This week we are reading Malachi 4:4-6, Malachi’s epilogue, a short summation of his whole message.
Four hundred years of silence separate the close of Malachi from the coming of Jesus. The famine of God’s words, as predicted by the prophet Amos, was close at hand. Amos foretold, “people will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it” (Amos 8:11-12). Both Jewish and Christian traditions refer to Malachi as the “seal of the prophets.” For that reason, his closing statements deserve their own episode as the prophet’s last words, even if they comprise a mere three verses.
