MALACHI INTRODUCTION
A
Bible Study - Commentary by Jim Melough
Copyright
2002 James Melough
Nothing is known of this
prophet except his name, which means my messenger; nor can the date of
writing be more closely identified than that it was probably c.450 BC, for the
walls of Jerusalem had already been rebuilt, and the post-exilic Temple
completed by the godly remnant that had returned from Babylon, long enough for
another generation of the people and priests to have become arrogantly sinful
again, not only as to their personal lives, but as to their worship. Divorce
was common, and they were intermarrying with Gentiles; they were dishonest in
their business practices, and the rich oppressed the poor; but worse, they
despised and angered God by offering sick and maimed animals on His altar, and
by withholding the prescribed tithes.
Malachi was the last of the
OT prophets, the years that followed his prophecy being generally known as the
400 silent years during which there was no communication from God until the
day when He spoke to Zacharias to announce the birth of John the Baptist, the
forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ; and to Mary to announce the Lord’s birth,
as recorded in Luke 1. In those 400 years there developed the hypocritical
Phariseeism which marked Israel at the time of the Lord’s first advent.
His ministry was to expose
the hypocrisy of the people and the priests relative to their sinful lives and
the maintenance of an empty loveless formal religion in the observance of
which they presented sick and maimed animals in sacrifice, in defiance of the
Divine proscription of such offerings; added to which sin was their
withholding of the prescribed tithes.
The application of the
prophecy to Christendom, however, will be understood only if we remember that
Esau, meaning shaggy: hairy: his doings is a type of the natural man;
and Jacob, of the carnal believer living according to the flesh rather than
the spirit, the spiritual believer being portrayed by Jacob’s new name,
Israel. The typological picture is corporate as well as individual, for we
see also in Esau a figure or type of apostate Christendom; in Jacob, a type of
believing, but carnal Christendom; and in Jacob’s new name Israel, a type of
spiritual believers as a corporate body.
[Malachi 1]