2001-POETIC SYNTAX AND INTERPRETATION OF MALACHI

LA 51 (2001) 55-107

POETIC SYNTAX AND INTERPRETATIONOF MALACHI

A. Niccacci

1. Outline of a Theory of the Verb in Biblical Hebrew

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theory of the verb in BiblicalHebrew (BH) prose developed by the author to a poetic text like the proph-ecy of Malachi. A short presentation of this theory is given at the begin-ning.1

Three general distinctions are to be made at the outset. First, a distinc-tion between temporal axes, on the one side, and verb forms and non-ver-bal constructions, on the other. The three temporal axes—present, past andfuture—are chronological entities (“time”), while verb forms and non-ver-bal constructions are grammatical categories (“tense”). As a rule, the non-verbal sentence belongs to the axis of the present, qatal and wayyiqtol tothe axis of the past, yiqtol and weqatal to the axis of the future.2

A second distinction is to be made between historical narrative and di-rect speech because distinctive verb forms are employed in each of thesetwo genres of the prose as will be indicated below. For the same reason, a

1.Based on The Syntax of the Verb in Classical Hebrew Prose, Sheffield 1990. A revisedSpanish edition of it has just been published: Sintaxis del Hebreo Bíblico. Traducido porGuadalupe Seijas de los Ríos-Zarzosa, Estella (Navarra) 2002. It also includes an Appen-dix with a complete analysis of Josh 1-5 translated and revised from my Lettura sintatticadella prosa ebraico-biblica. Principi e applicazioni, Jerusalem 1991. Standard grammarsof biblical Hebrew, such as Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, 2nd English ed., ed. by E.Kautzsch, rev. by A.E. Cowley, Oxford 1910 (repr. 1985), and P. Joüon, A Grammar ofBiblical Hebrew, transl. and rev. by T. Muraoka, vol. II, Roma 1991, will be referred to bythe names of the authors and/or revisors. Commentaries are also quoted by the names of theauthors after the first mention, e.g., C.F. Keil - F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testa-ment in Ten Volumes. Vol. X: Minor Prophets, by C.F. Keil, Grand Rapids repr. 1980 (abbr.Keil). Finally, a standard abbreviation employed is BHS, i.e., Biblia Hebraica Stuttgar-tensia, ed. by W. Elliger and W. Rudolph. – I warmly thank Prof. L. Hoppe for revising myEnglish.

2.This distinction between time (“Zeit”) and tense (“Tempus”) is basis of a classic of text-linguistics, whose methodology I adopted in my description of the BH verb system (seeprevious footnote), i.e., H. Weinrich, Tempus. Besprochene und erzählte Welt, 4. ed.,Stuttgart - Berlin - Köln 1985.

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third distinction is required between main line, or foreground, vs. second-ary line, or off line, or background, in historical narrative as well as in di-rect speech.3

1.1. Historical Narrative

Beginning of Narrative → Beginning of the main line → Off line= ANTECEDENT = FOREGROUND = BACKGROUND

(secondary level) (main level, narrative sequence) (secondary level)

x-qatal → x-qatalnon-verbal sentence → non-verbal sent.x-yiqtol → wayyiqtol in a sequence → x-yiqtolweqatal → weqatal

Cf. Gen 1:1-2:4; 2:5-25; 3:1-24; 4:1-26; 5:1-6:8, etc.4

(1.1.1) Historical Narrative begins with verb forms of secondary level,or off line, conveying antecedent information, or setting, i.e., x-qatal, non-verbal sentence, weqatal, x-yiqtol.

(1.1.2) The main line of narrative starts with wayyiqtol. Wayyiqtol alsocontinues the main line, i.e., wayyiqtol → wayyiqtol → wayyiqtol… (in asequence). This is called the narrative sequence. It conveys pieces of infor-mation on the main line, coordinated, usually in chronological order.

(1.1.3) The narrative sequence is broken when the writer intends toconvey a piece of information in the secondary level to express, e.g., a cir-cumstance of the main action/event, an action/event accompanying (notsequential to) the main action/event or anterior to it, a description, a com-mentary, or a clarification.

3.This terminology is explained in my Syntax of the Verb § 2-3. A brief presentation of thetheory is to be found in my paper “Essential Hebrew Syntax,” in: E. Talstra (ed.), Narrativeand Comment. Contributions Presented to Wolfgang Schneider, Amsterdam 1995, 111-125.

4.On Gen 1-3, see my paper “Analysis of Biblical Narrative,” in: R.D. Bergen (ed.), Bibli-cal Hebrew and Discourse Linguistics, Dallas 1994, 175-198. In “Organizzazione canonicadella Bibbia ebraica: tra sintassi e retorica,” RivBiblIt 43 (1995) 9-29 (pp. 21-23), I haveidentified the different “texts” that compose the book of Genesis (according to the defini-tion of “text” given below, § 1.1.5).

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(1.1.4) A narrative often includes direct speech. If the introductory for-mula (e.g., “God said…”) is in the wayyiqtol, the following direct speechis linked to the main line of the narrative. Sometimes, however, the writeruses a verb form of the secondary level in the introductory formula for oneof the reasons listed above (1.1.3).

(1.1.5) H. Weinrich’s definition of text [with additions for BH] readsas follows: “A text is a logical (i.e. intelligible and consistent) sequence oflinguistic signs [particularly wayyiqtol in BH], placed between two signifi-cant breaks in communication [i.e. waw-x-qatal, or other non-verbal con-structions, in BH].”

(1.1.6) In historical narrative, wayyiqtol indicates connection whileverb forms of the secondary level (1.1.1) indicate a break in the line ofcommunication. This break is not always a “significant break” in the sensethat it indicates a beginning of a new text (1.1.5). Syntax signals a phe-nomenon which needs to be evaluated by means of other criteria, e.g., char-acters involved, place, time, interpretation.

(1.1.7) The occurrence of an off-line verb form (1.1.1) produces in thetext a change from the main level to the secondary level of communica-tion. This is called “tense shift” (indicated with →). A list of such cases isas follows: wayyiqtol → x-qatal; wayyiqtol → non-verbal sentence;wayyiqtol → weqatal, etc. The tense shifts produce different relief in thetext.

(1.1.8) In the tense shifts just listed (1.1.7), the various forms of sec-ondary level, indicating background, are linked to a preceding wayyiqtol,indicating foreground. Foreground and background forms constitute an in-divisible syntactic unit. Such tense shifts do not signal a “significant break”in the line of communication nor the beginning of a new text (1.1.5); theyonly indicate a pause in the narrative when another wayyiqtol follows thatcarries the main line of narrative further.

(1.1.9) The occurrence of an off-line verb form (1.1.1) constitutes a“significant break” in the line of narrative and delimits a text when, on thebasis of the semantic criteria indicated above (1.1.6), it is linked to a fol-lowing wayyiqtol. In this case the secondary-level verb form(s) convey(s)pieces of information previous to the beginning of the main line of narra-tive, which starts with wayyiqtol (1.1.2). We can call these secondary-levelverb forms antecedent, or setting of the story. In this case we have a tenseshift type ‘secondary-level verb form(s) → wayyiqtol’ that is reverse com-pared with the one indicate above (1.1.7).

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1.2. Direct Speech

Temporal Main Level Secondary LevelAxis (FOREGROUND) (BACKGROUND)

Past (x-) qatal → continuation → x-qatal, non-verbal sentence,wayyiqtol (coordinated, x-yiqtol, or weqatalin a sequence, main level) (background)cf. Deut 1:6 ff.; 5:2 ff.; 5:28

Present Non-verbal sent. → non-verbal sent.with/without participle with/without participlecf. Gen 42:9-11.13

Future Non-verbal sent. (esp. withIndicative participle) → continuation

weqatal (in a sequence)cf. Exod 7:27-29 → x-yiqtol (background)

or:Initial x-yiqtol → continuation

weqatal (in a sequence)cf. Gen 50:25

Future Imperative → weyiqtol → x-imperative (background)volitive (foreground)

(x-) yiqtol cohortative/jussive → x-yiqtol (background)→ weyiqtol (foreground)cf. Num 6:24-26

Note:Imperative → (volitive) weyiqtol = purpose (‘in order to’)Imperative → (indicative) weqatal = consequence (‘thus,

therefore’)cf. Exod 25:2 → 25:8

While the axis of the past is the only one used as main line in histori-cal narrative, in direct speech all the three temporal axes are viable asmain line. The writer freely switches from one to the other. Here is a listof the verb forms and other constructions used in each axis in directspeech.

(1.2.1) In the axis of the present, the non-verbal sentence is used bothfor main line and for off line.


5.See my paper “Analysing Biblical Hebrew Poetry,” JSOT 74 (1997) 77-93. Also see no.9 below.

