NOTES for Mal 1:1-14

The prophet Malachi lived in the middle of the fifth century BC and belonged to the last generation of writing prophets. History has preserved no details of his life or personality for us; perhaps even his name is a pseudonym reflecting his ministry. It means ‘messenger, herald’. The prophet lived in a difficult time: after the enthusiasm of the first years following the return from Babylon, God's people sank ever deeper into indifference. Neither faith, nor the worship of God, nor even national dignity interested people—nothing but their own well-being. Deprived of political independence and spared historical upheavals, the people gradually forgot their high calling. All this found vivid expression in Malachi's preaching. He speaks with particular bitterness of neglect of the Temple, of reverence for God and of the observance of His law: it is possible that he himself was among the priests.

From the first words of the book of the prophet Malachi, we are immersed in the oppressive atmosphere of those years. People are dissatisfied with their situation, and their hearts and minds are burdened with murmuring. Where is the greatness of the chosen people? Where is the dominion that the promised Messiah was to extend over all nations? Instead, Jerusalem no longer even has a governor representing the Persian king, and Judaea, as a province of little importance, is subject to the governor of Samaria, populated by apostates. There is neither greatness nor prosperity nor standing among their neighbours; all the hopes of renewal that sustained the Jews returning from captivity have turned to dust. Instead, they are condemned to hard labour simply to secure some kind of livelihood. The culture of the pagan nations begins to seem to the Jews the very height of well-being, while the austere faith of their fathers looks like a relic beside it. ‘In what way have You shown Your love for us?’ they ask God, a cruel and unjust question.

We ourselves, in a sense, witness the birth of this murmuring. Yes, say Malachi's contemporaries, we have a certain, rather illusory freedom, but the desired prosperity did not arrive of its own accord, at a wave of the Almighty's hand. Living in freedom has proved hard—at any rate, no easier than living in captivity. And the love God showed in freeing the people from captivity and restoring Jerusalem begins to seem like empty words. Real life is hard, joyless and far from grand; the bitter awareness of this gradually permeates the literature of Israel's wise men that is emerging in this period. Shortly before the book of the prophet Malachi comes the book of Jonah, vividly demonstrating the gulf between God's righteousness and human notions of justice. A few decades later, the books of Job and Ecclesiastes come into being, where desperate hope will shine only by a miracle through unrelenting sorrow. But in most souls, the agonising question ‘Where are Your love and righteousness?’, with which the hearts of the prophet Habakkuk and the author of Job turn towards God, gives way to a terrible, lifeless complaint: ‘Can this really be love?’

Through the prophet Malachi, God answers this and says that everything depends on the chosen people's attitude towards Him. God's love is revealed in the very fact of their election, in the fact that the Almighty gave His law to this particular people. The prophet cites the Jews' question, ‘In what way have You shown Your love for us?’, and answers it with God's counter-question: ‘Is not Esau Jacob's brother?’ Israel has done nothing to deserve God's love, and yet He remains faithful to His chosen people: this is where Malachi sees the manifestation of love. ‘You alone have I called from among all nations,’ God said through the prophet Amos; God's love is manifested not in benefactions, but in Love itself. People find this hard to accept because it calls for love in return. And if the people's response is cold indifference, then even salvation and freedom themselves will not be sufficient manifestations of love for them; the indifferent need something more tangible, even if it lasts only a moment.

Malachi enters the territory no one wants to discuss; with astonishing directness he conveys devastating words of rebuke. Israel is dissatisfied with the ‘quality’ of the Creator's love, yet treats Him with evident disregard. ‘If I am a father, where is the honour due to Me? And if I am Lord, where is the reverence due to Me?’ says the Lord. The attitude towards God in this period can be expressed in the Russian saying, ‘Here, God, take what is no good to us’: only the very worst is offered in sacrifice to God, since something has to be offered. ‘Offer it to your governor; will he be pleased with you?’ the Lord asks the priests of Israel. So the problem is not that God loves His people too little. On the contrary, Israel has forgotten how to love and honour God, and therefore fails to notice the Creator's love. And since the Lord's truth endures for ever, as the psalmist says (Ps 111:3; 110:3 in the Russian numbering), disregard for God becomes a source of curse for people. The Lord measures the Jews' negligent worship not against that of their pagan contemporaries, who honour idols, but against the coming Kingdom, where all nations will glorify God's name. For unlike the pagans, Israel has had God's name and righteousness revealed to it by God Himself.