Malachi 1:2-5
Wherein have you loved us
The first statement is affection and the first reply is a demand for evidence. That pattern, statement and objection, runs through all four chapters.
People of the Bible
Malachi
Wrote the last page of the Old Testament as an argument, and the audience answers back seven times.
Malachi speaks to a community with a temple, a priesthood and a working sacrificial system, and none of it is doing anything. The book is built as a dispute: God makes a statement, the people ask a question back, and the question is always a form of denial. I have loved you, and they say wherein have you loved us. You have despised my name, and they say wherein have we despised it. The answer is the animals on the altar, blind and lame and sick, offered because they were not worth keeping.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Malachi
- 01
- 02
Malachi 1:6-14
Offer it now to your governor
Blind, lame and sick animals brought to the altar. The test proposed is social rather than theological: try giving that to the man who rules you and see whether he accepts it.
- 03
Malachi 2:13-16
The wife of your youth
They cover the altar with tears and ask why the offering is not regarded. The answer is that the LORD was witness between you and the companion of your covenant.
- 04
Malachi 3:8-12
Will a man rob God
Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, and prove me now, whether I will not open the windows of heaven. It is the one place in Scripture where testing God is invited.
- 05
Malachi 4:2-6
The sun of righteousness
Healing in his wings, and calves of the stall. Then Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the LORD, turning the heart of the fathers to the children, and the Old Testament stops.
Why it matters
Malachi closes the Old Testament and leaves two things on the table. One is the charge that this worship would be better stopped than continued: who is there among you that would shut the doors for nothing, and I have no pleasure in you. The other is a promise about a messenger who will prepare the way, and about Elijah before the great and dreadful day, turning the heart of the fathers to the children. The next voice in the story is a man in the wilderness in camel’s hair.
10 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