6.Recent bibliography on Malachi is reviewed by J.M. O’Brien, “Malachi in Recent Re-search,” CR:BS 3 (1995) 81-94. See further M.F. Floyd, Minor Prophets. Part 2, GrandRapids (MI) - Cambridge 2000, 559-626.

7.Differently, according to P.A. Verhoeff, The Books of Haggai and Malachi, Grand Rap-ids (MI) 1987, 166: “The book of Malachi… is written in prose, with a few traces of a rhyth-mical pattern…”

(1.2.2) In the axis of the past, an oral narrative begins with first-placeqatal, or second-place x-qatal, without any difference, and continues witha sequence of wayyiqtol forms. From wayyiqtol the oral narrative switchesto x-qatal (or non-verbal sentence, or weqatal, or x-yiqtol) for off-line in-formation (i.e. to express simultaneity, anteriority, posteriority, description,custom, emphasis on the ‘x’ element, or the like).

(1.2.3) In the axis of the future, a non-volitive prediction begins withx-yiqtol, or with a non-verbal sentence (eventually with participle), andcontinues with main-line weqatal. (Note that weqatal is not used at the be-ginning of direct speech.) From weqatal it switches to x-yiqtol for off line.

This theory is derived from prose texts. Poetry basically behaves likedirect speech. The main difference is that while direct speech, as prose ingeneral, consists of pieces of information conveyed in a sequence, poetrycommunicates pieces of information in parallelism. The result is linear ver-sus segmented communication.5 As a consequence poetry switches fromone temporal axis to the other even more freely than direct speech. Thisresults in a greater variety of, and more abrupt transition from, one verbform to the other.

Given the difficulty of understanding the verb system in poetry, mostscholars simply disregard the verb forms appearing in the texts and translateaccording to their own taste. However, as a norm one should assign to thevarious verb forms their usual function(s) and interpret the text accordingly,rather than to make the analysis of the various verb forms dependent on one’sown interpretation. It is only reasonable to assume that if a writer uses dif-ferent verb forms, he has in mind different temporal or aspectual references.Our task is to interpret his mind on the basis of the verb forms he uses.

The prophecy of Malachi is presented here as an example of a poetictext analyzed according to these principles.6 On the one side, the fact thatit is written in poetry will be practically shown by the division in lines pre-sented below (§ 2), a division that reflects a segmented type of communi-cation and parallelism characteristic of poetry. On the other side, the verbsystem employed is that of direct speech as is the case in poetry.7

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8.The criterion adopted in my paper “Analysing Biblical Hebrew Poetry” reads as follows:“Lines consist of parallel grammatical units, that normally constitute a complete sentence”(p. 89). This means that usually a complete sentence is taken to constitute a line by itself.However, another criterion is the relative equilibrium among the lines. In Mal 1:2a, for in-stance, I put hÎwh◊y rAmDa in the same line with MRkVtRa yI;tVbAhDa, although both are complete sen-tences, in order to obtain a line symmetrical with those following; on the contrary, for asimilar reason, in 1:6d I separate twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa from what precedes. In my paper mentionedabove, I illustrated this principle by analyzing Prov 10:1-10 and other parallel texts.

9.Of the three main characteristics of poetry versus prose that I identified in my paper“Analysing Biblical Hebrew Poetry,” I would say today that two are valid, i.e., “(1) seg-mented versus linear communication; (2) parallelism of similar bits of information versussequence of different bits of information,” while the third is not, i.e., “(3) non-detectableversus detectable verbal system” (pp. 77-78; also see the concluding statement on this sub-ject on p. 91). In the meantime, I have became more and more convinced that the BH verbsystem is basically the same in prose and in poetry as the present paper is trying to show.Methodologically, at least, the same system is to be applied unless it proves impossible.Eventually, this methodology will help discover peculiarities of poetry versus prose.

Three levels of the Hebrew text of Malachi are identified according tothe verb forms used and their respective functions as illustrated above, i.e.,according to their usual functions in BH prose, specifically in direct speech.The non-verbal constructions belonging to the axis of the present are placedin the right margin, while the verb forms and non-verbal constructions be-longing to the axes of the past and of the future are indented towards theleft. In the axis of the future are also placed the imperative along with thevolitive/jussive verb forms yiqtol and weyiqtol.

The complete Hebrew text of Malachi with an English translation(based on the Revised Standard Version, with modifications) is given,structured according to my syntactic analysis and subdivided into verses,or lines,8 according to the criteria of grammar and symmetry (§ 2).9

A syntactic and interpretive commentary will follow (§ 3), accompa-nied by an illustration of the internal coherence of the prophecy (§ 4) andby some remarks on the functions of the verb forms occurring in it (§ 5).


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2. Text and Translation

yIkDaVlAm dÅyV;b lEa∂rVcˆy_lRa hÎwh◊y_rAb√d aDÚcAm

(1:1) (This is) the burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.

2.1.1. Mal 1:2-5

(1:2a) “I have loved you,” said the Lord. hÎwh◊y rAmDa MRkVtRa yI;tVbAhDa

(1:2b) “But you shall say, ‘In what have you …wnD;tVbAhSa hD;mA;b MR;t√rAmSaÅw

loved us?’

(1:2c) Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” hÎwh◊y_MUa◊n bOqSoÅyVl wDcEo jDa_awølSh

oracle of the Lord.

(1:2d) “Yet I have loved Jacob bOqSoÅy_tRa bAhOaÎw

(1:3a) while I have hated Esau. yIta´nDc wDcEo_tRa◊w

(1:3b) I have laid waste his mountains hDmDmVv wy∂rDh_tRa MyIcDaÎw

(1:3c) and his heritage to jackals of the desert. rD;b√dIm twø…nAtVl wøtDlSjÅn_tRa◊w

(1:4a) When Edom will say, MwødTa rAmaøt_yI;k

(1:4b) ‘We have been shattered but we want twøb∂rFj h‰nVbˆn◊w b…wvÎn◊w …wnVvAÚvür

to build the ruins again,’”

(1:4c) thus said the Lord of hosts, twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa hO;k

(1:4d) “they will build, but I will tear down. swørThRa yˆnSaÅw …wnVbˆy hD;mEh

(1:4e) Thus one shall call them the territory of hDoVvîr l…wb◊…g MRhDl …wa√r∂q◊w

wickedness

(1:4f) and the people with whom MDlwøo_dAo hÎwh◊y MAoÎz_rRvSa MDoDh◊w

the Lord was angry for ever.

(1:5a) Your own eyes shall see, hÎnyRa√rI;t MRky´nyEo◊w

(1:5b) and you yourselves shall say, …wrVmaø;t MR;tAa◊w

(1:5c) ‘May the Lord be great beyond lEa∂rVcˆy l…wb◊gIl lAoEm hÎwh◊y lå;d◊gˆy

the territory of Israel!’”

2.1.2. Mal 1:6-8

(1:6a) “A son will honor his father, wyÎnOdSa dRbRo◊w bDa dE;bAk◊y NE;b

and a servant his master.

(1:6b) If then I am a father, where is my honor? yîdwøbVk h´¥yAa yˆnDa bDa_MIa◊w

(1:6c) And if I am a master, where is my fear?” yIa∂rwøm h´¥yAa yˆnDa MyˆnwødSa_MIa◊w

(1:6d) said the Lord of hosts twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa

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(1:6e) “to you, O priests, who despise my name. yImVv y´zwø;b MyˆnShO;kAh MRkDl

(1:6f) But you shall say, ‘Wherein ÔKRmVv_tRa …wnyzDb hR;mA;b MR;t√rAmSaÅw

have we despised your name?’

(1:7a) While offering upon my altar lDaøgVm MRjRl yIjV;b◊zIm_lAo MyIvyˆ…gAm

polluted food.

(1:7b) But you shall say, ‘Wherein have we ÔK…wnVlAa´g hR;mA;b MR;t√rAmSaÅw

polluted you?’

(1:7c) By saying, ‘The Lord’s table, a…wh h‰zVbˆn hÎwh◊y NAjVlUv MRk√rDmTaR;b

it is despicable.’

(1:8a) When you were offering what is blind o∂r NyEa AjO;b◊zIl r´…wIo N…wv…gAt_yIk◊w

in sacrifice, was there no evil?

(1:8b) And when you were offering what is o∂r NyEa hRlOj◊w AjE;sIÚp …wvyˆ…gAt yIk◊w

lame or sick, was there no evil?

(1:8c) Present that to your governor! ÔKRtDjRpVl aÎn …whEbyîrVqAh

(1:8d) Will he be pleased with you ÔKy‰nDp aDÚcˆySh wøa ÔKVx√rˆySh

or show you favor?”

(1:8e) said the Lord of hosts. twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa

2.1.3. Mal 1:9-14

(1:9a) “And now entreat the favor of God, …wnnDjyˆw lEa_y´nVp aÎn_…w;lAj hD;tAo◊w

that he may be gracious to us.

