Malachi 4
Malachi 4 brings down the curtain - on the book of Malachi, on the prophets, and on the entire Old Testament. After this chapter the Hebrew Scriptures fall silent for some four hundred years, until a voice cries in the wilderness and the Gospel begins. So these six verses carry enormous weight: they are the last word God speaks before the long wait for the Messiah. And what is that last word? A day of reckoning, and a rising Sun. For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven (v. 1) - but for those who fear the LORD's name, the Sun of righteousness arises with healing in his wings (v. 2). The book that opened with the LORD insisting I have loved you closes by showing what that love finally looks like: light breaking over a world in the dark.3
The chapter sets two destinies side by side, as the prophets so often do. To the proud and those who do wickedly, the coming day is fire - they are stubble, left neither root nor branch (v. 1), trodden down to ashes (v. 3). To those who fear God's name, the same day is sunrise and healing, and they go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall (v. 2) - the picture of penned animals released into open pasture, leaping for the sheer relief of freedom. Between these two pictures comes a single, steadying command that gathers up the whole of the past: Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb (v. 4). Before the silence falls, the people are told where to stand: on the covenant, on the word already given.
Then the Old Testament ends by pointing forward off its own last page. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers (vv. 5-6). A messenger is promised, a forerunner who will turn hearts and ready a people. The Hebrew Bible thus closes not on a full stop but on an outstretched hand - a coming One, not yet come. When the New Testament opens, it answers immediately: the forerunner arrives in the spirit and power of Elias (Luke 1:17), and the Sun of righteousness Himself steps onto the page.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Malachi 4:1-3The Sun of Righteousness Shall Arise
1For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. 2But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. 3And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts.
The final chapter opens with a thunderclap: For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven (v. 1). The image is a furnace heated white-hot, the kind used to bake bread, and into it goes everything that is proud and rotten. All the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble - not green standing grain but the dry, dead leftovers after harvest, the most flammable thing in the field, gone in an instant. The threat is total: the day shall leave them neither root nor branch. Branch and root together mean the whole plant, top to bottom, with nothing left to sprout again - a wickedness so thoroughly consumed it cannot regrow. This is the answer to a complaint Malachi's hearers had been making: that it seemed pointless to serve God, that the arrogant got away with everything and even called the proud happy (Mal. 3:15). Not forever, the prophet says. A day is set. The proud who seem so permanent now are, in the end, only stubble waiting for the fire. Notice that what the day burns is named morally, not nationally - the proud, all that do wickedly. The dividing line on that day will not run between nations or families but straight through the human heart.3
Against that fire stands the most luminous promise in the book: But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings (v. 2). The same day that is an oven to the proud is a sunrise to those who fear God. The image is exact and tender. After a long, cold night the sun crests the horizon, and its first rays spread across the land like outstretched wings - and these rays do not merely give light, they bring healing. To a people worn down, doubting whether faithfulness was worth it, the word is: morning is coming, and it comes with healing in it. And the One who rises is named the Sun of righteousness - not bare power but goodness itself dawning, setting right what was wrong. The verse then bursts into motion: ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. Picture animals shut up all winter in a dark pen, suddenly turned out into open pasture in the spring - they leap and kick and run for the sheer joy of release. That is the prophet's picture of the redeemed when the Sun rises: not solemn, but bounding into the light, healed and free. After three short chapters of rebuke and disputing, the book's deepest note turns out to be this joy.1
The vision closes the contrast: And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts (v. 3). The two destinies meet in a single image. The proud who were stubble in verse 1 are now ashes - what is left after the fire has done its work - and the faithful, so recently penned and oppressed, walk free over ground where the old tyranny has crumbled to nothing. It is important to hear what this does and does not say. The faithful do not light the fire; they do not exact the vengeance. The judging is the LORD's alone - in the day that I shall do this - and twice over the whole oracle is sealed with His own name and title, saith the LORD of hosts, the LORD of the armies of heaven, who alone commands that day. The promise to the downtrodden is simply that the order they see now is not the final order. The arrogance that looms so large will one day be underfoot, and those who feared God's name through the long night will be standing in the sun. Wrong does not get the last word; the LORD does.
Malachi 4:4Remember Ye the Law of Moses
4Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.
Between the rising Sun and the promised Elijah comes a single steadying command: Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments (v. 4). It is a backward glance at the very moment the silence is about to begin. The people are sent to Horeb - another name for Sinai - the mountain where the covenant was given, where God spoke out of the fire and Moses received the law for all Israel. The point of the command is not a turn toward cold rule-keeping; the same prophet has just been pleading for hearts that fear God's name and turn back to Him. The point is constancy. While they wait for the day that burns and the Sun that heals, while the long centuries of silence stretch ahead, they are not left without a word. They already have one. Remember it. Hold to what God has already spoken until what He has promised arrives. There is a quiet wisdom in this for any season of waiting: when no new word is coming, the task is faithfulness to the word already given. Moses is here called my servant - the great title of honour - and the command anchors the people to the proven ground beneath their feet, so that the waiting will not become wandering.
