* For the contraction it is possible and customary to appeal to the fact that the name of the mother of Hezekiah is given as ‘2 Abi in 2K 183, and as ™3x Abijah in 20h 291. But, since Abjijah must be translated ‘J” is father,’ this Ly Arrears would require that Malachi should be rendered, not ‘ the messenger of J”, but ‘ J” is messenger.’
Its reading is ἐν χειρὶ ἀγγίλον αὐτοῦ, the word of J” ‘by the hand of His messenger.
t ‘Quem Esdram scribam, le isque doctorem, Hebrai οί: mant’ (Prafatio in duodecim ).
MALACHI
which are mentioned in the histories of Ezra and Nehemiah, clearly proves a very similar condition of affairs in the community. Legislators and prophet have alike to protest against such abuses as neglect of the sacred dues, irregular sacrifices, and intermarriage with foreign women.* So similar is the whole situation that Malachi must have been nearly contemporaneous with those reformers.
Opinion, however, is still divided as to whether Malachi prepared the way by word for the later legislative acts of Ezra and Moherniah, or whether he supplemented and enforced the work which these began. In the former case, the book must have been written before B.C. 458, the date of Ezra’s arrival in Jerusalem ; in the latter, either shortly before or after B.C. 432, when Nehemiah’s second visit to that city took place. The question cannot be decided with certainty. But the manner in which intermarriage with foreigners is con- demned as a sin, not against the strict letter of the law, but against J”s relation as Father to His people (2'), agrees best with a time before Ezra had legislated on the subject (cf. OT JC? p. 427, n. 2). Malachi also connects those foreign marriages with the prevalence of divorce, as though the one caused the other. Such a con- nexion seems more likely at a time when foreign intermarriage, being novel, was causing many to put away their native wives, than at the period when Ezra found it a settled practice among his people. The terms also in which the governor is alluded to (18 ye treat J” as ye would not treat the Persian satrap) lose half their force if the position was occupied not by a foreigner but by Nehemiah.
A more uncertain means of dating the book is found in its information about the details of ritual. Thus the priests are regarded as the sons of Levi (28 33), not of Aaron. This would seem to imply that the book was written from the standpoint of D, and before the Priestly Code had degraded the Levites into a subordinate position towards the sons of Aaron. On the other hand, the command to offer tithes in the temple (31), presumably for the support of the officiating Levites, agrees more closely with the rule of P (Nu 18") than with that of Ὁ (Dt 14”"-), which commands the giver to share them at home with the Levites and the poor. This may mark the transition from the earlier to the later practice—a transition which was made easier by the fact that, when the community was the city, all the Levites were attached to the temple. The priest is still the exponent of the law (27); after the promulgation of P he was only its servant.t Were we less ignorant of the history of Edom at this period, the opening section (17°), with its reference to the condition of that people, would furnish the best means of determining the exact date.
iii. CONDITIONS PRESUPPOSED BY THE BooK.— The condition of the people was enough to cause grave anxiety. They had suffered from drought and locusts (3). The revolts of Egypt against Persia, which were quickened by news of Persia’s waning strength in Asia Minor, must have entailed heavy military requisitions on Palestine for the support of the armies which were sent against the rebels. Men were losing heart. They had sacrificed something when, at the bidding of their religious leaders, they returned from Babylon. They had expected that the holy land would repay those sacrifices, and instead it was demand- ing larger. The glowing visions of Deutero-Isaiah, some of which were dangerously material in them-
+" Of. Mal 87-12 with Neh 108299 13414, and Mal 21016 with Ezr 95 103. 16-44, Neh 1050 1323-81,
+ For an adequate statement of the relations between Malachi, Dand P, cf. W. B. Smith, ΟΤΩ ΟἽ 425 ff.
MALACHI
selves, and were further materialized in the popular mind, did not correspond with the stern realities of Jerusalem. Haggai had believed (2!) the cause of their misery to be their negligence in the restoration of the temple, and had promised 55 return on the completion of the work. But the temple was rebuilt, and everything remained as before, which, to men who had hoped for so much, must have appeared worse than before. Men were beginning to ask for proofs of that divine love of which they heard so often, but of which they thought that they saw so little (1). They were debating, though not yet openly, whether it were not better, after all, to become like the heathen among whom they lived (3!*}), And, where such ideas were even being debated among the better minds of the nation,* the less religious must have already begun to show their discouragement, and to cast off those distinctive forms which separated Judah from the other nations. The priests, as a rule, were slovenly in their performance of the ritual. That it was a weary form (11%) they expressed by their careless- ness of its requirements more eloquently than by words. The laity, miserable, heartless, and copy- ing their religious leaders, were inclined to stint their sacrifices (115), and to withhold their dues (37). And the increasing practice of intermarriage with foreign women (215-16), itself both sign and cause of a slackening devotion to the God of Israel, was sapping their family life and helping to merge the people into the surrounding paganism. It is this condition which Malachi faces; and he is prophet enough to see the root from which all the rest springs. Their religious life is weak, their spiritual vision dim. And this weakened religious life is affecting their moral and social condition, as well as their religious practice. It is causing them at once to make light of marriage, and to neglect ritual. The people must return to J” (37). They need a quickened sense of the worth of the divine favour. For that would bring with it a different judgment of life. To be written in God’s book of remembrance, to belong to God, would make many ills in life tolerable (3168), To return to J” would make impossible their frequent divorce, which at presut is rendering God deaf to their prayers (2). f the prophet seems to write as though the whole