(1:9b) It is from your hand that this occurred, taøΩz hDt◊yDh MRk√d‰¥yIm

(1:9c) will (God) show favor (to anybody) MyˆnDÚp MR;kIm aDÚcˆySh

because of you?”

(1:9d) said the Lord of hosts. twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(1:10a) “Who is there among yourselves MˆyAtDl√;d rO…gVsˆy◊w MRkD;b_MÅg yIm

who would shut the doors,

(1:10b) and so you will not light my altar in vain! MÎ…nIj yIjV;b◊zIm …wryIaDt_aøl◊w

(1:10c) I have no pleasure in you, MRkD;b XRpEj yIl_NyEa

(1:10d) said the Lord of hosts, twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(1:10e) and not a single offering shall I accept MRk√d‰¥yIm hRx√rRa_aøl hDj◊nIm…w

from your hand.

(1:11a) For from the rising of the sun to its setting wøawøbVm_dAo◊w vRmRv_jår◊zI;mIm yI;k

(1:11b) my name is great among the nations, Mˆywø…gA;b yImVv lwødÎ…g

(1:11c) and in every place incense is burned yImVvIl vÎ…gUm rDfVqUm MwøqDm_lDkVb…w

and sacrifice is offered to my name,

(1:11d) and a pure offering; h∂rwøhVf hDj◊nIm…w

(1:11e) for my name is great among the nations, Mˆywø…gA;b yImVv lwødÎg_yI;k


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(1:11f) said the Lord of hosts. twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(1:12a) But you are profaning it wøtwøa MyIlV;lAjVm MR;tAa◊w

(1:12b) by saying, ‘The Lord’s table, it is polluted, a…wh lDaøgVm yÎnOdSa NAjVlUv MRk√rDmTaR;b

(1:12c) and its fruit, its food is despicable.’ wølVkDa h‰zVbˆn wøbyˆn◊w

(1:13a) But you shall say, ‘Behold, what hDaDlV;tAm h´…nIh MR;t√rAmSaÅw

a weariness this is,’

(1:13b) and thus you shall sniff at it,” wøtwøa MR;tVjAÚpIh◊w

(1:13c) said the Lord of hosts. twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(1:13d) “If you shall bring what hRlwøjAh_tRa◊w AjE;sIÚpAh_tRa◊w l…wzÎ…g MRtaEbShÅw

has been taken by violence

or the lame or the sick,

(1:13e) and thus you shall bring the offering, hDj◊nI;mAh_tRa MRtaEbShÅw

(1:13f) shall I accept that from your hand?” MRk√d‰¥yIm ;hDtwøa hRx√rRaAh

(1:13g) said the Lord. hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(1:14a) “Cursed is the one who cheats while rDkÎz wør√dRoV;b v´y◊w lEkwøn r…wrDa◊w

he has a male in his flock,

(1:14b) and who vows and sacrifices to the Lord yÎnOdaAl tDjVvDm AjEbOz◊w rédOn◊w

what is blemished;

(1:14c) for I am a great King,” yˆnDa lwødÎ…g JKRlRm yI;k


(1:14e) “and my name is feared among the nations.” Mˆywø…gAb a∂rwøn yImVv…w

2.1.4. Mal 2:1-9

(2:1) “And now, for you is this dispensation, MyˆnShO;kAh taøΩzAh hÎwVxI;mAh MRkyElSa hD;tAo◊w

O priests.

(2:2a) If you will not listen, …woVmVvIt aøl_MIa

(2:2b) and if you will not lay it to heart bEl_lAo …wmyIcDt aøl_MIa◊w

(2:2c) to give glory to my name,” yImVvIl dwøbD;k tEtDl


(2:2e) “then I will send the curse upon you h∂rEaV;mAh_tRa MRkDb yI;tVjA;lIv◊w

(2:2f) and I will curse your blessings; MRkyEtwøk√rI;b_tRa yItwørDa◊w

(2:2g) indeed I have already cursed each one of them, DhyItwørDa MÅg◊w

(2:2h) because you are not laying it to heart. bEl_lAo MyImDc MRk◊nyEa yI;k

(2:3a) Behold, I am about to rebuke the seed oår‰ΩzAh_tRa MRkDl rEoOg yˆn◊nIh

because of you,

(2:3b) I will spread dung upon your faces, MRky´nVÚp_lAo v®rRp yItyîr´z◊w

(2:3c) the dung of your feasts, MRky´…gAj v®rRÚp

(2:3d) and one will take you together with it. wyDlEa MRkVtRa aDcÎn◊w

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(2:4a) Thus you will taøΩzAh hÎwVxI;mAh tEa MRkyElSa yI;tVjA;lIv yI;k MR;tVoådyˆw

know that I have sent this dispensation to you,

(2:4b) that my covenant may be with Levi,” yˆwEl_tRa yItyîrV;b twøyVhIl


(2:5a) “Indeed, my covenant was with him; wø;tIa hDt◊yDh yItyîrV;b

(2:5b) life and peace, I gave them to him; wøl_MńV;tRaÎw MwølDÚvAh◊w My¥yAjAh

(2:5c) as to fear, he feared me. yˆnEa∂ryˆ¥yÅw a∂rwøm

(2:5d) Indeed, before my name he stood in awe; a…wh tAjˆn yImVv yńVÚpIm…w

(2:6a) there was a law of truth in his mouth …whyIpV;b hDt◊yDh tRmTa tårwø;t

(2:6b) and absolutely no wrong was found on his lips; wyDtDpVcIb aDxVmˆn_aøl hDl◊wAo◊w

(2:6c) in peace and uprightness he walked with me; yI;tIa JKAlDh rwøvyImVb…w MwølDvV;b

(2:6d) and many he turned from iniquity. NOwDoEm byIvEh MyI;bår◊w

(2:7a) For the lips of a priest tAoåd_…wrVmVvˆy NEhOk yEtVpIc_yI;k

will keep knowledge,

(2:7b) and men will seek law from his mouth, …whyIÚpIm …wvVqAb◊y h∂rwøt◊w

(2:7c) for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. a…wh twøaDbVx_hÎwh◊y JKAaVlAm yI;k

(2:8a) But you, on your part, have turned JK®r®;dAh_NIm MR;t√rAs MR;tAa◊w

aside from the way;

(2:8b) you have caused many to stumble at the law; h∂rwø;tA;b MyI;bår MR;tVlAvVkIh

(2:8c) you have corrupted the covenant of Levi,” yˆwE;lAh tyîrV;b MR;tAjIv


(2:9a) “and I, on my part, have made you despised MyˆzVbˆn MRkVtRa yI;tAtÎn yˆnSa_MÅg◊w

(2:9b) and abased before all the people, MDoDh_lDkVl MyIlDpVv…w

(2:9c) inasmuch as you are not keeping my ways yAk∂r√;d_tRa MyîrVmOv MRk◊nyEa rRvSa yIpV;k

(2:9d) and are showing partiality in the law.” h∂rwø;tA;b MyˆnDÚp MyIaVcOn◊w

2.1.5. Mal 2:10-16

(2:10a) Have we not all one Father? …wnD;lUkVl dDjRa bDa awølSh

(2:10b) Has not one God created us? …wnDa∂rV;b dDjRa lEa awølSh

(2:10c) Why then shall we be faithless wyIjDaV;b vyIa dÅ…gVbˆn Ao…w;dAm

to one another,

(2:10d) to profane the covenant of our fathers? …wnyEtObSa tyîrV;b lE;lAjVl

(2:11a) Judah has been faithless, h∂d…wh◊y h∂d◊gD;b

(2:11b) and abomination was committed MIDlDv…wryIb…w lEa∂rVcˆyVb hDtVcRo‰n hDbEowøt◊w

in Israel and in Jerusalem;

(2:11c) for Judah profaned the sanctity bEhDa rRvSa hÎwh◊y v®dOq h∂d…wh◊y lE;lIj yI;k

of the Lord, which he loves,

(2:11d) as one used to marry the daughter of a foreign god, rDkń lEa_tA;b lAoDb…w


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Present

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(2:12a) only to the effect of letting God hD…nRcSoÅy rRvSa vyIaDl hÎwh◊y térVkÅy

cut off, to the man who shall do this,

(2:12b) anyone who is awake and answers, bOqSoÅy yElFhDaEm h‰nOo◊w rEo

out of the tents of Jacob,

(2:12c) and who presents an offering twøaDbVx hÎwhyAl hDj◊nIm vyˆ…gAm…w

to the Lord of hosts.

