Albert Barnes Commentary Malachi 4

For, behold, the day comes, which shall burn as an oven - He had declared the great separation of the God-fearing and the God-blaspheming, those who served God and those who did not serve God; the righteous and the wicked. Now he declares the way and time of the separation: the Day of Judgment.

Daniel had described the fire of that day (Daniel 7:9–10): “The throne (of the Ancient of days) was a fiery flame; his wheels a burning fire: a fiery stream issued and came forth from Him: the judgment was set and the books were opened.”

Fire is always spoken of as accompanying the judgment. For example, it is written, “Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence, a fire shall devour before Him” (Psalms 50:3). Also, “Behold the Lord will come with fire: for by fire and by His sword will the Lord plead with all flesh:” (Isaiah 66:15–16). And as the Apostle Paul states, “Every man’s work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire: and the fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort it is” (1 Corinthians 3:13).

Peter tells us that this fire will involve the burning of the world itself (2 Peter 3:7–10): “the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are in it shall be burned up.”

The oven, or furnace, pictures the intensity of the heat, which is white from its intensity, and darts forth fiercely, shooting up like a living creature, and destroying life, like the flame of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace; for as it is written (Daniel 3:22), the “burning fiery furnace slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.” The whole world shall be one burning furnace.

And all the proud and all that do wickedly - This refers to all those whom the complainers pronounced “blessed” (Malachi 3:15), indeed, and all who should afterward be like them (he insists on the universality of the judgment). “Every doer of wickedness,” up to that day and those who will then exist, shall be stubble.

The proud and mighty, who in this life were strong as iron and brass, so that no one dared resist them, but they dared to fight with God—these, in the Day of Judgment, shall be utterly powerless, like stubble that cannot resist the fire, in an “ever-living death.”

That shall leave them neither root nor branch - That is, they shall have no hope of shooting up again to life—that life, I mean, which is worthy of love, and in glory with God, in holiness and bliss.

For when the root has not been wholly cut away, nor the shoot torn up from the depths, some hope is retained that it may again shoot up. For, as it is written (Job 14:7): “There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.”

But if it is wholly torn up from below and from its very roots, and its shoots are fiercely cut away, all hope that it can again shoot up to life will also perish. So, he says, will all hope of the lovers of sin perish. For so the divine Isaiah clearly announces (Isaiah 66:24), “Their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorring to all flesh.”

And you shall tread down the wicked, for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet. It shall be a great reversal. He that exalts himself shall be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted – here the wicked often have the pre-eminence. This was the complaint of the murmurers among the Jews; in the morning of the Resurrection (Psalms 49:14), the upright shall have dominion over them.

The wicked, he had said, shall be as stubble, and that day (Psalms 4:1), shall burn them up; here, then, they are as the ashes, the only remnant of the stubble, as the dust under the feet.

The elect shall rejoice that they have, in mercy, escaped such misery. Therefore they shall be kindled inconceivably with the divine love and shall from their inmost heart give thanks to God. And being thus of one mind with God, and seeing all things as He sees, they will rejoice in His judgments, because they are His.

For they cannot have the slightest wish other than the all-perfect Will of God. So Isaiah closes his prophecy (Isaiah 66:24), And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men who have transgressed against Me, for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh. So (Psalms 58:10). The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; and another Psalmist (Psalms 107:42), The righteous shall see and rejoice; and all wickedness shall stop her mouth; and Job (Job 22:19). The righteous see and are glad, and the innocent laugh them to scorn.

Remember ye the law of Moses, My servant - (Galatians 3:24). The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ. Then those who were most faithful to the law would be most prepared for Christ. But for those of his own day, too, who were negligent both of the ceremonial and moral law, he says, “Since the judgment of God will be so fearful, remember now unceasingly and observe the law of God given by Moses.”

Which I commanded -

Unto him for (literally upon, incumbent upon) all Israel - Not Moses commanded them, but God by His servant Moses. Therefore, He “would in the day of judgment take strict account of each, whether they had or had not kept them. He would glorify those who obeyed; He would condemn those who disobeyed them.”

They had asked, “Where is the God of judgment?” (Malachi 2:17) and, “What profit, that we have kept the ordinance?” (Malachi 3:14). He tells them of the judgment to come and commands them to take heed that they did indeed keep them, for there was a day of account to be held for all.

The statutes and judgments - Better, “statutes and judgments,” i.e., consisting in them; it seems added as an explanation of the word “law,” individualizing them.

Duty is fulfilled, not in a general acknowledgment of law, or an arbitrary selection of some favorite commandments which cost the human will less. As, in our Lord’s time, they minutely observed the law of tithes but: “omitted weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith” (Matthew 23:23). It is in obedience to the commandments, one by one, one and all.

