Albert Barnes Commentary Malachi 3:1

"Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye desire, behold, he cometh, saith Jehovah of hosts." — Malachi 3:1 (ASV)

God answers their complaints about the absence of His judgments, stating that they would come, but would also include those who clamored for them. For no one who knew his own sinfulness would call for the judgment of God, as he himself is the chief of sinners. Augustine pictures one saying to God, “Take away the ungodly man,” and God answers, “Which?”

Behold, I send My messenger before My face, and he shall prepare My way before Me—they, therefore, were not prepared for His Coming, for whom they clamored.

The messenger is the same one whom Isaiah had foretold, whose words Malachi uses (Isaiah 40:3): The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare you the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. “You, child,” was the prophecy on John the Immerser’s birth, “shall be called the prophet of the Highest, for you shall go before the face of the Lord to prepare His way, to give knowledge of salvation to His people, for the remission of their sins” (Luke 1:76).

Repentance was to be the preparation for the kingdom of Christ, the Messiah, for whom they looked so impatiently.

He who speaks is He who should come, God the Son. For it was before Him Who came and dwelt among us that the way was to be prepared. He speaks here in His divine nature, as the Lord Who should send, and Who should Himself come in our flesh. In the Gospel, when He had come in the flesh, He speaks not of His own Person but of the Father, since “indivisible are the operations of the Trinity, and what the One does, the other Two do, since the Three are of one nature, power, and operation.” Therefore Christ, in order to give no excuse to the Jews to speak against Him before the time, refers to the Father His life (John 6:57), His doctrine (John 7:16), His words (John 3:11; John 5:43; John 8:38, 40, 47, 55; John 12:49; John 14:10, 24), and His works (John 4:34; John 5:19–20, 26, 30, 36; John 6:38; John 8:28; John 9:4; John 10:25, 32, 37-38; John 14:10–11).

“Those works, which do not relate to that which uniquely belongs to each Person, being common, are ascribed now to One Person, now to Another, in order to reveal the One Substance in the Trinity of Persons.” Thus, John says (John 12:41) that Isaiah spoke of the unbelief of the Jews when he saw the glory of God the Son and spoke of Him; and Paul says (Acts 28:25) that the Holy Spirit spoke then by him.

And he shall prepare the way before Me—“The same is God’s way here, and Christ’s there, an evident proof that Christ is one God with the Father, and that, in Christ, God came and was manifest in the flesh.”

The prophets and all who turned men to righteousness, or who retained the knowledge of the truth or of righteousness or of God in the world, did, in their degree, prepare the way for Christ. But John was His immediate forerunner “before His Face,” the herald of His immediate approach; this is why he is called “the end of the law, and the beginning of the Gospel,” “the lamp before the Light, the voice before the Word, the mediator between the Old and the New Testament,” “the link of the law and of grace; a new morning star; a ray, before the true Sun should burst forth,” the end of night, the beginning of day.

And the Lord, whom you seek, shall suddenly come to His temple—He, Whose coming they sought, was Almighty God, the God of Judgment. He who should come was the Lord, again Almighty God, since, in usage too, none else is called the Lord, as none else can be. The temple also, to which He was to come, the temple of God, is His own.

The messenger, or the Angel of the covenant, plainly, even from the parallelism, is the same as the Lord. It was one for whom they looked; one whose absence they complained of (Malachi 2:17), Where is the God of judgment?; one who should come to His temple; one whose coming they sought and prepared to have pleasure in; one of whom it is repeated, Lo, He comes; one in the day of whose coming, at whose appearing, it was asked, Who shall stand?

“All Christian interpreters are agreed that this Lord is Christ (Acts 2:36), whom God has made both Lord and Christ, and (Acts 10:36) Who is Lord over all; by whom all things were made, are sustained and governed; Who is (as the root of the word implies) the basis and foundation, not of any private family, tribe or kingdom, but of all (1 Corinthians 8:6); by whom are all things and we by Him: and whose we are also by right of redemption; and so He is Lord of lords and King of kings (Revelation 17:14; Revelation 19:16), deservedly called the Lord.”

As, then, the special presence of God was often indicated in connection with the Angel of the Lord, so, here, He who was to come was entitled the Angel or messenger of the covenant, as God also calls Him the covenant itself.

As Isaiah 42:6 says, I will give You for a covenant of the people, a light of the Gentiles.

He it was (Isaiah 63:9), the Angel of His presence, who saved His former people, in whom His Name was, and who, by the prerogative of God, would (Exodus 23:21) not pardon their transgressions.

He would be (Hebrews 12:24; Hebrews 8:6) the Mediator of the new and better covenant, which is promised (Jeremiah 31:32–33; Hebrews 8:9), not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, which My covenant they broke, although I was a husband to them, says the Lord; but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Whom you seek, are seeking, whom you delight in—that is, profess so to do. He will come, but will be very different from Him whom you look for, an Avenger on your enemies. Judgment will come, but it will begin with yourselves.

Shall suddenly come—“unawares, when men should not think of Him; which is why perhaps it is that the Jews reckon the Messiah among what shall come unawares.” As it is here said of His first Coming, so it is said of His second Coming (which may be comprehended under what is spoken of here) that unless they diligently watch for it, it shall come upon them unawares (Luke 21:35); suddenly (Mark 13:36); in such an hour as they think not (Matthew 24:44). “The Lord of glory always comes, like a thief in the night, to those who sleep in their sins.”

Lo, He will come: He insists again and calls their minds to that Coming—certain, swift, new, wonderful, on which all eyes should be set—but His coming would be a sifting-time.