Commentary - Malachi 4:5-6

Bird's-eye view

Here, at the very close of the Old Testament canon, God provides a final, hinge-pin prophecy that anticipates the entire drama of the New Testament's arrival. After four hundred years of prophetic silence, God promises to break that silence not with the Messiah Himself, but with a forerunner, a preparatory figure in the mold of the archetypal prophet, Elijah. This coming prophet's task is defined as a ministry of radical reconciliation, a turning of hearts within the fundamental unit of society: the family. This restoration is not presented as a sentimental nicety, but as the absolute prerequisite for averting a national catastrophe. The alternative to this familial repentance is a covenantal curse of the highest order, a striking of "the land" with utter destruction. This prophecy, therefore, sets the stage for the ministry of John the Baptist, the coming of Christ, and the subsequent judgment that fell upon the apostate Jewish nation in A.D. 70. It is the final warning shot of the Old Covenant before the arrival of the New.

In essence, Malachi is telling us that the gospel comes to households before it comes to capitols. The great movements of God in history are preceded by reformation in the home. The message of the kingdom is one that reorders our most basic relationships, starting with fathers and their children. Failure to receive this message of internal, familial repentance would result in an external, national judgment. The entire Old Testament thus concludes with a stark choice: revival in the home or utter ruin for the nation.

Outline

Context In Malachi

Malachi has been a book of covenant lawsuits. God has brought a series of charges against His people, particularly the priesthood, for their faithlessness, their polluted worship, and their social injustice. The people have responded not with repentance, but with a cynical, weary skepticism ("How have you loved us?"). The book has repeatedly pointed forward to a coming day of judgment and purification, a day when the Lord would suddenly come to His temple like a refiner's fire (Mal 3:1-3). These final two verses serve as the climax of all these warnings. They provide God's final prescription for how His people might prepare for this "great and awesome day." The solution is not a new set of external rituals, for their rituals were already corrupt. The solution is a deep, internal turning, a repentance that manifests itself in the restoration of covenantal faithfulness at the most foundational level of society, the family.

Key Issues

The Hinge of Redemptive History

The Old Testament does not trail off into nothingness. It ends with a cliffhanger, but a very specific one. It ends with a promise and a threat, both of which demand a resolution. For four centuries, the people of God were left with this word hanging in the air: Elijah is coming, and his arrival will determine whether the coming of the Lord is a blessing or a curse of utter destruction. This makes these verses the connecting tissue between the Old and New Testaments. You cannot understand the first words of the Gospels without understanding the last words of the Prophets.

When the angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to announce the birth of John the Baptist, he explicitly quotes this passage, saying John will go "in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children" (Luke 1:17). Jesus Himself identifies John as the fulfillment of this prophecy (Matt 11:14; 17:10-13). Therefore, the entire New Testament narrative opens with the direct fulfillment of Malachi's closing words. This is not just about predicting a future event; it is about defining the nature of the conflict that is about to unfold. The conflict is over true, heart-level repentance versus dead, external religion, and the battleground is the covenant family.

Verse by Verse Commentary

5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh.

The word Behold signals a solemn and weighty announcement. God is about to do something significant, and He wants His people's undivided attention. He promises to send "Elijah the prophet." This does not mean a literal reincarnation of the historical Elijah, but rather a man who would come in the "spirit and power" of Elijah. Elijah was the prophet of fiery confrontation, the man who stood against the apostate King Ahab and the entire corrupt religious establishment of his day. His ministry was one of calling for a radical decision: "If Yahweh is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him" (1 Kings 18:21). So, the promise is for a new Elijah, a prophet who will bring that same kind of sharp, clarifying, confrontational call to repentance. This ministry is timed to occur just before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh. This "day" is not the end of the space-time universe, but a historical day of intense, covenantal judgment. Throughout the Old Testament, such language refers to God's decisive intervention in history to judge a particular nation or city. In this context, it refers to that final judgment on the old covenant system, which was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by the Romans in A.D. 70. It was "great and awesome," a day of terror for God's enemies and a day of vindication for His people.

6 And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land, devoting it to destruction.”

Here is the substance of the new Elijah's message. His preaching will be aimed at radical reconciliation. But notice the direction of this reconciliation: it is profoundly familial. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. A society's spiritual health can be measured by the health of its families. When a nation is in rebellion against God, it always manifests in the breakdown of the home. Fathers become derelict in their duties, abdicating their spiritual responsibility, and children become rebellious and disrespectful. The turning required is a return to covenantal order. Fathers must again take up their God-given role as the spiritual heads of their homes, loving, teaching, and disciplining their children. And children must, in turn, honor their fathers. This is the first fruit of true repentance. A revival that does not heal homes is no revival at all. This ministry is presented as the final opportunity for the nation to repent. The alternative is stark: lest I come and strike the land, devoting it to destruction. The word for this utter destruction is herem, the ban, the curse. This is the same word used for the total destruction of idolatrous Jericho. It means to be devoted to God for utter destruction, to be placed under a ban from which there is no recovery. This was the choice set before first-century Israel by the ministry of John the Baptist. Either repent, starting in your homes, or face a national, covenantal herem. They rejected the forerunner and killed the Son, and so the land was indeed struck, and that generation was devoted to destruction in the horrors of the Jewish War.

Application

The message of Malachi's closing words is as relevant today as it was in the days of John the Baptist. We live in a culture that is witnessing a catastrophic breakdown of the family. Fathers are either absent or passive, and children are adrift, catechized by a godless culture. We long for national revival and reformation, but we often want to start with politics or media, when God insists that we start in our living rooms.

The call of this text is a call for fathers to turn their hearts toward their children. This is not a sentimental feeling; it is a covenantal action. It means taking responsibility for the spiritual well-being of your household. It means leading in family worship, teaching the Scriptures, modeling repentance and faith, and bringing up your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. It means turning off the screens and engaging with your children's souls. It means sons and daughters learning to honor their parents, not as a matter of mere external compliance, but as a joyful submission to God's good order.

The principle remains: God's judgment or blessing upon a nation is directly tied to the health of its families. If we want to avert the judgment that our nation so richly deserves, the Elijah-like call to repentance must be heard and heeded first and foremost by the men in our churches. We cannot expect to see a great turning to God in our land if we do not first see the hearts of Christian fathers turning in loving, sacrificial leadership toward their own children. The gospel repairs the world by first repairing the home.