Moses exhorted to the keeping of the law under these same words (Deuteronomy 4:1–2, 5, 8, 14): “Now, therefore hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and judgments which I teach you, to do them, that ye may live. Ye shall not add unto the word that I command you, neither shall ye diminish it. Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me. What nation so great, that hath statutes and judgments, righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? The Lord commanded me at that time, to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land, whither ye go to possess it.”

Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet (I send, as a future event, near in the prophet’s mind) – The Archangel Gabriel interprets this for us to include the sending of John the Immerser. For he not only says (Luke 1:17) that John shall go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elias, but describes his mission in the characteristic words of Malachi, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Those other words from Luke, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, perhaps represent the sequel in Malachi, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; for their hearts could only be so turned by conversion to God, whom the fathers—patriarchs and prophets—knew, loved, and served, and whom they served in name only.

John the Immerser, in denying that he was Elias (John 1:21), denied only that he was that great prophet himself. Our Lord, in saying (Matthew 11:14), “This is Elias, who was to come,” and (Matthew 17:12) that “Elias has come already and they did not know him, but have done to him whatever they wished,” met the error of the scribes that He could not be the Christ because Elias had not yet come.

When He says (Matthew 17:11), “Elias truly shall first come and restore all things,” He implies a coming of Elijah other than that of John the Immerser, since John was already martyred, and all things were not yet restored. This must also be the fullest fulfillment. “The great and terrible Day of the Lord” is the Day of Judgment, of which all earthly judgments, however devastating (such as the destruction of Jerusalem), are but shadows and foretastes. Before our Lord’s first coming, all things looked toward it; and since that coming, all looks toward the second, which is the completion of the first and of all things in time.

Our Lord’s words, “Elias truly shall first come and restore all things,” seem to me to leave no question that, just as John the Immerser came in the spirit and power of Elias before His first coming, so, before the second coming, Elijah himself should come in person, as Jews and Christians alike have expected. This has been the Christian expectation from the first. Justin Martyr asked his opponent, “Shall we not conceive that the Word of God has proclaimed Elias to be the forerunner of the great and terrible day of His second Coming?” “Certainly,” was Trypho’s reply. Justin continues, “Our Lord Himself taught us in His own teaching that this very thing shall be, when He said that ‘Elias also shall come;’ and we know that this shall be fulfilled when He is about to come from heaven in glory.”

Tertullian says, “Elias is to come again, not after a departure from life, but after a translation; not to be restored to the body, from which he was never taken; but to be restored to the world, from which he was translated; not by way of restoration to life, but for the completion of prophecy; one and the same in name and in person.” He also states, “Enoch and Elias were translated, and their death is not recorded, as being postponed; but they are reserved to die, that they may vanquish Antichrist by their blood.”

And, in proof that the end was not yet, [it is said,] “No one has yet received Elias; no one has yet fled from Antichrist.” The ancient author of the verses against Marcion states: “Elias who has not yet tasted the debt of death, because he is again to come into the world.”

Origen says simply in one place that the Savior answered the question regarding the Scribes’ objection, “not annulling what had been handed down concerning Elias, but affirming that there was another coming of Elias before Christ, unknown to the Scribes, according to which, not knowing him, and being, in a manner, accomplices in his being cast into prison by Herod and slain by him, they had done to him what they pleased.”

Hippolytus states: “As two Comings of our Lord and Savior were indicated by the Scriptures—the first in the flesh, in dishonor, that He might be set at naught; the second in glory, when He shall come from heaven with the heavenly host and the glory of the Father—so two forerunners were pointed out: the first, John, the son of Zacharias; and again—since He is manifested as Judge at the end of the world—His forerunners must first appear, as He says through Malachi, ‘I will send to you Elias the Tishbite before the great and terrible day of the Lord shall come.’”

Hilary writes: “The Apostles inquire in anxiety about the times of Elias. To whom He answers that ‘Elias will come and restore all things,’ that is, will recall to the knowledge of God what he shall find of Israel. But He signifies that John came ‘in the spirit and power of Elias,’ to whom they had shown all severe and harsh dealings, so that, by announcing beforehand the Coming of the Lord, he might be a forerunner of the Passion also by an example of wrong and harassment.” Hilary also says: “We understand that those same prophets (Moses and Elias) will come before His Coming, who, the Apocalypse of John says, will be slain by Antichrist, although there are various opinions among many as to Enoch or Jeremiah, that one of them is to die, as Elias.”

Hilary the Deacon (355 A.D.), commenting on the words, “I suppose God has set forth us the Apostles last,” says: “He therefore applies these to his own person, because he was always in distress, suffering, beyond the rest, persecutions and distresses, as Enoch and Elias will suffer, who will be Apostles at the last time. For they have to be sent before Christ to prepare the people of God and fortify all the Churches to resist Antichrist, of whom the Apocalypse attests that they will suffer persecutions and be slain.” He continues: “When the faithless shall be secure of the kingdom of the devil, the saints (that is, Enoch and Elias) being slain, rejoicing in the victory, and ‘sending gifts one to another,’ as the Apocalypse says (Revelation 11:10), sudden destruction shall come upon them. For Christ at His Coming shall destroy them all.”