(2:13a) Further, this second thing you shall do: …wcSoA;t tyˆnEv taøz◊w

(2:13b) covering with tears the altar hÎwh◊y jA;b◊zIm_tRa hDoVmî;d twø;sA;k

of the Lord,

(2:13c) weeping and groaning, h∂qÎnSaÅw yIkV;b

(2:13d) because (God) will no longer regard hDj◊nI;mAh_lRa twønVÚp dwøo NyEaEm

the offering

(2:13e) or accept it with favor from your hand. MRk√d‰¥yIm Nwøx∂r tAjåqDl◊w

(2:14a) And you shall say, “Why?” hDm_lAo MR;t√rAmSaÅw

(2:14b) Because the Lord has been ÔKy®r…wo◊n tRvEa NyEb…w ÔK◊nyE;b dyIoEh hÎwh◊y_yI;k lAo

witness between you and the wife of your youth,

(2:14c) to whom you have been faithless, ;hD;b hD;t√dÅgD;b hD;tAa rRvSa

(2:14d) while she is your companion and the wife ÔKRtyîrV;b tRvEa◊w ÔKV;t√rRbSj ayIh◊w

of your covenant.

(2:15a) Yet has not the One (God) made (you) hDcDo dDjRa_aøl◊w

(2:15b) and the rest of the spirit is not his? wøl Aj…wr rDaVv…w

(2:15c) And what does the One (God) seek? vé;qAbVm dDjRaDh hDm…w

(2:15d) The offspring of God! MyIhølTa oår‰z

(2:15e) Therefore you shall take heed to your spirit, MRkSj…wrV;b MR;t√rAmVvˆn◊w

(2:15f) and to the wife of his youth let none be dO…gVbˆy_lAa ÔKy®r…wo◊n tRvEaVb…w

faithless.

(2:16a) “For (I) hate divorce,” jA;lAv a´nDc_yI;k

(2:16b) said the Lord the God of Israel, lEa∂rVcˆy yEhølTa hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(2:16c) “thus he shall cover his own garment wøv…wbVl_lAo sDmDj hD;sIk◊w

with violence,”


(2:16e) “Therefore you shall take heed to your spirit MRkSj…wrV;b MR;t√rAmVvˆn◊w

(2:16f) and shall not be faithless.” …wdO…gVbIt aøl◊w

2.2.1. Mal 2:17-3:7b

(2:17a) “You have wearied the Lord with your words. MRkyérVbîdV;b hÎwh◊y MR;tVoÅgwøh

(2:17b) But you shall say, ‘In what have we …wnVoÎgwøh hD;mA;b MR;t√rAmSaÅw

wearied (him)?’

A. NICCACCI66

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(2:17c) By saying, ‘Every one who hÎwh◊y y´nyEoV;b bwøf o∂r hEcOo_lD;k MRk√rDmTaR;b

does evil is good in the sight of the Lord,

(2:17d) and in them he delights’; XEpDj a…wh MRhDb…w

(2:17e) Or, ‘Where is the God of judgment?’ fDÚpVvI;mAh yEhølTa h¥yAa wøa

(3:1a) Behold, I am about to send my messenger, yIkDaVlAm AjElOv yˆn◊nIh

(3:1b) and he will prepare the way before me, yÎnDpVl JK®r®d_hÎ…nIp…w

(3:1c) and suddenly there will come wølDkyEh_lRa awøbÎy MOaVtIp…w

to his temple

(3:1d) the Lord whom you are seeking. MyIvVqAbVm MR;tAa_rRvSa NwødDaDh

(3:1e) For his part, aDb_h´…nIh MyIxEpSj MR;tAa_rRvSa tyîrV;bAh JKAaVlAm…w

the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight,

behold, he is about to come,”

(3:1f) said the Lord of hosts. twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(3:2a) “And who shall be able to endure wøawø;b Mwøy_tRa lE;kVlAkVm yIm…w

the day of his coming,

(3:2b) and who shall be able to stand wøtwøa∂rEhV;b dEmOoDh yIm…w

when he appears?

(3:2c) For he shall be like a refiner’s fire PérDxVm vEaV;k a…wh_yI;k

(3:2d) and like fullers’ soap; MyIsV;bAkVm tyîrObVk…w

(3:3a) he will sit as a refiner and purifier PRsR;k rEhAfVm…w PérDxVm bAvÎy◊w

of silver,

(3:3b) and he will purify the sons of Levi yˆwEl_y´nV;b_tRa rAhIf◊w

(3:3c) and refine them like gold and silver. PRsD;kAk◊w bDhÎΩzA;k MDtOa qå;qˆz◊w

(3:3d) Thus they shall be for the Lord h∂q∂dVxI;b hDj◊nIm yEvyˆ…gAm hÎwhyAl …wyDh◊w

presenting an offering in justice,

(3:4a) and the offering of Judah MIDlDv…wryˆw h∂d…wh◊y tAj◊nIm hÎwhyAl hDb√rDo◊w

and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord

(3:4b) as in the days of old and as twø¥yˆnOm√dåq MyˆnDvVk…w MDlwøo yEmyI;k

in former years.

(3:5a) Then I will draw near to you fDÚpVvI;mAl MRkyElSa yI;tVbår∂q◊w

for judgment

(3:5b) and I will be a swift witness rEhAmVm dEo yItyˆyDh◊w

(3:5c) against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, MyIpSaÎnVmAb…w MyIpVÚvAkVmA;b

(3:5d) against those who swear falsely, r®qDÚvAl MyIoD;bVvˆ…nAb…w

(3:5e) against those who oppress MwøtÎy◊w hÎnDmVlAa ryIkDc_rAkVc yéqVvOoVb…w

the wages of the hireling, the widow and the orphan,

(3:5f) against those who thrust aside the sojourner, yˆn…waér◊y aøl◊w r´g_yEÚfAm…w

and do not fear me,”

(3:5g) said the Lord of hosts. twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(3:6a) “For I the Lord did not change, yItyˆnDv aøl hÎwh◊y yˆnSa yI;k


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(3:6b) and you, O sons of Jacob, on your part, MRtyIlVk aøl bOqSoÅy_y´nV;b MR;tAa◊w

did not perish.

(3:7a) Indeed, from the days of your fathers yå;qUjEm MR;t√rAs MRkyEtObSa yEmyImVl

you have turned aside from my statutes

(3:7b) and have not kept them.” MR;t√rAmVv aøl◊w

2.2.2. Mal 3:7c-12

(3:7c) “Return to me, that I may MRkyElSa hDb…wvDa◊w yAlEa …wb…wv

return to you,”


(3:7e) “But you shall say, ‘Wherein shall b…wvÎn hR;mA;b MR;t√rAmSaÅw

we return?’

(3:8a) Will man rob God, MyIhølTa M∂dDa oA;bVqˆySh

(3:8b) that you are robbing me? yItOa MyIoVbOq MR;tAa yI;k

(3:8c) But you shall say, ‘In what ÔK…wnSoAbVq hR;mA;b MR;t√rAmSaÅw

did we rob you?’

(3:8d) In your tithes and offerings. hDm…wrV;tAh◊w rEcSoA;mAh

(3:9a) With a curse you are being cursed MyîrDa´n MR;tAa h∂rEaV;mA;b

(3:9b) because me you are robbing—the whole nation. wø;lU;k ywø…gAh MyIoVbOq MR;tAa yItOa◊w

(3:10a) Bring the full tithes into rDxwøaDh tyE;b_lRa rEcSoA;mAh_lD;k_tRa …wayIbDh

the storehouse [of the temple]

(3:10b) and let there be food in my house; yItyEbV;b P®rRf yIhyˆw

(3:10c) and then put me to the test herewith,” taøzD;b aÎn yˆn…wnDjVb…w


(3:10e) “if I will not open for you MˆyAmDÚvAh twø;bürSa tEa MRkDl jA;tVpRa aøl_MIa

the windows of heaven

(3:10f) and pour down for you an y∂d_yIlV;b_dAo hDk∂rV;b MRkDl yItOqyîrShÅw

overflowing blessing.

(3:11a) I will rebuke for you the devourer, lEkOaD;b MRkDl yI;t√rAoÎg◊w

(3:11b) and it will not destroy to you hDm∂dSaDh yîrVÚp_tRa MRkDl tIjVvÅy_aøl◊w

the fruits of the soil;

(3:11c) and the vine in the field shall not h®dDÚcA;b NRp‰…gAh MRkDl lE;kAvVt_aøl◊w

fail to bear to you,”


(3:12a) “Then all nations will call you blessed, Mˆywø…gAh_lD;k MRkVtRa …wrVÚvIa◊w

(3:12b) for you, even you, will be a land XRpEj X®rRa MR;tAa …wyVhIt_yI;k

of delight,”


A. NICCACCI68

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2.2.3. Mal 3:13-18

(3:13a) “Your words have been harsh against me,” MRkyérVbî;d yAlDo …wq◊zDj

(3:13b) said the Lord. hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(3:13c) “But you shall say, ‘On what have we ÔKyRlDo …wn√rA;b√dˆ…n_hAm MR;t√rAmSaÅw

conversed against you?’

