Joel 2:30-31

2:30 I will produce portents both in the sky ¹  and on the earth –

blood, fire, and columns of smoke.

2:31 The sunlight will be turned to darkness

and the moon to the color of blood, ² 

before the day of the Lord comes –

that great and terrible day!

Zephaniah 1:14-18

1:14 The Lord’s great day of judgment ³  is almost here;

it is approaching very rapidly!

There will be a bitter sound on the Lord’s day of judgment;

at that time warriors will cry out in battle. ⁴ 

1:15 That day will be a day of God’s anger, ⁵ 

a day of distress and hardship,

a day of devastation and ruin,

a day of darkness and gloom,

a day of clouds and dark skies,

1:16 a day of trumpet blasts ⁶  and battle cries. ⁷ 

Judgment will fall on ⁸  the fortified cities and the high corner towers.

1:17 I will bring distress on the people ⁹ 

and they will stumble ¹⁰  like blind men,

for they have sinned against the Lord.

Their blood will be poured out like dirt;

their flesh ¹¹  will be scattered ¹²  like manure.

1:18 Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to deliver them

in the day of the Lord’s angry judgment.

The whole earth ¹³  will be consumed by his fiery wrath. ¹⁴ 

Indeed, ¹⁵  he will bring terrifying destruction ¹⁶  on all who live on the earth.” ¹⁷ 

Malachi 4:1-6

4:1 (3:19) ¹⁸  “For indeed the day ¹⁹  is coming, burning like a furnace, and all the arrogant evildoers will be chaff. The coming day will burn them up,” says the Lord who rules over all. “It ²⁰  will not leave even a root or branch. 4:2 But for you who respect my name, the sun of vindication ²¹  will rise with healing wings, ²²  and you will skip about ²³  like calves released from the stall. 4:3 You will trample on the wicked, for they will be like ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the Lord who rules over all.

Restoration through the Lord

4:4 “Remember the law of my servant Moses, to whom at Horeb ²⁴  I gave rules and regulations for all Israel to obey. ²⁵  4:5 Look, I will send you Elijah ²⁶  the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives. 4:6 He will encourage fathers and their children to return to me, ²⁷  so that I will not come and strike the earth with judgment.” ²⁸ 

[2:30]  ¹ tn Or “in the heavens.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heavens” or “sky” depending on the context.

[2:31]  ² tn Heb “to blood,” but no doubt this is intended to indicate by metonymy the color of blood rather than the substance itself. The blood red color suggests a visual impression here – something that could be caused by fires, volcanic dust, sandstorms, or other atmospheric phenomena.

[1:14]  ³ tn Heb “The great day of the Lord.” The words “of judgment” are supplied in the translation here and later in this verse for clarity. See the note on the expression “day of judgment” in v. 7.

[1:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “the sound of the day of the Lord, bitter [is] one crying out there, a warrior.” The present translation does four things: (1) It takes מַר (mar, “bitter”) with what precedes (contrary to the accentuation of the MT). (2) It understands the participle צָרַח (tsarakh, “cry out in battle”) as verbal with “warrior” as its subject. (3) It takes שָׁם (sham, “there”) in a temporal sense, meaning “then, at that time.” (4) It understands “warrior” as collective.

[1:15]  ⁵ tn Heb “a day of wrath.” The word “God’s” is supplied in the translation for clarification.

[1:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “a ram’s horn.” By metonymy the Hebrew text mentions the trumpet (“ram’s horn”) in place of the sound it produces (“trumpet blasts”).

[1:16]  ⁷ sn This description of the day of the Lord consists of an initial reference to anger, followed by four pairs of synonyms. The joining of synonyms in this way emphasizes the degree of the characteristic being described. The first two pairs focus on the distress and ruin that judgment will bring; the second two pairs picture this day of judgment as being very dark (darkness) and exceedingly overcast (gloom). The description concludes with the pairing of two familiar battle sounds, the blast on the ram’s horn (trumpet blasts) and the war cries of the warriors (battle cries).

[1:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “against.” The words “judgment will fall” are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[1:17]  ⁹ tn “The people” refers to mankind in general (see vv. 2-3) or more specifically to the residents of Judah (see vv. 4-13).