Gregory of Nyssa quotes the prophecy under the heading that “before the second Coming of our Lord, Elias should come.”

Ambrose writes: “Because the Lord was to come down from heaven and to ascend to heaven, He raised Elias to heaven, to bring him back to the earth at the time He should please.” He also states: “The beast, Antichrist, ascends from the abyss to fight against Elias and Enoch and John, who are restored to the earth for the testimony to the Lord Jesus, as we read in the Apocalypse of John.”

Jerome gives the mystical meaning here: “God will send, in Elias (which is interpreted ‘My God,’ and who is of the town Tishbe, which signifies ‘conversion’ or ‘penitence’), the whole choir of the prophets, ‘to convert the heart of the fathers to the sons’—namely, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the patriarchs—that their posterity may believe in the Lord the Savior, in whom they themselves believed: ‘for Abraham saw the day of the Lord and was glad.’” Here, Jerome speaks of the “coming of Elias before their anointed” as a supposition of Jews and Judaizing heretics. But in commenting on our Lord’s words in Matthew, he adheres twice to the literal meaning.

On Matthew 11:14-15, Jerome states: “Some think that John is therefore called Elias because, as according to Malachi, [Elias is to come] at the second coming of the Savior.” He further notes, commenting on Matthew 17:11-12, that “Elias will precede and announce the Judge to come, so John did at His first coming, and each is a messenger of the first or second coming of the Lord.” And again concisely, on Matthew 17:11-12: “He who is to come in the second Coming of the Savior in the actual body now comes through John in spirit and power.” Jerome also speaks of Enoch and Elias as “the two witnesses in the Revelation, since, according to the Apocalypse of John, Enoch and Elias are spoken of as having to die.”

Chrysostom says: “When He says that Elias ‘cometh and shall restore all things,’ He means Elias himself, and the conversion of the Jews, which shall then occur. But when He says, ‘which was to come,’ He calls John Elias, according to the manner of his ministry.”

In Augustine’s time, it was the universal belief. He writes: “When he (Malachi) had admonished them to remember the law of Moses—because he foresaw that for a long time they would not receive it spiritually, as they ought—he added immediately, ‘And I will send you Elias the Thisbite,’ etc. That when, through this Elias, the great and wonderful prophet, at the last time before the judgment, the law shall have been explained to them, the Jews shall believe in the true Christ (that is, in our Christ), is everywhere in the mouths and hearts of the faithful.”

Augustine continues: “For not without reason is it hoped that he shall come before the Coming of the Savior as Judge, because not without reason is it believed that he still lives. For he was carried in a chariot of fire from things below, which Scripture most evidently attests. When he shall come then, by explaining the law spiritually, which the Jews now understand carnally, he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children.”

Cyril of Alexandria, his antagonist Theodoret, and Theodore of Mopsuestia (who was loose from all tradition) had the same clear belief. Cyril states: “It is demonstrative of the gentleness and long-suffering of God that Elias the Tishbite shall also shine upon us, to announce beforehand when the Judge shall come to those in the whole world. For the Son shall come down as Judge, in the glory of the Father, attended by the angels, and shall ‘sit on the throne of His glory, judging the world in righteousness, and shall reward every man according to his works.’ But since we are in many sins, it is well for us that the divine prophet goes before Him, bringing all those on earth to one mind, so that all, being brought to unity through the faith and ceasing from evil intents, may fulfill what is good, and so be saved when the Judge comes down. The blessed John the Baptist came before Him ‘in the spirit and power of Elias.’ But, as John preached, saying, ‘Prepare you the way of the Lord, make His paths straight,’ so also the divine Elias proclaims His then being near and almost present, that He may ‘judge the world in righteousness.’”

Theodoret writes: “Malachi teaches us how, when Antichrist shall presume on these things, the great Elias shall appear, preaching to the Jews the coming of Christ. He shall convert many, for this is the meaning of ‘he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children’ (that is, the Jews, for these he calls fathers, as being older in knowledge) to those who believed from the Gentiles. Those who shall believe through the preaching of the great Elias, and shall join themselves to the Gentiles who seized the salvation sent to them, shall become one church. He hints how, when these things are done by Antichrist, Michael the Archangel will set all in motion, so that Elias should come and announce beforehand the coming of the Lord, that the Jews then living may obtain salvation.”