(3:14a) You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God. MyIhølTa dObSo a◊wDv MR;t√rAmSa

(3:14b) And what gain is it that we kept wø;t√rAmVvIm …wn√rAmDv yI;k oAxR;b_hAm…w

his charge,

(3:14c) and that we walked as in twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y y´nVÚpIm tyˆ…nårOdVq …wnVkAlDh yIk◊w

mourning before the Lord of hosts?

(3:15a) Henceforth we are deeming Myîd´z MyîrVÚvAaVm …wnVjÅnSa hD;tAo◊w

the arrogant blessed;

(3:15b) Not only have evildoers been built up, hDoVvîr yEcOo …wnVbˆn_MÅ…g

(3:15c) but they also have put God …wfElD;mˆ¥yÅw MyIhølTa …wnSjD;b MÅ…g

to the test and escaped.’”

(3:16a) Then those who feared the Lord …whEoér_tRa vyIa hÎwh◊y yEa√rˆy …wrV;b√dˆn zDa

conversed with one another,

(3:16b) and the Lord heeded and heard them, oDmVvˆ¥yÅw hÎwh◊y bEvVqÅ¥yÅw

(3:16c) and a book of remembrance was written wyÎnDpVl NwørD;kˆz rRpEs bEtD;kˆ¥yÅw

before him

(3:16d) concerning those who fear the Lord wømVv yEbVvOjVl…w hÎwh◊y yEa√rˆyVl

and those who value his name.

(3:17a) “Thus they shall be to me,” twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa yIl …wyDh◊w

said the Lord of hosts,

(3:17b) “on the day when I am about to act, hD;l¨gVs hRcOo yˆnSa rRvSa Mwø¥yAl

as special possession.

(3:17c) And I will have compassion on them MRhyElSo yI;tVlAmDj◊w

(3:17d) as a man will be wøtOa dEbOoDh wønV;b_lAo vyIa lOmVjÅy rRvSaA;k

compassionate on his son who serves him.

(3:18a) Then you shall again distinguish oDv∂rVl qyî;dAx NyE;b MRtyIa√r…w MR;tVbAv◊w

between the righteous and the wicked,

(3:18b) between one who serves God wødDbSo aøl rRvSaAl MyIhølTa dEbOo NyE;b

and one who did not serve him.”

2.2.4. Mal 3:19-21 (Engl. 4:1-3)

(3:19a) “For behold, the day is about r…w…nA;tA;k rEoO;b aD;b Mwø¥yAh h´…nIh_yI;k

to come, burning like an oven,


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(3:19b) and all the arrogant and all våq hDoVvîr hEcOo_lDk◊w Myîd´z_lDk …wyDh◊w

evildoers will be stubble,

(3:19c) the day that is coming shall devour them,” aD;bAh Mwø¥yAh MDtOa fAhIl◊w


(3:19e) “so that it will leave them neither PÎnDo◊w v®rOv MRhDl bOzSoÅy_aøl rRvSa

root nor branch,

(3:20a) but the sun of righteousness h∂q∂dVx vRmRv yImVv yEa√rˆy MRkDl hDj√rÎz◊w

shall rise for you who fear my name,

(3:20b) with a healer in its wings. DhyRpÎnVkI;b aEÚp√rAm…w

(3:20c) You shall go forth and leap qE;b√rAm yEl◊gRoV;k MR;tVvIp…w MRtaDxyˆw

like calves of the stall,

(3:21a) and you shall tread down the wicked, MyIoDv√r MRtwø;sAo◊w

(3:21b) for they will be ashes under MRkyEl◊går twøÚpA;k tAjA;t rRpEa …wyVhˆy_yI;k

the soles of your feet,

(3:21c) on the day when I am about to act,” hRcOo yˆnSa rRvSa Mwø¥yA;b


2.2.5. Mal 3:22-24 (Engl. 4:4-6)

(3:22a) “Remember the law of my servant Moses, yI;dVbAo hRvOm tårwø;t …wrVkˆz

(3:22b) that I commanded him at Horeb bérOjVb wøtwøa yItyˆ…wIx rRvSa

(3:22c) for all Israel, the statutes and the MyIfDÚpVvIm…w MyI;qUj lEa∂rVcˆy_lD;k_lAo

ordinances.

(3:23a) Behold, I am about to ayIbÎ…nAh hÎ¥yIlEa tEa MRkDl AjElOv yIkOnDa h´…nIh

send you Elijah the prophet

(3:23b) before the coming of the great a∂rwø…nAh◊w lwødÎ…gAh hÎwh◊y Mwøy awø;b y´nVpIl

and terrible day of the Lord.

(3:24a) He will turn the hearts of fathers MyˆnD;b_lAo twøbDa_bEl byIvEh◊w

to their children

(3:24b) and the hearts of children to their fathers, MDtwøbSa_lAo MynD;b bEl◊w

(3:24c) lest I will come and smite M®rEj X®rDaDh_tRa yItyE;kIh◊w awøbDa_NRÚp

the land with a curse.”

A. NICCACCI70

3. Commentary

3.1.1. Mal 1:1-5

A part of the superscription. i.e., hÎwh◊y_rAb√d aDÚcAm, also appears in Zech 9:1and 12:1. It is followed here by an indication of the addressee (lEa∂rVcˆy_lRa)as in Zech 9:1 and 12:1, and by the name of the prophet who conveys thedivine message (yIkDaVlAm dÅyV;b) as in Hag 1:1.10 The first part of the superscrip-tion is most likely in the construct state, i.e., “the burden of the word of theLord,” as translated above, rather than in apposition.11 As a superscription,Mal 1:1 is grammatically a non-verbal sentence consisting of the predicateonly, while the subject is implied, as is the case with headings, i.e., “(Thisis) the burden of the word of the Lord.”12

10.According to K.W. Weyde, Prophecy and Teaching. Prophetic Authority, Form Prob-lems, and the Use of Traditions in the Book of Malachi, Berlin - New York 2000, 68, thisphrasing indicates that “YHWH has not ‘spoken to him’ [Malachi]. His authority and mes-sage are based on the traditions.” It is of course appropriate to investigate the older tradi-tions on which Malachi bases his prophecy as does Weyde, but this fact does not diminishhis prophetic prerogative. Indeed, similar expressions with rbd verb or noun occur in Isa20:2; Jer 37:2; 50:1; Hag 1:1, 3; 2:1. On dÅyV;b see, e.g., R.L. Smith, Micah-Malachi, Waco(Tex.) 1984, 303.

11.The LXX (lhvmma lo/gou kuri÷ou) and the Vulgate (“onus verbi Domini”) understand itas a construct while, e.g., A.E. Hill, Malachi. A New Translation with Introduction and Com-mentary, New York etc. 1998, understands it as apposition, i.e., “an oracle: the word of God.”On the grammatical analysis of the superscription as well as on the compositional conse-quences drawn by some scholars from the similarity of Zech 9:1 and 12:1 with Mal 1:1 andalso with Hag 1:1, see Hill, 136-140. Among those who assume an editorial unit comprisingZech 9-11, 12-14 and Malachi, L. Bauer, Zeit des Zweiten Tempels – Zeit der Gerechtigkeit.Zur sozio-ökonomischen Konzeption im Haggai-Sacharja-Maleachi-Korpus, Bern 1992 (seeoverall literary structure on p. 138), tries to illustrate the date (the Ptolemaic period, accord-ing to this author) and the socio-economic and spiritual conditions of this corpus of literature.A more precise date “between Nehemiah’s two visits [to Jerusalem], that is, shortly after 443B.C.” has been proposed by Verhoef, 158-162. For J. Nogalski, Redactional Processes in theBook of the Twelve, Berlin - New York 1993, a definite editorial activity extends to the wholecorpus of the Minor Prophets (see no. 102 below). In my paper, “Organizzazione canonicadella Bibbia ebraica,” I tried to show a conscious editorial activity in the Hebrew Bible on thebasis of the verb forms used in the beginning and end of the various books.

