The tradition, however, may at least be taken as implying the perception of a real affinity between the prophet and the great restorer of the law. The religious spirit of Malachi’s prophecy is that of the prayers of Ezra and Nehemiah. A strong sense of the unique privileges of the children of Jacob, the objects of electing love (i. 2), the children of the Divine Father (ii. 10). is combined with an equally strong assurance of Jehovah’s righteousness amidst the many miseries that pressed on the unhappy inhabitants of Judaea. At an earlier date the prophet Haggai had taught that the people could not expect Jehovah’s blessing while the temple lay in ruins. In Malachi’s time the temple was built (i. 10) and the priests waited in their office, but still a curse seemed to rest on the nation’s labours (iii 9). To Malachi the reason of this is plain. The “law of Moses” was forgotten (iv. 4 [iii. 22]); let the people return to Jehovah, and He will return to them. It was vain to complain, saying, “Every one that doeth evil is good in the eyes of Jehovah,” or “Where is the God of judgment?’"—vain to ask “Wherein shall we return ?” Obedience to the law is the sure path to blessing (ii 17-iii. 12).

It is not e⅞sy to say whether the law to which Malachi recalls the people is that which was established by the covenant taken under Ezra, or whether the prophet wrote before that event. It is at least the Deuteronomic law that is most familiar to him, as appears from his use of the name Horeb for the mountain of the law, and the Deuteronomic phrase “statutes and judgments " (iv. 4), from his language as to tithes and offerings (iii. 8, 10, comp. Deut, xii. 11, xxvl 12), and especially from his conception of the priesthood as resting on a covenant with Levi (ii. 4 sq.). The abuses of which he particularly complains are such as were found rampant by Ezra and Nehemiah,—marriage with foreign women (ii. 11, comp. Ezra ix., Neh. xiii. 23 sq., Deut. vii. 3) and failure in payment of sacred dues (iii. 8 sq., comp. Neh. x. 34 sq., xiii. 10 sq., Deut. xxvi. 12 sq. y ). Add to this that the position of the priests had fallen into contempt (ii. 9), and that the oral law is still one of their chief trusts (ii. 6 sq.), and we shall be disposed to conclude that, if Malachi’s work did not precede the reformation of Ezra, it must have fallen very little later, and before the new order was thoroughly established. The prophecy of Joel shows the new theocracy in much fuller development.

The object of Ezra and Nehemiah was to establish the law by means of the organs of government under warrant from the Great King. Malachi looks for reformation in another direction. He calls the people to repentance, and he enforces the call by proclaiming the approach of Jehovah in judgment agιinst the sorcerers, the adulterers, the false swearers, the oppressors of the poor, the orphan, and the stranger. Then it shall be seen that He is indeed a God of righteous judgment, distinguishing between those that serve Him and those that serve Him not. The Sun of Righteousness shall shine forth on those that fear Jehovah’s name; they shall go forth with joy, and tread the wicked under foot. The conception of the day of final decision, when Jehovah shall come suddenly to His temple (iii. 1) and confound those who think the presumptuous godless happy (iii. 15), is taken from earlier prophets, but it receives a special character from an application of a thought based on Isa. xl. 3. The day of Jehovah would be a curse not a blessing if it found the nation in its present state, the priests listlessly performing a fraudulent service (i. 7-ii. 9), the people bound by marriage to heathen women, while the tears of the daughters of Israel, thrust aside to make way for strangers, cover the altar (ii. 11-16), all faith in divine justice gone (ii. 17, iii. 14 sq.), sorcery, uncleanness, falsehood, and oppression rampant (iii. 5), the house of God deprived of its dues (iii. 8), and the true fearers of God a little flock gathered together in private exercises of religion (perhaps the germ of the later synagogue) in the midst of a godless nation (iii. 16). That the day of Jehovah is delayed in such a state of things is but a new proof of His unchanging love (iii. 6), which refuses to consume the sons of Jacob. Meantime He is about to send His messenger to prepare His way before Him. The prophet Elijah must reappear to bring back the hearts of fathers and children before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come. Elijah was the advocate of national decision in the great concerns of Israel’s religion; and it is such decision, a clear recognition of what the service of Jehovah means, a purging of His professed worshippers from hypocritical and half-hearted service (iii 3) that Malachi with his intense religious earnestness sees to be the only salvation of the nation. In thus looking to the return of an ancient prophet to do the work for which later prophecy is too weak, Malachi unconsciously signalizes the decay of the order of which he was one of the last representatives; and the somewhat mechanical measure which he applies to the people’s sins, as for example when he teaches that if the sacred dues were rightly paid prosperous seasons would at once return (iii. 10), heralds the advent of that system of formal legalism which thought that all religious duty could be reduced to a system of set rules. It was left to a greater Teacher to show that hypocrisy and vain religion might coexist with Pharisaic exactness in the observance of the whole letter of the law. Yet Malachi himself is no mere formalist. To him, as to the Deuteronomic legislation, the forms of legal observance are of value only as the fitting expression of Israel’s peculiar sonship and service, and he shows himself a true prophet when he contrasts the worthless ministry of unwilling priests with the pure offering of prayer and praise that rises from all corners of the Hebrew dispersion (i. 11), or when he asserts the brotherhood of all Israelites under their one Father (ii. 10), not merely as a ground of separation from the heathen, but as inconsistent with the selfish and cruel freedom of divorce current in his time. It is characteristic of later Judaism that an arbitrary exegesis transformed this anticipation of the doctrine of marriage laid down in the gospel into an express sanction of the right of thé husband to put away his wife at will.

The style of Malachi, like his argument, corresponds in its generally prosaic character to that transformation or decay of prophecy which began with Ezekiel; and Ewald has rightly called attention to the fact that the conduct of the argument already shows traces of the dialectic manner of the schools. Yet there is a simple dignity in the manner not unworthy of a prophet, and rising from time to time to poetical rhythm.

The exegetical helps to the studyof Malachi are mainly thesameas have been already cited in the article Haggai. Reference mayalsobe made to the lengthy commentary of Reinke (Roman Catholic), 1856; to Μ. Sänger, Maleachi, eine exegetische Studie, 1867; and among older commentaries to that of Pococke (2d ed., 1692).