Malachi is the last book of the Minor Prophets, or the Twelve Prophets, and for Christians, it is the last book of the Old Testament. It is hard to know when it was written, but use of the word pechah (governor), in 1:8 fits the period after the Persian conquest of Judah (539 BCE) and the building of the Second Temple.

Malachi means “my messenger,” or “angel,” and Malachi says that the “God will send a messenger who will prepare the way before me.” Some believe this “messenger” is Malachi, although the phrase is also used by Jesus to describe John the Baptist (Luke 7:27), leading Christian commentators to see the promised messenger as Christ.

Catalogue of rebukes

The text begins by invoking the Genesis story of Jacob and his brother Esau (see here), in which Jacob is loved by God, and receives His blessing, while Esau is rejected. This sets the stage for the remainder of the text, in which God reminds the Israelites of His covenants with the ancestors and asks “Where is the respect due me?” (1:6). He rebukes the priests for not keeping the Law and the people for disobedience; taking wives who worship foreign gods; and sacrificing blind, lame, or diseased animals as offerings.

The book ends with a proclamation that the Day of the Lord will come, when “every evildoer will be stubble” (4:1) to be set on fire. However, God renews His covenant with the faithful and states that He will send the prophet Elijah—a precursor to the Messiah in Judaism and to Jesus Christ in Christianity—before striking the land with “total destruction” (4:6).

Christ sits above a rainbow in Crispin van den Broeck’s The Last Judgment (1560), recalling the rainbow that God created as a symbol of his covenant with Noah after the Flood.

See also: The Fall • The Flood • Sodom and Gomorrah • The Fall of Jerusalem • The Final Judgment

See also: The Flood • Covenants • Esau and Jacob • The Ten Commandments • The Coming of Salvation • The Final Judgment