THE BOOK OF "MALACHI"

THIS book, the last in the arrangement of the prophetic canon, bears the title: "Burden" or "Oracle of the Word of Jehovah to Israel by the hand of male’akhi." Since at least the second century of our era the word has been understood as a proper name, Malachi, or Malachias. But there are strong objections to this, as well as to the genuineness of the whole title, and critics now almost universally agree that the book was originally anonymous.

It is true that neither in form nor in meaning is there any insuperable obstacle to our understanding "male’akhi" as the name of a person. If so, however, it cannot have been, as some have suggested, an abbreviation of Male’akhiyah, for, according to the analogy of other names of such formation, this could only express the impossible meaning "Jehovah is Angel." But, as it stands, it might have meant "My Angel" or "Messenger," or it may be taken as an adjective, "Angelicus." Either of these meanings would form a natural name for a Jewish child, and a very suitable one for a prophet. There is evidence, however, that some of the earliest Jewish interpreters did not think of the title as containing the name of a person. The Septuagint read "by the hand of His messenger," "male’akho"; and the Targum of Jonathan, while retaining "male’akhi," rendered it "My messenger," adding that it was Ezra the Scribe who was thus designated. This opinion was adopted by Calvin.

Recent criticism has shown that, whether the word was originally intended as a personal name or not, it was a purely artificial one borrowed from Mal 3:1, "Behold, I send My messenger," "male’akhi," for the title, which itself has been added by the editor of the Twelve Prophets in the form in which we now have them. The peculiar words of the title, "Burden" or "Oracle of the Word of Jehovah," occur nowhere else than in the titles of the two prophecies which have been appended to the Book of Zechariah, Zec 9:1 and Zec 12:1, and immediately precede this book of "Malachi." In Zec 9:1 "the Word of Jehovah" belongs to the text; "Burden" or "Oracle" has been inserted before it as a title; then the whole phrase has been inserted as a title in Zec 12:1. These two pieces are anonymous, and nothing is more likely than that another anonymous prophecy should have received, when attached to them, the same heading. The argument is not final, but it is the most probable explanation of the data, and agrees with the other facts. The cumulative force of all that we have stated-the improbability of male’akhi being a personal name, the fact that the earliest versions do not treat it as such, the obvious suggestion for its invention in the male’akhi of Mal 3:1, the absence of a father’s name and place of residence, and the character of the whole title-is enough for the opinion rapidly spreading among critics that our book was, like so much more in the Old Testament, originally anonymous. The author attacks the religious authorities of his day; he belongs to a pious remnant of his people, who are overborne and perhaps oppressed by the majority. {Mal 3:16 ff.} In these facts, which are all we know of his personality, he found sufficient reason for not attaching his name to his prophecy.

The book is also undated, but it reflects its period almost as clearly as do the dated Books of Haggai and Zechariah. The conquest of Edom by the Nabateans, which took place during the Exile, is already past. {Mal 1:2-5} The Jews are under a Persian viceroy. {Mal 1:8} They are in touch with a heathen power, which does not tyrannize over them, for this book is the first to predict no judgment upon the heathen, and the first, moreover, to acknowledge that among the heathen the true God is worshipped "from the rising to the setting of the sun." The only judgment predicted is one upon the false and disobedient portion of Israel, whose arrogance and success have cast true Israelites into despair. All this reveals a time when the Jews were favorably treated by their Persian lords. The reign must be that of Artaxerxes Longhand, 464-424.