12.Pace Hill, 143, Mal 1:1 does not omit any verb, be it rbd or hyh, but rather a personalpronoun functioning as the implied subject. A verb is simply not needed in this type of sen-tence although it could be present; even in the latter case, however, the sentence would re-main of the sane type, e.g., …lRa hÎyDh rRvSa hÎwh◊y_rAb√;d “(This is) the word of the Lord that cameto” (name of the respective prophet: Hos 1:1; Joel 1:1; Mic 1:1; Zeph 1:1), orayIbÎ…nAh q…w;qAbSj hÎzDj rRvSa aDÚcA;mAh “(This is) the oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw” (Hab 1:1).Differently, the sentence is complete and of a different type (x-qatal) in cases like


The first literary unit is 1:2-5. The prophecy begins right in medias reswith a God’s statement conveyed with qatal and its continuation formwayyiqtol.13 Indeed, both qatal forms yI;tVbAhDa (1:2a) and yIta´nDc (1:3a), beingstative verbs, usually indicate a present situation;14 here, however, theircontinuation forms wayyiqtol—bAhOaÎw (1:2d) and MyIcDaÎw (1:3b)—make it clearthat a past situation is intended.15 Because of that, the non-verbal construc-tion in 1:2c, which in the axis of the present constitutes the present tense,indicates contemporaneity with the past and corresponds to the imperfectof the Latin languages: “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?”16

In the phrase hÎwh◊y rAmDa (1:2a), the qatal has its usual value of past, notof present,17 both here and in the other variations of the formula found inthis text—twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa hO;k (1:4c), twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa (1:6d; 1:8e; 1:9d; 1:10d;1:11f; 1:13c; 1:14d; 2:2d; 2:4c; 2:8d; 2:16d; 3:1f; 3:5g; 3:7d; 3:10d; 3:11d;3:12c; 3:17a; 3:19d; 3:21d), lEa∂rVcˆy yEhølTa hÎwh◊y rAmDa (2:16b), and hÎwh◊y rAmDa

(1:13g; 3:13b).18

Although it is commonly translated with present tense, the weqatal formMR;t√rAmSaÅw (1:2b) conveys as a rule future information19—here as well as in the

lRbD;bür◊z_lRa ayIbÎ…nAh yÅ…gAj_dÅyV;b hÎwh◊y_rAb√d hÎyDh MˆyA;tVv tÅnVvI;b “In the second year… the word of the Lordcame by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel” (Hag 1:1), or…yˆnyImVÚvAh v®dOjA;b

hÎy√rAk◊z_lRa hÎwh◊y_rAb√d hÎyDh “In the eighth month… the word of the Lord came to Zechariah”(Zech 1:1). See, briefly, my paper “Organizzazione canonica della Bibbia ebraica,” 18.

13.As a rule in direct speech, when a past information is to be conveyed, the first verb formused is either first-place qatal or second-place qatal (i.e., x-qatal) with no difference (ex-cept in contextually specific cases); see § 1.2.2 above, based on my Syntax of the Verb §§74-77 (“Narrative discourse”).

14.Joüon-Muraoka § 112a.

15.On the problem of twø…nAtVl “jackals,” a term frequently corrected by critics, see discussionin D. Barthélemy, Critique textuelle de l’Ancien Testament. 3: Ezéchiel, Daniel et les 12Prophètes, Fribourg - Göttingen 1992, 1016-1017.

16.See my Syntax of the Verb § 162. Yet, A. Meinhold, Maleachi, XIV/8/1-2, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2000-2002, 21, translates as present: “Hat nicht Jakob einen Bruder Esau?”

17.Among the exceptions are Hill, who consistently translates this formula in the past tense:“Yahweh has said,” and Meinhold: “hat YHWH gesagt.”

18.Cf. J. Krispenz, “Grammatik und Theologie in der Botenformel,” ZAH 11 (1998) 133-139. See no. 88 below.

19.The LXX always translates MR;t√rAmSaÅw with past tense: kai« ei¶pate “And/but you said,” ex-cept in 3:8c, where it has the future, kai« e˙rei√te. The Vulgate also translates in the past (“etdixistis”), except for one case in the present (1:7b, “et dicitis”). On his part, Meinhold cor-rectly objects to the translation with a past tense but his argument that “die gegenwärtigeEinrede soll zum Ausdruck gebracht werden” (p. 21) is hardly valid. In fact, on the oneside, interpretation without a definite idea of BH verb system may be misleading as a lin-guistic criterion; on the other side, the objection (“Einrede”) need not occur in the present.

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other occurrences in Malachi (1:6f, 7b, 13a; 2:14a, 17b; 3:7e, 8c, 13c).20 Thisverb form constitutes a formula that introduces an objection by the address-ees to a specific divine accusation. Such objections are not directly expressedby the addressees, who never intervene in the discussion, but are anticipatedby God himself. Indeed, God is the speaker throughout the prophecy; only incertain cases the voice of the prophet is heard as spokesman of the people orof God himself (see § 4.3 below). Not recognizing the future value of theseweqatal forms amounts to altering the perspective of the prophecy. On the onehand, translating these verb forms with present tenses supposes an exchangeof accusations and objections in actual progress while, on the other hand,translating them with past tenses supposes a similar exchange in the past,both of which are unjustified on the basis of verb syntax in BH.21

The analysis of 1:4 illustrates an ambiguity that from time to time facesthe interpreter who evaluates indicative weqatal and x-yiqtol forms. Theambiguity arises from the fact that they occur both in the axis of the past, innarrative, both historical and oral, and in the axis of the future, in directspeech (see §§ 1.2-1.2 above). In the first case, they convey off-line infor-mation and correspond to the imperfect of the Latin languages, while in thesecond case they convey main-line information (although they are also usedfor off-line information) and indicate future tense. Sometimes it is not easyto decide whether they refer to the axis of the past or to that of the future. In1:4, for instance, because 1:3 evokes past deeds of the Lord towards Esau,the verb forms might be taken to refer to the past as well. If so, the x-yiqtolin 1:4a, 4d, and 5a-b, as well as the weqatal in 1:4e are translated with theimperfect and signal repetition, or custom, i.e., “When Edom was saying…

Indeed, in Malachi the objections of the people to God’s affirmations or accusations areconsistently introduced by MR;t√rAmSaÅw “and/but you shall say,” and thus presented as future.

20.Thus the formula MR;t√rAmSaÅw appears as follows in the various units of Malachi: in the firstpart, once in unit 3.1.1, twice in 3.1.2, once in 3.1.3, never in 3.1.4, and once in 3.1.5; inthe second part, once in 3.2.1, twice in 3.2.2, once in 3.2.3, and never in 3.2.4 and 3.2.5.The units in which the formula does not appear contain God’s prosecution and no discus-sion of people’s objections.

21.These dialogues are “fictitious” in the sense that they are not factual exchanges but bothquestion/accusation and answer are presented as formulated by God; however the literaryform dialogue or disputation is real. Thus, it is not advisable to reject it out of hand as doneby Weyde, Prophecy and Teaching, 46. Otherwise, the disputation is generally recognizedas the basic literary form of Malachi. D.L. Petersen, “Malachi: The Form-Critical Task,”in: K.-D. Schunck - M. Augustin (eds.), “Lasset uns Brücken bauen”: Collected Communi-cations to the XVth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the OldTestament, Cambridge 1995, Bern 1998, 269-274, suggested that a comparison with theGreco-Roman diatribe is helpful to evaluate the genre of Malachi, while Smith, 300, ratherrefers to other prophetic passages such as Mic 2:6-11; Jer 2:23-25, 29-32; 28:1-11; 29:24:32.


They were building, but I was tearing down. Thus one was calling/used tocall them the territory of wickedness… Your own eyes were seeing this, andyou yourselves were saying (it)…” However, it is more probable that the x-yiqtol and weqatal forms refer to the axis of the future, i.e., God anticipates,with MwødTa rAmaøt_yI;k, the objections and describes the reactions of Esau/Edom,just as above he anticipated, with MR;t√rAmSaÅw, the objections of the descendantsof Jacob (see comment on in 1:2b above).22

In the reported speech of Edom we find a qatal followed by twoweyiqtol forms: h‰nVbˆn◊w b…wvÎn◊w …wnVvAÚvür (1:4b). As a rule, weyiqtol is the continua-tion form of volitive yiqtol (while the continuation form of the indicativeyiqtol is weqatal) and as such is indicates volition, not simple prediction(see § 1.2 above). Therefore I translated: “we have been shattered but wewant to return and we want to build”, i.e., “… we want to build again”, or:“we have been shattered but only in order that we return and build”, i.e.,“… only to build again” (cf. comment on 2:12a). Note, in this expression,the hendiadys “we want to return and we want to build (h‰nVbˆn◊w b…wvÎn◊w)” withan adverbial use of a finite form of the verb bwv with the meaning of“again” (see 3:18a below).23

The x-yiqtol sentences in 1:5a-b lay emphasis on the ‘x’ element: “yourown eyes shall see”, and “you yourselves shall say.”24 Weqatal forms areavoided here because the two pieces of information stand not on the samelevel with weqatal of 1:4e but rather specify it; otherwise, one would haveexpected a sequence of coordinated weqatal forms (see § 1.2 above).

