NOTES for Mal 4:5-6

The prophet Malachi says that Elijah will come to turn the hearts of children to their fathers and the hearts of fathers to their children. And for some reason Elijah must come for this... After all, it would seem that what could be more natural than love between children and parents? Yet each of us, if not in our own family, then in the families of friends, has surely encountered the fact that loving the closest and dearest people is hardest of all. It is in the family that the most cruel wounds are inflicted, because the closest person causes far more pain than a stranger. And the Lord wants to heal these relationships. One must prepare for the day of the Lord, and reconciliation in the family is one of the chief works He expects from us.

What do the prophet's words mean about Elijah, whom God will send to His people before the coming of the day of Yahweh, the "day of the Lord"? One could, of course, understand his words literally, as many did. Indeed, in the Books of Kings there is a mention that Elijah did not die, but was taken alive into heaven. Of course, the actual ascent of the prophet is described with no details: it says only that he went out to meet the chariot of Yahweh, which had descended from heaven, and disappeared from sight. He was seen no more, and from this it was concluded that Elijah had been taken into heaven alive. But is this what Malachi means? Elijah is remarkable not only because of the legend of being taken alive into heaven, but also because of his fiery denunciation of apostasy and other sins, both of the authorities and of the people.

He is an uncompromising and ruthless fighter for the purity of Yahwism. And while God was more likely to tolerate Elijah's ruthlessness, his uncompromising character was certainly pleasing to Him. This is not surprising: behind his uncompromising stance, sometimes manifested in a militant and irreconcilable form, stood the spiritual wholeness without which one cannot speak either of full spiritual life or of the path into the Kingdom. Of course, Elijah was not the only prophet who had such uncompromising character. And the prophet's words need not be understood as a prophecy about the return in the last days of Elijah himself.

Jesus does not accidentally point to John the Baptist as the Elijah whom the people were so awaiting in Gospel times, wanting to see an unquestionable sign of the Messiah's imminent coming. The issue was witness, which, like Elijah's witness in its time, was acceptable only to those who were ready to walk the spiritual path without looking back or to the sides. The Savior does not accidentally speak of John as a prophet who came, in His own words, "in the spirit and power of Elijah."

The issue, of course, is not outward resemblance and not physical strength. The issue is the breath, the "spirit," and the power of God, which allow a person to acquire the inner strength and wholeness so characteristic of both Elijah and John. The uncompromising character of both was only the consequence of this spiritual wholeness. For Elijah it helped him hear God through that "transparent silence" whose experience he lived through on Sinai; for John it helped him feel the breath of the Kingdom ready to enter the world and recognize the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. And it made both of them faithful witnesses: of God, of the Messiah, and of the Kingdom.

The closing words of the book of the prophet Malachi are filled with a profound and very concrete hope. Drawing together the drama of the Creator's love and of people's unbelief and disregard for Him, the prophet returns to the image of the flame blazing on the Day of the Lord. He says that this flame will burn up every sin; all evil will be destroyed in it like straw in a furnace. In essence, this conclusion follows naturally from everything Malachi has already said. But what the Lord wishes to say through the prophet goes far beyond this. In what is to come, he sees more than the destruction of sin and wickedness, more than a kind of ‘natural selection’ in which only what is worthy of survival will survive. The righteous, who revere the Lord's name, will not merely go on living free from want — that is not, not at all, their reward.

‘For you who revere My name,’ says the Lord, ‘the Sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its rays.’ This striking designation of the Messiah as the Sun of righteousness connects Malachi's prophecy with the light of which the evangelist John speaks continually. The Sun of righteousness is the source of the mysterious light which, as will be said, enlightens every person coming into the world. This is not physical light; it is the light of righteousness, which dispels the darkness of a godless world. In the New Testament era, this name — the Sun of righteousness — will become one of the most beautiful in the Church's hymns. The Sun of righteousness, enlightening those who dwell in darkness; the Sun of righteousness, who has broken the curse and bestowed a blessing. And the light of Christ, the Sun of righteousness, Malachi says, brings healing to those who revere the Lord's name. Ezekiel spoke of the very same thing when he proclaimed that God Himself would wipe away every tear of the righteous.

Yet already in Malachi's time it is quite clear that the ‘Sun of righteousness’ differs from the ordinary expectations of the Jews just as markedly as the ‘Messenger of the covenant’ does. Malachi chooses these designations to emphasise his intuition that the Messiah's coming will not violate human freedom. Everyone will have to choose between good and evil, between God and the vanity of the world. And so the prophet ends with words about repentance and turning back to God. Through him the Lord promises to send people the greatest, most revered prophet. Malachi invokes the name of the prophet Elijah, whose voice called the people to turn back, without fear of the anger and opposition of earthly rulers. The Lord promises to send him to restore the people's spiritual unity, to turn the hearts of the descendants to the faith of their fathers and thereby avert the curse from them. At the very beginning of the New Testament, six months before the birth of the Messiah, the Sun of righteousness, the priest Zechariah, father of John the Forerunner, will quote these lines. Within the book of Malachi, however, they are of exceptional importance: the prophet stresses that the Lord desires not the destruction of sinners but their turning back and living, as He said through the prophet Ezekiel.

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