[1:17]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “walk.”

[1:17]  ¹¹ tn Some take the referent of “flesh” to be more specific here; cf. NEB (“bowels”), NAB (“brains”), NIV (“entrails”).

[1:17]  ¹² tn The words “will be scattered” are supplied in the translation for clarity based on the parallelism with “will be poured out” in the previous line.

[1:18]  ¹³ tn Or “land” (cf. NEB). This same word also occurs at the end of the present verse.

[1:18]  ¹⁴ tn Or “passion”; traditionally, “jealousy.”

[1:18]  ¹⁵ tn Or “for.”

[1:18]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “complete destruction, even terror, he will make.”

[1:18]  ¹⁷ tn It is not certain where the Lord’s words end and the prophet’s words begin. It is possible that Zephaniah begins speaking in the middle of v. 17 or at the beginning of v. 18 (note the third person pronouns referring to the Lord).

[4:1]  ¹⁸ sn Beginning with 4:1, the verse numbers through 4:6 in the English Bible differ from the verse numbers in the Hebrew text (BHS), with 4:1 ET = 3:19 HT, 4:2 ET = 3:20 HT, etc., through 4:6 ET = 3:24 HT. Thus the book of Malachi in the Hebrew Bible has only three chapters, with 24 verses in ch. 3.

[4:1]  ¹⁹ sn This day is the well-known “day of the Lord” so pervasive in OT eschatological texts (see Joel 2:30-31; Amos 5:18; Obad 15). For the believer it is a day of grace and salvation; for the sinner, a day of judgment and destruction.

[4:1]  ²⁰ tn Heb “so that it” (so NASB, NRSV). For stylistic reasons a new sentence was begun here in the translation.

[4:2]  ²¹ tn Here the Hebrew word צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah), usually translated “righteousness” (so KJV, NIV, NRSV, NLT; cf. NAB “justice”), has been rendered as “vindication” because it is the vindication of God’s people that is in view in the context. Cf. BDB 842 s.v. צְדָקָה 6; “righteousness as vindicated, justification, salvation, etc.”

[4:2]  ²² sn The point of the metaphor of healing wings is unclear. The sun seems to be compared to a bird. Perhaps the sun’s “wings” are its warm rays. “Healing” may refer to a reversal of the injury done by evildoers (see Mal 3:5).

[4:2]  ²³ tn Heb “you will go out and skip about.”

[4:4]  ²⁴ sn Horeb is another name for Mount Sinai (cf. Exod 3:1).

[4:4]  ²⁵ tn Heb “which I commanded him in Horeb concerning all Israel, statutes and ordinances.”

[4:5]  ²⁶ sn I will send you Elijah the prophet. In light of the ascension of Elijah to heaven without dying (2 Kgs 2:11), Judaism has always awaited his return as an aspect of the messianic age (see, e.g., John 1:19-28). Jesus identified John the Baptist as Elijah, because he came in the “spirit and power” of his prototype Elijah (Matt 11:14; 17:1-13; Mark 9:2-13; Luke 9:28-36).

[4:6]  ²⁷ tn Heb “he will turn the heart[s] of [the] fathers to [the] sons, and the heart[s] of [the] sons to their fathers.” This may mean that the messenger will encourage reconciliation of conflicts within Jewish families in the postexilic community (see Mal 2:10; this interpretation is followed by most English versions). Another option is to translate, “he will turn the hearts of the fathers together with those of the children [to me], and the hearts of the children together with those of their fathers [to me].” In this case the prophet encourages both the younger and older generations of sinful society to repent and return to the Lord (cf. Mal 3:7). This option is preferred in the present translation; see Beth Glazier-McDonald, Malachi (SBLDS), 256.

[4:6]  ²⁸ tn Heb “[the] ban” (חֵרֶם, kherem). God’s prophetic messenger seeks to bring about salvation and restoration, thus avoiding the imposition of the covenant curse, that is, the divine ban that the hopelessly unrepentant must expect (see Deut 7:2; 20:17; Judg 1:21; Zech 14:11). If the wicked repent, the purifying judgment threatened in 4:1-3 will be unnecessary.