Malachi 4:5-6Behold, I Will Send You Elijah
5Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: 6And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
And so the Old Testament arrives at its last two verses, and they point off the page into the future: Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD (v. 5). After the backward look to Moses comes a forward look to a coming prophet - named for Elijah, the fearless figure who had once called a drifting nation back to God on Mount Carmel. Before the great day dawns, God will send such a messenger again: a voice to wake the people, to prepare them, to ready a heart to receive what is coming. The whole Hebrew Bible thus ends not on a full stop but on an outstretched hand. It closes with a Behold - look, watch, expect - for a messenger who has not yet come and a day that has not yet dawned. Everything leans forward. This is why the four hundred years that follow are so charged: they are not empty years but waiting years, the held breath between a promise and its keeping. The last word of the prophets is, in effect, get ready - someone is coming.2
The work this messenger will do is described with striking tenderness: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (v. 6). The promised day need not fall as a curse; it can dawn as healing - and the difference turns on hearts being turned. The phrase reaches in two directions at once. At its plainest it speaks of mended homes: estranged fathers and children brought back to one another, the most basic bonds of love repaired. But it reaches wider too - the “fathers” can call to mind the faithful generations of old, and the turning of hearts is a whole people brought back into step with the God of their fathers. Repentance, reconciliation, hearts re-knit - this is the readying the messenger brings, and it is the alternative to the curse. The very last word of the Old Testament, fittingly, is that ominous curse; the threat still hangs in the air as the page ends. But the verse has already shown the way it is escaped: hearts turned, in time, by the messenger God will send. The Hebrew Scriptures close on a knife's edge between blessing and curse - and on the promise of the One who will come to tip it toward blessing.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Malachi's closing verses with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for shemesh tzedaqah (v. 2, the “Sun of righteousness” with healing in its rays), for yom YHWH ha-gadol ve-ha-nora (v. 5, “the great and dreadful day of the LORD”), and for the way Jewish tradition handles the closing promise of Elijah. (In the Hebrew Bible's ordering these six verses fall within Malachi 3, the final chapter of the Prophets.)
- Malachi 4 ↔ Luke 1 · Matthew 11 & 17 · Isaiah 53Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Malachi 4 to the rest of Scripture - the Sun of righteousness with healing in his wings (v. 2) read beside the dayspring from on high (Luke 1:78-79) and with his stripes we are healed (Isa. 53:5), and the promised Elijah (vv. 5-6) read alongside the forerunner who comes in the spirit and power of Elias (Luke 1:17) of whom Jesus says, this is Elias, which was for to come (Matt. 11:14).
- Malachi 4 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Malachi 4 - the burning day and the imagery of stubble left without root or branch (v. 1), the “wings” of the rising sun and the freed calves of the stall (vv. 2-3), and the much-discussed closing promise of Elijah and the turning of hearts (vv. 5-6).
Where this echoes in Scripture
The Sun of Righteousness Shall Arise
- Luke 1:78-79the dayspring from on high hath visited us, To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.Malachi’s rising Sun (v. 2) received at the dawn of the Gospel - the dayspring that has visited a world in the dark.
- Isaiah 53:5he was wounded for our transgressions... and with his stripes we are healed.The healing carried in the Sun’s wings (v. 2) - the deep mending the prophets foresaw.
- John 8:12I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.The Sun of righteousness (v. 2) named in person - the light dawning over those who sat in shadow.
- Malachi 3:14-15Ye have said, It is vain to serve God... and now we call the proud happy.The complaint this oracle answers - the proud who seem happy now (v. 1) shown to be only stubble before the fire.
- Psalm 30:5weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.The same shape as verses 1-2 - the long night, and the morning that comes for those who fear the LORD.
Remember Ye the Law of Moses
- Deuteronomy 4:9-10forget not the things which thine eyes have seen... the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb.The same charge to remember Horeb (v. 4) - holding fast to the covenant given at the mountain.
- Joshua 1:7-8observe to do according to all the law... this book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth.The constancy verse 4 calls for - faithfulness to the word already given, day after day.
- Psalm 119:11Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.How the command of verse 4 is kept - the remembered word treasured up within.
- Matthew 5:17Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.The law of Moses (v. 4) honored and fulfilled, not discarded, by the One the chapter is leaning toward.
Behold, I Will Send You Elijah
- Luke 1:17he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children... to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.The promise of verses 5-6 taken up word for word at the opening of the Gospel - the forerunner foretold.
- Matthew 11:13-14For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.Jesus identifying the promised Elijah of verse 5 - the messenger come at last in John the Baptist.
- Matthew 17:11-13Elias is come already, and they knew him not... Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.The fulfillment of verse 5 made explicit - the Elijah to come, recognized after the fact.
- Matthew 3:1-3The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.The messenger of verses 5-6 at work - the voice that broke the long silence and readied the way.
- Mark 1:1-2The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ... Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.The very first lines of the earliest Gospel open by citing the promised messenger - the Old Testament’s last word becoming the New Testament’s first.