or city from an outside threat. The angels who visited Lot pulled him inside and “shut the door” to keep out the inhabitants of Sodom (Gen 19:10). In the eerily similar case where the Levite found refuge with an......
“Esau I Have Hated”
God’s declaration in Malachi 1:3, “I have hated Esau,” follows immediately on the heels of his declaration of love for Israel. What does it mean that God hated Esau? At least part of an answer to this question lies the way in which God’s hatred of Esau/Edom was expressed. In a nutshell, they were not his chosen people and therefore God would not allow them to become prosperous or dominant. Malachi expressed this in two ways. The first was that God had given them a second-rate land as their inheritance; the second......
