MALACHI

After the Jews were allowed to return to their land from exile in Babylon, they rebuilt their temple and the walls surrounding Jerusalem. The story of this part of Jewish history is found in Ezra and Nehemiah with prophetic utterances from Haggai and Zechariah, who lived during the same time. But eighty years passed; the people had sunk into apathy.

Around 440 B.C. the prophet Malachi came on the scene, calling for better temple worship and ethical living. He condemns the same sins Nehemiah saw long before—people weren’t tithing, they were breaking the Sabbath and intermarrying with foreigners, and their priests were acting in a corrupt fashion. Much of this sounds familiar–the prophets rebuked the people for failing to live up to the covenant they had agreed to in the desert at Sinai. We see God here as in other prophetic books as a jilted lover, asking his people to return to him. Take a look at Malachi 4:4-6; it serves as a good conclusion to all the Old Testament prophets.

This prophetic book also has good examples of figures of speech like other books in the Old Testament.  Some critics comment on the mirror image produced by scenes here in which the sections appear in this format—ABCCBA. In other words, the first section is reflected in the last section, the second section is mirrored in the next-to-last section, and the third section is followed by another section resembling it in content. See if you can construct this pattern by using the following sections—1:2-5, 1:6-2:9, 2:10-16, 2:17-3:5, 3:6-12, 3:13-4:3.