Malachi 4:1-6, The Great and Awesome Day of Yahweh

The Day of Yahweh is any day of God’s judgment when the wicked are destroyed and the righteous are exonerated and restored. There is going to be an ultimate Day of Yahweh, the final judgment of the wicked and justification of the righteous. This is what Malachi calls “the great and awesome day of Yahweh.”

^4:1 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says Yahweh of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. ² But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. ³ And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says Yahweh of hosts.

⁴ “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.

⁵ “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of Yahweh comes. ⁶ And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”

The judgment has just been explained by Yahweh as the final adjudication of righteousness. Now He elaborates further on what this day will be like. For unbelievers it will be like an oven in which they are the fuel. They will be destroyed by the fire of it, not just the branches but also the root.  For believers it will be like the rising sun which brings warmth and life to everything.

Whereas before, the righteous had been under the boot of the wicked, now they will be like unstalled calves, so excited to be free that they indulge in leaping and running. It is the wicked who will be under the boots of the righteous, ashes under their feet, when God’s Day arrives.

As usual, when God announces judgment, He also invites repentance as a way of avoiding the judgment. So keep the statutes of Moses, keep the Law, in the ways Israel has not been. And Yahweh promises a return of one in the spirit and power of Elijah the prophet to help His people repent. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and vice versa by giving the children the hearts of the fathers, as the original Elijah did. That John the Baptist fulfilled this is without dispute. But there is a possibility that another in the spirit and power of Elijah is yet to come immediately before the great and awesome Day of Yahweh, and perhaps this is what is spoken of in Revelation 11 concerning the two witnesses.