Look, I will send you Elijah ¹  the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord arrives.

(3:19) ¹  “For indeed the day ²  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 ³  will not leave even a root or branch.

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.

Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can keep standing when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire, ¹  like a launderer’s soap.

“They will belong to me,” says the Lord who rules over all, “in the day when I prepare my own special property. ¹  I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.

From the days of your ancestors you have ignored ¹  my commandments ²  and have not kept them! Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord who rules over all. “But you say, ‘How should we return?’

The offerings ¹  of Judah and Jerusalem ²  will be pleasing to the Lord as in former times and years past.

Yet you ask, “Why?” The Lord is testifying against you on behalf of the wife you married when you were young, ¹  to whom you have become unfaithful even though she is your companion and wife by law. ²