Malachi 4: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Malachi's final chapter describes a coming day that will burn like an oven, destroying the arrogant and those who do evil, while those who fear God's name see the sun of righteousness rise with healing in its wings. The LORD tells the people to remember the law he gave Moses at Horeb for all Israel. He then promises to send Elijah the prophet before that great and terrible day, to turn the hearts of parents and children toward each other, so that he does not come and strike the land with a curse.

Claim by Claim

1. 4:1
   • A day is coming that will burn like a furnace.
   • All the arrogant will be stubble on that day.
   • All who do wickedly will be stubble on that day.
   • The coming day will burn them up.
   • The LORD of hosts says this.
   • The day will leave them neither root nor branch.
2. 4:2
   • For those who fear the LORD's name, the sun of righteousness will rise.
   • The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.
   • Those who fear his name will go out.
   • They will leap about like calves released from the stall.
3. 4:3
   • Those who fear his name will trample down the wicked.
   • The wicked will be ashes under the soles of their feet.
   • This will happen on the day the LORD acts.
   • The LORD of hosts says this.
4. 4:4
   • The people are commanded to remember the law of Moses.
   • Moses is the LORD's servant.
   • The LORD commanded that law to Moses at Horeb.
   • The LORD commanded it for all Israel.
   • The law includes statutes and judgments.
5. 4:5
   • The LORD will send Elijah the prophet.
   • Elijah will be sent before the day of the LORD comes.
   • The day of the LORD is great.
   • The day of the LORD is terrifying.
6. 4:6
   • Elijah will turn the heart of the fathers to the children.
   • Elijah will turn the heart of the children to their fathers.
   • Otherwise the LORD will come and strike the land with a curse of utter destruction.
   • It is unspecified whether what is struck is the land of Israel or the whole earth.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

4:1

"Stubble" is the short dry stalks left in a field after the grain has been cut. Farmers burned it off; it flares and is gone in moments. "Neither root nor branch" is a Hebrew way of saying nothing whatever is left, nothing above ground and nothing below it; some readers have also heard in it "no ancestors and no descendants," the wiping out of a family line. In printed Hebrew Bibles these six verses are not a separate chapter at all; they are the closing verses of chapter 3.

4:2

"Fear my name" translates a Hebrew word closer to reverence or awe than to being frightened, which is why the rendering says "honor." A sun disc with outstretched wings was a familiar emblem across Egypt and the wider ancient Near East, stamped on seals and carved over doorways; the Hebrew word for "wings" also covers the edges or skirts of a garment, and by extension the spreading rays of the sun. KJV's "his wings" is not a statement about a person: older English used "his" where we now say "its." "Calves of the stall" are calves shut in a pen to be fattened; the picture is of them let loose into open pasture and kicking about.

4:3

Treading on a defeated enemy was standard ancient language and art for total victory; kings had themselves carved with a foot on the necks of the people they had beaten.

4:4

Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai, the mountain where Israel received the law after leaving Egypt. "Statutes and judgments" are two kinds of law: fixed standing decrees, and rulings handed down on particular cases, roughly what we would call legislation and case law.

4:5

Elijah was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel about four centuries before Malachi. According to 2 Kings 2 he did not die but was carried off in a whirlwind, which is why a promise of his return could be made at all. "The day of the LORD" was already a set phrase among the prophets for a decisive day when God acts openly to judge and to set things right. KJV's "dreadful" carries its older sense: full of dread, awe-inspiring, not merely unpleasant.

4:6

The Hebrew is genuinely open here. "Fathers" and "children" may mean literal parents and children, with family quarrels healed; or the "fathers" may be the ancestors of Israel, with their descendants brought back to their ways. The word behind "curse" is *herem*, a term used of things placed under a ban and devoted to total destruction, considerably heavier than the English "curse" suggests. "Earth" here translates a word that means both the whole earth and, more narrowly, the land of Israel. Because the Hebrew Bible ends on this word, synagogue readings repeat verse 5 after verse 6 so the reading does not close on it.