According to normal use, the yiqtol lå;d◊gˆy (1:5c) that occupies the firstplace in the sentence has volitive force (see the same or similar phrase inPs 35:27; 40:17; 70:5).25 It is not clear which is the more suitable meaningof l…wb◊gIl lAoEm—“over” or “beyond the territory of Israel.”26

22.In any case, the value of yI;k as conditional or temporal “if, when” is justified and thereis no need to invoke the deictic value of this conjunction, nor would it yield a better sense,pace Meinhold, 23. He rejects the conditional value because in this case “stellte hk (»so«)eine beim Konditionalsatz nicht übliche Einleitung des Nachsatzes dar…” (ibid.). However,it seems evident that the apodosis is not twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa hO;k but rather swørThRa yˆnSaÅw …wnVbˆy hD;mEh.

23.Cf. Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley § 120d.

24.This detail is also noted by Hill, 160.

25.Despite contrary views of interpreters like Keil, 432, and Verhoeff, 194, no. 14. Hill,on his part, translates as jussive and notes that it is an “expression… stemming from the so-called Zion tradition of the first Davidic corpus of the Psalter” (p. 161). Actually, Hill writesthat “the expression [yigdal YHWH] is an epithet for Yahweh” (ibid.), an opinion that hereiterates in his note on Mˆywø…gA;b yImVv lwødÎ…g (1:11b), which he translates as follows: “‘Great’ ismy name among the nations!” (see p. 187), but I do not share this view.

26.Various opinions are listed in Hill, 161-162.

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3.1.2. Mal 1:6-8

It is the second literary unit. As the previous one, it starts with a God’sstatement (1:6; cf. 1:2a) followed by an objection of the addressees (1:6f;cf. 1:2b). The key-word “father” evokes here the honor that is due to him(while in 2:10 it evokes respect among brothers).27

The indicative yiqtol in 1:6a is used to express something that is natu-ral and normal, as to say: “A son will always (have to) honor his father.”This idiomatic use of x-yiqtol occurs especially in Proverbs, e.g., 10:1, 13,14, 19, and 28, where such a yiqtol is paralleled with a non-verbal sentenceexpressing information in the axis of the present.28

Two questions in 1:6f and 1:7b consist of a syntactic predicate, i.e., hD;mA;b

in both cases, and a syntactic subject, i.e., the verbs …wnyˆzDb in 1:6f and ÔK…wnVlAa´g

in 1:7b, while the answer consists only of the predicate, i.e., the participleMyIvyˆ…gAm in 1:7a29 and the prepositional phrase MRk√rDmTaR;b in 1:7c. In fact, the lasttwo elements correspond to hD;mA;b, that is the syntactic predicate, and repre-sent the answers to the respective questions, while the subject, i.e., the twoverbs, is omitted in both cases as the already-known element.30 Because

27.The occurrence in 1:6c of MyˆnwødSa (in the plural, usually called plural of majesty: seeGesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley § 124i) with reference to the Lord may be due to the parallel-ism with wyÎnOdSa in 1:6a used for a human lord. On his part, P.J. Botha, “Honour and Shameas Keys to the Interpretation of Malachi,” OTE 14 (2001) 392-403, suggests that the wholetext of Malachi can be understood in terms of honor and shame linked to three covenants—between the Lord and the Levites (2:4, 5, 8), between the Lord and the people (2:10; 3;1),and between husband and wife (2:14, 15, 16).

28.My translation of Prov 10:1 in “Analysing Biblical Hebrew Poetry” should be revisedas follows: “(a) A wise son will make glad his father, / (b) while a foolish son is a sorrowto his mother” (p. 81).

29.The participle is the predicate of an elliptic non-verbal sentence, whose subject “you”is implied. Being this sentence a reply to the question “Wherein have we despised yourname?” a literal translation is: “In the fact that (you) are offering,” or “While you areoffering.”

30.This terminology continues to raise criticism by some, e.g. W. Groß, Doppelt besetztesVorfeld. Syntaktische, pragmatische und übersetzungstechnische Studien zum althebräi-schen Verbalsatz, Berlin - New York 2001, 48-49. However, if we agree that the predicateis the new information that is provided on a subject or topic, then it is only natural to affirmthat, e.g., in the example under examination, hD;mA;b and MyIvyˆ…gAm / MRk√rDmTaR;b constitute the newinformation or the predicate while …wnyˆzDb and ÔK…wnVlAa´g are the already-known (from 1:6e and1:7a, respectively) or the “support” for the new information, i.e., the subject. See my paper“Marked Syntactical Structures in Biblical Greek in Comparison with Biblical Hebrew,” LA43 (1993) 9-69, esp. § 3. On p. 14, I quoted H.J. Polotsky, Etudes de syntaxe copte.Deuxième étude: Les temps seconds, Le Caire 1944, 24-25, who affirms that in similar casesgrammatical and “logical” terms do not coincide but what is predicate in a sen-


they are connected with verb forms of the past, both the participle and theprepositional phrase are put in the axis of the past.

In 1:8a-b the two yI;k + yiqtol constructions, which function as protases,as well as the two following non-verbal clauses, which function as apo-doses, refer to the past because they belong to a past context (establishedby the questions/objections in 1:6f and 1:7b). As such they indicate con-temporaneity and are translated with the past continuous, where a participleis present, or with the imperfect, where it does not appear, while the con-junction yI;k takes a temporal value; therefore: “When you were offering…was there no evil? / And when you were offering… was there no evil?” Inthis interpretation, the words of 1:8 are spoken by God to the priests andthe two apodoses in the same verse have interrogative force.31

3.1.3. Mal 1:9-14

With hD;tAo◊w a new literary section starts linked to the previous one (see 2:1).In 1:9a we find a well-attested volitive sequence with imperative contin-ued by weyiqtol (i.e., the ‘imperative → weyiqtol’ construction, see § 1.2above) expressing a command and its intended purpose: “entreat the favorof God, that he may be gracious to us.”32 From the 1st person plural pro-noun “to us” it appears that God, or the prophet, is picking up here a re-quest to the priests by the Israelites and by the prophet as well as a newstarting point to continue his accusation.33

tence becomes the “support” or the subject in the following one (Polotsky examines theGreek text of 2 Cor 4:3 in comparison with its Coptic translation). This analysis also ap-plies to the passage under consideration (see further comment on 2:17b-c). The only differ-ence between Polotsky’s analysis and mine is that he speaks of grammatical and logicalterms, while I prefer to speak of grammatical and syntactic categories.

31.If, however, 1:8 is taken as words spoken by the priests and quoted by God as a con-tinuation of 1:6f, then the second-person pronoun in …wvyˆ…gAt / N…wvˆ…gAt_yIk◊w refers to the peoplepresenting an offering to the Temple. Thus explicitly Radak: “When people bring to you ablind sheep to sacrifice and to offer it, you say: ‘This is not evil but it is good to offer itbecause the table is contemptible…’”; similarly Ibn Ezra: see A.J. Rosenberg (ed.),Mikraoth Gedoloth: Twelve Prophets. A New English Translation, etc., New York 1992,401. Keil, 434 also takes o∂r NyEa in both cases as affirmative, not interrogative, and interpretGod’s words as ironic, while Meinhold attributes this clause to the priests themselves as animplicit quotation: “(, sagt ihr): Es ist nicht schlimm!” (p. 64).

32.A dagesh is missing in …wn´nDjyˆw, for the expected …wnE…nDjyˆw, in the Leningradensis (cf. BHS).

33.Actually, God is referred to in the third person in 1:9a and 1:9c, but then the first per-son is used in 1:10 ff. Thus, it appears that the words of the prophet and those of God him-self are one and the same. Better said, the prophet faithfully relates God’s words to the point

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In 1:9-10 God is addressing the priests in a high rhetorical language.The x-qatal construction in 1:9b puts emphasis on the prepositional phrasethat precedes the verb: “It is from your hand that this occurred,” i.e., thecustom of offering unsuitable sacrifices. Syntactically, this sentence canserve as a circumstance (or protasis) linked to the main sentence (orapodosis), i.e., “Because it is from your hand that this occurred, will (God)show favor…?” The implicit object of the last verb is “anybody,” i.e., thepeople in general, while the prepositional phrase MR;kIm means “because ofyou,” i.e., the priests.34 Also note the insistence on the pronouns referringto the priests in this verse and in the following: “because of you,” “amongyou,” “in you,” “from your hand.”

This severe accusation stands in conflict with the request in 1:9a forinterceding for the nation. The intended meaning seems to be: “(However,)because it is from your hand that this occurred, will ever God show favor(to the nation) because of you?”35

In 1:10a, the construction rO…gVsˆy◊w MRkD;b_MÅg yIm consists of interrogative pro-noun and weyiqtol with its usual function of expressing purpose (lit. “inorder that he would shut…”), while MÅ…g strengthens the following comple-ment.36 On the contrary, the negative construction in the next lineMÎ…nIj yIjV;b◊zIm …wryIaDt_aøl◊w is indicative (its positive counterpart would be weqatal)and expresses simple, non-volitive consequence: “and so you will not lightmy altar in vain,” i.e., “by the shining of the sacrificial fire which burnedupon the altar” (Keil, 436).

