Discovery BoxMalachi 4:6
Context4:6 He will encourage fathers and their children to return to me, 1 so that I will not come and strike the earth with judgment.” 2
Malachi 1:3
Context1:3 and rejected Esau. 3 I turned Esau’s 4 mountains into a deserted wasteland 5 and gave his territory 6 to the wild jackals.”
Malachi 1:5
Context1:5 Your eyes will see it, and then you will say, ‘May the Lord be magnified 7 even beyond the border of Israel!’”
[4:6] 1 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
[4:6] 2 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.
[1:3] 3 tn Heb “and I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated.” The context indicates this is technical covenant vocabulary in which “love” and “hate” are synonymous with “choose” and “reject” respectively (see Deut 7:8; Jer 31:3; Hos 3:1; 9:15; 11:1).
[1:3] 4 tn Heb “his”; the referent (Esau) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
[1:3] 5 tn Heb “I set his mountains as a desolation.”
[1:3] 6 tn Or “inheritance” (so NIV, NLT).
[1:5] 5 tn Or “Great is the