The Temple has been finished, {Mal 1:10; Mal 3:1; Mal 1:10} and years enough have elapsed to disappoint those fervid hopes with which about 518 Zechariah expected its completion. The congregation has grown worldly and careless. In particular the priests are corrupt and partial in the administration of the Law. {Mal 2:1-9} There have been many marriages with the heathen women of the land, {Mal 2:10-16} and the laity have failed to pay the tithes and other dues to the Temple. {Mal 3:7-12} These are the evils against which we find strenuous measures directed by Ezra, who returned from Babylon in 458, and by Nehemiah, who visited Jerusalem as its governor for the first time in 445 and for the second time in 433. Besides, "the religious spirit of the book is that of the prayers of Ezra and Nehemiah. A strong sense of the unique privileges of the children of Jacob, the objects of electing love, {Mal 1:2} the children of the Divine Father, {Mal 2:10} is combined with an equally strong assurance of Jehovah’s righteousness amidst the many miseries that pressed on the unhappy inhabitants of Judea . . . Obedience to the law is the sure path to blessedness." But the question still remains whether the Book of "Malachi" prepared for, assisted, or followed up the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. An ancient tradition already alluded to assigned the authorship to Ezra himself.

Recent criticism has been divided among the years immediately before Ezra’s arrival in 458, those immediately before Nehemiah’s first visit in 445, those between his first government and his second, and those after Nehemiah’s disappearance from Jerusalem. But the years in which Nehemiah held office may be excluded, because the Jews are represented as bringing gifts to the governor, which Nehemiah tells us he did not allow to be brought to him. The whole question depends upon what Law was in practice in Israel when the book was written. In 445 Ezra and Nehemiah, by solemn covenant between the people and Jehovah, instituted the code which we now know as the Priestly Code of the Pentateuch. Before that year the ritual and social life of the Jews appear to have been directed by the Deuteronomic Code. Now the Book of "Malachi" enforces a practice with regard to the tithes, which agrees more closely with the Priestly Code than it does with Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy commands that every third year the whole tithe is to be given to the Levites and the poor who reside "within the gates" of the giver, and is there to be eaten by them. "Malachi" commands that the whole tithe be brought into the storehouse of the Temple for the Levites in service there; and so does the Priestly Code {Deu 12:11; Deu 26:12; Mal 3:8; Mal 3:10 Num 28:21 ff.} On this ground many date the Book of "Malachi" after 445. But "Malachi’s" divergence from Deuteronomy on this point may be explained by the fact that in his time there were practically no Levites outside Jerusalem; and it is to be noticed that he joins the tithe with the terumah or heave-offering exactly as Deuteronomy does. On other points of the Law he agrees rather with Deuteronomy than with the Priestly Code. He follows Deuteronomy in calling the priests "sons of Levi," {Mal 2:4-8 cf. Deu 33:8} while the Priestly Code limits the priesthood to the sons of Aaron. He seems to quote Deuteronomy when forbidding the oblation of blind, lame, and sick beasts; {Mal 1:8; Deu 15:21} appears to differ from the Priestly Code which allows the sacrificial beast to be male or female, when he assumes that it is a male; {Mal 1:14; Lev 3:1; Lev 3:6} follows the expressions of Deuteronomy and not those of the Priestly Code in detailing the sins of the people (Mal 3:5; Deu 5:11 ff., Deu 18:10; Deu 24:17 ff.; Lev 19:31; Lev 19:33 f. Lev 20:6); and uses the Deuteronomic phrases "the Law of Moses," "My servant Moses," "statutes and judgments," and "Horeb" for the Mount of the Law. For the rest, he echoes or implies only Ezekiel and that part of the Priestly Code which is regarded as earlier than the rest, and probably from the first years of exile. Moreover he describes the Torah as not yet fully codified. {Mal 2:6 ff.} The priests still deliver it in a way improbable after 445. The trouble of the heathen marriages with which he deals (if indeed the verses on this subject be authentic and not a later intrusion) was that which engaged Ezra’s attention on his arrival in 458, but Ezra found that it had already for some time been vexing the heads of the community. While, therefore, we are obliged to date the Book of "Malachi" before 445 B.C., it is uncertain whether it preceded or followed Ezra’s attempts at reform in 458. Most critics now think that it preceded them.

