Bible Study on Malachi - Part 1, Introduction

We began this study with prayer, as always, and with a short history of the period of time in which Malachi was a prophet and other Scriptures you can read to get more background. If you were with us in the Daniel study, you know that the leaders of the Medo-Persian Empire took over Babylon and the Babylonian Empire in 539 BC. These new, largely Persian leaders quickly decided to do the opposite of the Babylonian approach to conquered peoples. The Persians allowed people, including Jews who had been carried away into captivity for 70 years, to begin to return home to their own countries and rebuild and even worship their own gods.

Some Jews started to return in 537 or 536 BC and were able to get resettled in Israel and soon built an altar and began again some of the Old Testament animal sacrifices and festivals. Opposition came, though, from the people of Samaria and other ethnic groups, who were not happy with these returning Jews and put many barriers in their way. Most rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple there, very important for Jewish worship, stopped until 520 BC. The Lord then raised up the prophet Haggai to call the Jews to get busy with rebuilding the temple, and raised up the prophet Zechariah to encourage the people to keep rebuilding and get the temple rededicated to the one true God. He also spoke of many warnings and promises for the future. (Haggai and Zechariah are the books of Scripture just before Malachi.)

The temple was finally finished in 515 BC, with a building similar to but much simpler than the great temple of Solomon. Temple rituals began again and Passover was celebrated again, remembering God’s rescue of His people from slavery in Egypt, long before.

We know little more about what happened in Israel until around 464 BC. We have one Biblical book, the story of Esther, a Jewish woman who becomes the wife of a Persian king and helped protect Jewish people in Persia from their enemies. This story happened some time in the 480’s-460’s BC, and is very unusual, in that God is never directly mentioned in the book. It is clear, though, that God continued to care about and protect the Jews and kept them going as a people. You can find the book of Esther earlier in the Old Testament.

Around 466-464 BC, Ezra, a Jewish scribe and expert in the Law of God, was allowed to go to Israel, with the support of Persians, along with some other leaders and religious teachers. He found things to be a mess, with the people far from God’s will and in need of much spiritual help and teaching from God’s Word. Ezra worked especially on spiritual reform, but it was not until 444 BC that Nehemiah, a Jewish man who served the Persian king, was allowed to go to Israel, as governor of that Persian province.

Nehemiah was an aggressive leader in civic and political affairs. Jews had been back in Israel for nearly 100 years, and still the walls of Jerusalem had not been rebuilt, and the people were “in great trouble and shame” (Nehemiah 1:3). Nehemiah pulled the people together, and in 52 days, in spite of opposition from neighboring peoples, the walls were rebuilt and the gates of the city repaired. Clearly this work “had been accomplished with the help of our God,” Nehemiah said (Nehemiah 6:15-16).

Nehemiah remained in Jerusalem as an effective leader until 432 BC, when he returned to Persia. He did return later, but things had gone downhill again for the Jewish people, and they had fallen back into bad religious and moral practices. (You can read more about all this in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, just before the book of Esther, and located a few books before the Psalms, in the Old Testament.)

It was around this time, 430 BC or a little before or after, that the prophet Malachi did his work, as directed by God,  and preached and wrote to his people. His writing raises many of the same concerns that Ezra and especially Nehemiah had. It has very strong Law, but also hope in God’s love for His people and for the future.

We know nothing about Malachi, other than what is in this short book. The name “Malachi” means “my messenger." Malachi is clearly a messenger from God, and most think that Malachi was his name, reflecting his calling from God. Malachi is an important book, as it is the last book of prophecy in the Old Testament. There had been a prophecy in Amos 8:11-12 that said, “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God, “when I will send a famine on the land - not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the Word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.” The people still had what was revealed in the Old Testament, but nothing new; and they often forgot or neglected what God had already given them.

400 years passed, then, without another true prophet of God, from the time of Malachi until the time of Christ and those preparing His way. Malachi is therefore an important link between the Old and New Testaments. There were other writings in this in-between time, including some known as the Apocryphal Books, which some listened to and read; but the Jews knew that these were not truly God’s Word, and they were not ever included in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Turn to Malachi 1:1, which begins, “The oracle of the Word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.” The word “oracle” can mean a message, but it literally means “a burden." Malachi has the heavy burden, the heavy responsibility, of proclaiming the Law of God  - to call people to see their sins and wrongdoing against God and the great need for repentance; but he also had the great burden of clearly proclaiming the Good News of God’s love to this troubled and weary people, not eager to listen.

Malachi is only 4 chapters, with 55 total verses, but in it are a series of statements and 22 questions, which often show the skeptical and even sarcastic attitudes of many of God’s people. You can see how this works by just looking at the first part of Malachi 1:2: “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” It is a skeptical, challenging question from the people. Another example is in verses 6-7, when God tells the priests, “You despise My Name.” They respond, “How have we despised your name? How have we polluted you?”

As we go through Malachi, we will hear things that are hard to understand. We will also hear things that seem irrelevant to us, since they talk about Old Testament Law, some of which is no longer binding upon us as we live under then new covenant, the New Testament. But as we hear the statements and questions, we need to think about whether we too respond to God as the these Old Testament people did and need repentance and a new focus on God’s real love for us, as well.

I will quote again from Walter R. Roehrs, who wrote an earlier Concordia Old Testament commentary: “A church in which people’s worship, their marriages, and their morals are all in perfect order, a church which can boast of a live sense of the presence of God in all aspects of human life, a church which feels no need of a returning Elijah to lead its members to repentance and reconciliation - such a church may dispense with Malachi. The rest of us will find his oracle with its strong Gospel and its unsparing exposure of our sins, a disquieting and a salutary word, a gift from Him to Whom all the prophets testify.”