Malachi 1:1, The Last Prophet of Israel

Though there were many books written after Malachi’s prophecy and before the New Testament (see the Apocrypha or deuterocanonical books), they did not rise to the level of true prophecy. Malachi is the last prophet Yahweh sent to His people until John the Baptist, a period of about 400 years intervening.

^1:1 A weighty oracle: The message of Yahweh to Israel through Malachi.

The opening words of this prophetic book, “a weighty oracle,” portend that the contents of this prophecy are going to be heavy in the sense of threatening words or a punitive discourse. This is not a light message from Yahweh to be enjoyed over coffee and a Danish. And that suggests that God sees Israel as being in a rebellious place spiritually.

Israel had been exiled from her land, or better, from Yahweh’s land (Leviticus 25:23), and had only been allowed to return to their land in 537 B.C.E. Malachi prophesied in 430 B.C.E. In the 100 years since Israel’s return to the land they had rebuilt the temple and the walls around the city of Jerusalem, not without, however, much urging from God’s prophets (see Haggai and Zechariah). Israel was not an independent nation but was still under the dominion of Persia.

Israel had been purged of idolatry. As one commentator notes,

Throughout the whole book we meet with the spirit which developed itself among the Jews after the captivity, and assumed the concrete forms of Phariseeism and Saduceeism. The outward or grosser kind of idolatry had been rendered thoroughly distasteful to the people by the sufferings of exile; and its place was taken by the more refined idolatry of dead-work righteousness, and trust in the outward fulfilment of the letter of the divine commands, without any deeper confession of sin, or penitential humiliation under the word and will of God. (Keil and Delitzsch)

So God speaks this prophecy to correct His people. He speaks through Malachi. The name Malachi means “my messenger,” and this has made some wonder if this is not a proper name but rather a description of an unnamed prophet who wrote this book. But this is not the way the prophets of the Old Testament identified themselves. It is simply ironic that Malachi’s name means “my messenger.” He is bringing a weighty oracle to his people.