And on this passage, Theodoret says: “Knowing well that they would neither obey the law nor receive Him when He came, but would deliver Him to be crucified, He promises them, in His unspeakable love for man, that He will again send Elias as a herald of salvation: ‘Lo, I will send you Elias the Tishbite.’ And signifying the time, He added, ‘Before the great and terrible day of the Lord shall come.’ He named the Day of His Second Coming. But He teaches us what the great Elias shall do when he comes: ‘Who shall bring back the heart of the father to the son,’ etc. And pointing out the end for which Elias should first come, He says, ‘Lest I come and smite the earth utterly.’ For He means, lest, finding you all in unbelief, He should send you all to that endless punishment, Elias will first come and will persuade you, O Jews, to unite yourselves indissolubly with those from the Gentiles who believe in Me, and to be united to My one Church.”

Theodore of Mopsuestia paraphrases: “In addition to all which I have said, I give you this last commandment: to remember My law, which I gave to all Israel through Moses, plainly declaring what they ought to do in each thing, and as the first token of obedience, to receive the Lord Christ when He comes, appearing for the salvation of all men. He will end the law but show His own perfection. It would have been well if you had immediately believed Him when He came and known Him as He whom Moses and all the prophets signified, Who should put an end to the law and reveal the common salvation of all men, so that it should be manifest to all that this is the sum and chief good of the whole dispensation of the law: to bring all men to the Lord Christ, Who, for those great goods, should be manifested in His own time.

But since, when He manifested Himself, you manifested your own unseemliness, the blessed Elias shall be sent to you before the second Coming of Christ. He will come from heaven to unite those who, for religion, are separated from each other, and, through the knowledge of religion, to bring the fathers to one-mindedness with the children, and in a word, to bring all men to one and the same harmony, when those then found in ungodliness shall receive from him the knowledge of the truth in the communion with the godly that follows.”

The African author of the work “On the Promises and Predictions of God” (writing between 450 and 455 A.D.) states: “Against Antichrist shall be sent two witnesses, the prophets Enoch and Elijah, against whom shall arise three false prophets of Antichrist.”

Isidore of Seville (595 A.D.) writes: “Elias, carried in a chariot of fire, ascended to heaven, to come according to the prophet Malachi at the end of the world, and to precede Christ, to announce His last coming with great deeds and wonderful signs, so that on earth too, Antichrist will war against him, be against him, or him who is to come with him, and will slay them; their bodies also will lie unburied in the streets. Then, raised by the Lord, they will smite the kingdom of Antichrist with a great blow. After this, the Lord will come and will slay Antichrist with the word of His mouth, and those who worshiped him.” Isidore adds: “This will be in the last times, when, on the preaching of Elias, Judah will be converted to Christ.”

To add one more, for his great gifts, Gregory the Great states: “It is promised that when Elias shall come, he shall bring back the hearts of the sons to their fathers, so that the doctrine of the old, which is now taken from the hearts of the Jews, may, in the mercy of God, return when the sons shall begin to understand from the Lord God what the fathers taught.”

Gregory continues: “Although Elias is related to have been carried to heaven, he postponed, he did not escape, death. For it is said of him by the mouth of the Truth Himself, ‘Elias shall come and restore all things.’ He shall come to ‘restore all things;’ for for this purpose he is restored to this world, that he may both fulfill the office of preaching and pay the debt of the flesh.”

Furthermore, Gregory writes: “The holy Church, although it now loses many through the shock of temptation, yet at the end of the world it receives its own double when, having received the Gentiles to the full, all Judea too, which shall then exist, agrees to hasten to its faith. For thus it is written, ‘Until the fullness of the Gentiles shall come, and so all Israel shall be saved.’ Hence, in the Gospel, the Truth says, ‘Elias shall come and shall restore all things.’ For now the Church has lost the Israelites, whom it could not convert by preaching; but then, at the preaching of Elias, while it collects all which it shall find, it receives in a manner more fully what it has lost.”

Finally, Gregory explains: “John is spoken of as to come in the spirit and power of Elias because, as Elias shall precede the second Coming of the Lord, so John preceded His first. For as Elias will come as precursor of the Judge, so John was made the precursor of the Redeemer. John then was Elias in spirit; he was not Elias in person. What then the Lord acknowledged regarding the spirit, John denies regarding the person.”

Whether Elijah is one of the two witnesses spoken of in the Apocalypse is obviously a distinct question. Of commentators on the Apocalypse, Arethas remarks that regarding Elijah, there is clear testimony from Holy Scripture (this of Malachi); but that concerning Enoch, we have only the fact of his being freed from death by translation and the tradition of the Church. John Damascene fixed the belief in the Eastern Church.

In the West, Bede, for example, who speaks of the belief that the two witnesses were Elijah and Enoch as what was said by “some doctors,” takes our Lord’s declaration that Elijah shall return in its simple meaning (commenting on Matthew 17:11 and Mark 9:12). Yet it was no matter of faith. When the belief in a personal Antichrist was changed by Luther and Calvin, the belief in a personal forerunner of Christ also gave way.