Malachi

Malachi is the conventional name of the prophet whose oracles form the Book of Malachi, the last book of the Twelve Minor Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and of the prophetic books in the Christian Old Testament. The Hebrew name Malʾāḵī means 'my messenger.' Because the same word appears in the book's promise, 'Behold, I send my messenger' (Malachi 3:1), some modern scholars have asked whether Malachi is a personal name or a title. Ancient Jewish and Christian tradition, however, treats Malachi as a distinct prophet, counted among the last of the classical prophets of Israel. Nothing historically certain is known of his parentage, birthplace, or death. Later identifications of Malachi with Ezra the Scribe, or with Mordecai, appear in rabbinic literature (for example Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 15a) and in the Targum, but they remain unproven and should not be treated as biography.

The oracles themselves belong to the Persian period after the Babylonian exile. The Temple in Jerusalem has already been rebuilt and is functioning; a Persian-appointed governor (peḥah) is in office; and the community is struggling with priestly negligence, inadequate tithes, and marital infidelity, including divorce and marriage to foreign women. These conditions point to the province of Yehud in the fifth century BCE, in the same general era as Ezra and Nehemiah, though the exact chronological relationship cannot be fixed with certainty. The prophet addresses priests and people in and around Jerusalem. No reliable source records a birth year, a death year, a city of origin, or a burial place. A cave on the Mount of Olives traditionally called the Tomb of the Prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi is a later Jewish and Christian shrine, not a verified historical tomb of this prophet.

The Book of Malachi is structured as a series of disputations. The Lord, through the prophet, accuses the priests of despising his name by offering blemished animals and of failing to give true instruction. He condemns Judah for faithlessness to the covenant, especially in marriage. He calls the people to bring the full tithe into the storehouse. He announces a coming day of judgment that will refine the Levites and distinguish the righteous from the wicked. Central to later Jewish and Christian reading is the promise of a messenger who will prepare the way of the Lord, and the statement that the prophet Elijah will be sent before the great and terrible day of the Lord. In the New Testament these passages are applied to John the Baptist and to the eschatological hope surrounding Jesus.

In Judaism Malachi is remembered as the last of the prophets; after him, according to rabbinic tradition, prophecy ceased and the holy spirit departed from Israel until the messianic age. His book closes the Nevi'im in the canonical order of the Tanakh. In Christianity he is venerated as a prophet-saint. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates the Prophet Malachi on 3 January. The Roman Martyrology records him on 14 January. He held no papal or patriarchal office, belonged to no later religious order, and left no historically documented spouse or children. His enduring importance lies in the book that bears his name, which shaped Jewish hopes for Elijah's return and Christian interpretation of the forerunner of the Messiah.