The Book of "Malachi" is an argument with the prophet’s contemporaries, not only with the wicked among them, who, in forgetfulness of what Jehovah is, corrupt the ritual, fail to give the Temple its dues, abuse justice, marry foreign wives, divorce their own, and commit various other sins; but also with the pious, who, equally forgetful of God’s character, are driven by the arrogance of the wicked to ask, whether He loves Israel, whether He is a God of justice, and to murmur that it is vain to serve Him. To these two classes of his contemporaries the prophet has the following answers. God does love Israel. He is worshipped everywhere among the heathen. He is the Father of all Israel. He will bless His people when they put away all abuses from their midst and pay their religious dues; and His Day of Judgment is coming, when the good shall be separated from the wicked. But before it come, Elijah the prophet will be sent to attempt the conversion of the wicked, or at least to call the nation to decide for Jehovah. This argument is pursued in seven or perhaps eight paragraphs, which do not show much consecutiveness, but are addressed, some to the wicked, and some to the despairing adherents of Jehovah.

1. Mal 1:2-5- To those who ask how God loves Israel, the proof of Jehovah’s election of Israel is shown in the fall of the Edomites.

2. Mal 1:6-14-Charge against the people of dishonoring their God, whom even the heathen reverence.

3. Mal 2:1-9-Charge against the priests, who have broken the covenant God made of old with Levi, and debased their high office by not reverencing Jehovah, by misleading the people, and by perverting justice. A curse is therefore fallen on them-they are contemptible in the people’s eyes.

4. Mal 2:10-16-A charge against the people for their treachery to each other; instanced in the heathen marriages, if the two verses, Mal 2:11-12, upon this be authentic, and in their divorce of their wives.

5. Mal 2:17- Mal 3:5 or Mal 3:6-Against those who in the midst of such evils grow skeptical about Jehovah. His Angel, or Himself, will come first to purge the priesthood and ritual that there may be pure sacrifices, and second to rid the land of its criminals and sinners.

6. Mal 3:6 or Mal 3:7-12-A charge against the people of neglecting tithes. Let these be paid, disasters shall cease and the land be blessed.

7. Mal 3:13-21-Another charge against the pious for saying it is vain to serve God. God will rise to action and separate between the good and bad in the terrible Day of His coming.

8. To this, Mal 4:3-5 adds a call to keep the Law, and a promise that Elijah will be sent to see whether he may not convert the people before the Day of the Lord comes upon them with its curse.

The authenticity of no part of the book has been till now in serious question. Bohme, indeed, took the last three verses for a later addition, on account of their Deuteronomic character, but, as Kuenen points out, this is in agreement with other parts of the book. Sufficient attention has not yet been paid to the question of the integrity of the text. The Septuagint offers a few emendations. There are other passages obviously or probably corrupt. The text of the title, as we have seen, is uncertain, and probably a later addition. Professor Robertson Smith has called attention to Mal 2:16, where the Massoretic punctuation seems to have been determined with the desire to support the rendering of the Targum "if thou hatest her put her away," and so pervert into a permission to divorce a passage which forbids divorce almost as clearly as Christ Himself did. But in truth the whole of this passage, Mal 2:10-16, is in such a curious state that we can hardly believe in its integrity. It opens with the statement that God is the Father of all us Israelites, and with the challenge, why then are we faithless to each other?- Mal 2:10. But Mal 2:11-12 do not give an instance of this: they describe the marriages with the heathen women of the land, which is not a proof of faithlessness between Israelites. Such a proof is furnished only by Mal 2:13-16, with their condemnation of those who divorce the wives of their youth. The verses, therefore, cannot lie in their proper order, and Mal 2:13-16 ought to follow immediately upon Mal 2:10. This raises the question of the authenticity of Mal 2:11-12, against the heathen marriages. If they bear such plain marks of having been intruded into their position, we can understand the possibility of such an intrusion in subsequent days, when the question of the heathen marriages came to the front with Ezra and Nehemiah. Besides, Mal 2:11-12 lack the characteristic mark of all the other oracles of the book: they do not state a general charge against the people, and then introduce the people’s question as to the particulars of the charge. On the whole, therefore, these verses are suspicious. If not a later intrusion, they are at least out of place where they now lie. The peculiar remark in Mal 2:13, "and this secondly ye do," must have been added by the editor to whom we owe the present arrangement.