The construction in 1:10e, with the object placed before the negativeverb form, hRx√rRa_aøl hDj◊nIm…w, is the negative counterpart of x-yiqtol, not ofweqatal, otherwise the object would have followed the negative verb as isthe case in 1:10b. This fact proves that the construction in 1:10e conveysoff-line information (with weqatal it would convey main-line information).It seems, in fact, that the choice of this construction has the function of

of incorporating them in his own speech. On the other side, one should also note that some-times God refers to himself in the third person, as in 1:14b (along with the first person in1:14c!) and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. See § 4.3 below.

34.However, a translation like “will he show favor to any of you?” (RSV), with “partitivemin,” is also possible.

35.Compare the following explanation by Rashi: “And now, you priests, who commit thisevil, how does enter your mind that you can be the messengers of Israel, to supplicate Godto have compassion on them? Lo, this evil has come from your hand” (Rosenberg, MikraothGedoloth, 402).

36.Similar cases of this construction with yIm + weyiqtol are Jer 9:11; Psa 107:43; Job 19:23;Esth 5:6 = 9:12; Neh 2:4; 2 Chron 10:9. There are also cases without “waw apodoseos,”i.e., with simple yiqtol: Judg 7:3; Prov 9:4, 16; Ezra 1:3.


placing special emphasis on the ‘x’ element, i.e., the object, that precedesthe verb form;37 therefore, I translated: “not a single offering…”38

The term yImVv “my name” links these verses together; see 1:11b-c, 11e,12a (where the phrase “my name” is referred to with a personal pronoun),and 14e.

In 1:10c and in 1:11 a series of non-verbal sentences convey pieces ofinformation in the present: “I have no pleasure in you… / my name is greatamong the nations, / and in every place incense is burned and sacrifice isoffered to my name, / and a pure offering (lit., ‘there is something burned[and] presented to my name, / and there is a pure offering’).”39 The extraor-dinary universalistic view of these affirmations should reflect, on the oneside, the scattering of the Jews throughout the Persian empire and, on theother, a cosmopolitan aura characteristic of that period, but the exact inter-pretation is an object of controversy.40

Grammatically, a…whlDaøgVm (1:12b) is a complete sentence (with normalorder of words predicate-subject) and therefore, yÎnOdSa NAjVlUv does not belongto it, rather it is a casus pendens; lit. “as for the Lord’s table, it is polluted.”The same analysis applies to the following line: “as for its fruit, its food isdespicable.”41

37.I would call the reader’s attention to this remarkable but easily overlooked point of BHgrammar. Given the fact that the negation is inseparable from the verb form, x-aøl + yiqtol(as hRx√rRa_aøl hDj◊nIm…w in 1:10e) is the negative counterpart of x-yiqtol while aøl + yiqtol-x (asyIjV;b◊zIm …wryIaDt_aøl◊w in 1:10b) is the negative counterpart of weqatal-x.

38.Hill’s translation takes into account this nuance: “Indeed, I will not accept [any] offer-ing from your hand,” although he adheres to a different description of the BH verb systemfrom the one proposed in this paper (see Hill, 186-187).

39.Keil, 438 assumes rather that h∂rwøhVf hDj◊nIm…w “is attached by Vav explic[ativum] in theform of an explanatory apposition,” i.e., an “offering is presented to my name, and indeeda sacrificial gift.”

40.See a discussion of the various views in Smith, 312-316, Verhoef, 225-232, andMeinhold, 128-133. On the similarities of this passage with Ezek 36:23-24, see Weyde,Prophecy and Teaching, 146-149. A. Viberg, “Wakening a Sleeping Metaphor: A New In-terpretation of Malachi 1:11,” TynBull 45 (1994) 297-319, suggests to interpret Mal 1:11c-dalong with 1:14 as a hyperbole meaning: “YHWH is the great king who should be wor-shipped as such” (p. 315). But this is hardly a solution to the problem. On his part, J. Briend,“Malachie 1, 11 et l’universalisme,” in: R. Kuntzmann - B. Renaud (eds.), Ce Dieu quivient. Études sur l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament offertes au Professeur Bernard Renaudà l’occasion de son soixante-cinquième anniversaire, Paris 1995, 191-204, tries to go be-yond hyperbole. He identifies a procedure of emulation (“le procédé d’émulation”) consist-ing in “faire parler ou agir les peuples étrangers pour qu’Israël réagisse par émulation etfasse comme eux ou même mieux qu’eux” (p. 199). He identifies this procedure in otherpassages, such as Exod 14:25; Psa 126:2; Ezek 16:14; Deut 4:6.

41.See various interpretations of wøbyˆn in Barthélemy, Critique textuelle, 1020-1022.

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The term hDaDlV;tAm (1:13a) “is a contraction of hDaDlV;t_hAm…: What a weari-ness it is!” (Keil, 440). Now, this term and the following phrase wøtwøa MR;tVjAÚpIh◊w

“you shall sniff at it” (1:13b)42 are introduced by MR;t√rAmSaÅw, a verb form thatin all the other eight occurrences in Malachi introduces an objection by theaddressees to a previous accusation by the Lord (see list in § 3.1.1 above).If so, the phrase “you shall sniff at it” does not directly refer to the sacrifi-cial table in the Temple, as assumed by some scholars, but rather to theobject of God’s new accusation, i.e., that, contrary to what is done by thenations of the earth, “you are profaning it (i.e., God’s holy Name) / by say-ing, ‘The Lord’s table, it is polluted, / and its fruit, its food is despicable’”(1:12). The priests appear then to complain that God’s accusation againstthem is a “tribulation, hardship” similar to that experienced by Israel dur-ing the centuries, according to the meaning of hDaDl;Vt in the other passageswhere it occurs (Exod 18:8; Num 20:14; Lam 3:5; Neh 9:32). God himselfanticipates their complaint (with MR;t√rAmSaÅw, 1:13a) and then goes on to de-scribe their future behavior toward the cult which, in fact, will only con-tinue the one already established (compare 1:6-7), and restates his rejectionof their service (1:13f, compared with 1:10e).

A grammatical detail is to be noted here. Because no subordinating in-dicator is present, the two weqatal forms in 1:13d-e and the following in-terrogative yiqtol are coordinate verb forms. However, since weqatal canbe both a main-line and an off-line verb form (see §§ 1.1-1.2 above), thesyntactic relationship among the three verb forms is aptly interpreted here,on semantic grounds, as protasis (the two weqatal) and apodosis (the inter-rogative yiqtol), i.e.: “If you shall bring… and thus you shall bring…, shallI accept…?”

Thus, it is advisable to carefully evaluate the various verb forms andnon-verbal constructions occurring in this section because they have thepurpose of conveying the exact perspective of the text. The section beginswith an invitation (imperative → weyiqtol) to the priests to entreat the fa-vor of God for the nation; however, this intercession is doomed to failure(unless they repent; see 3:7c-12) because the priests themselves are respon-sible for the poor condition of the people (1:9). God’s indignation goes so

42.A certain Jewish tradition finds here a tiqqun soferim (“correction of the scribes”), sup-posing a reading yItwøa MR;tVjAÚpIh◊w instead of wøtwøa MR;tVjAÚpIh◊w, i.e., with a first-person pronoun refer-ring to the Lord. However, the MT makes good sense although it is debatable which is theterm referred to by the third-person masculine pronoun—the table, as indicated above, or“la tâche de contrôler l’état d’intégrité des bêtes à offrir en sacrifice… que l’on considèrecomme ennuyeuse et inutile.” See on this Barthélemy, Critique textuelle, 1023-1024 (quo-tation on p. 1024).


far as to ask that the priests themselves close the Temple and stop offeringunworthy sacrifices. Indeed, said the Lord, “I have no pleasure in you”(non-verbal construction = present tense), “and not a single offering shall Iaccept from your hand” (waw-x-aøl + yiqtol = future tense) (1:10). The rea-son for that is given by a series of non verbal sentences (= present tense)governed by yI;k: because in all the earth God is revered and pure offeringsare presented, while the Israelite priests do just the opposite (1:10-12).43 Atthis point God anticipates the priests’ complaint, describes their future be-havior and declares his rejection of their offerings (weqatal and interroga-tive yiqtol = future tense, 1:13). Finally, a new series of non-verbalconstructions (= present tense) again introduced by yI;k, paralleling 1:10-11,restates the reason for this rejection (1:14).

3.1.4. Mal 2:1-9

A new literary section begins here, introduced by hD;tAo◊w like the previousone. A further connection is represented by yImVvIl “to my name” (2:2c; cf.1:11b).

In 2:2f-g the shift from the plural MRkyEtwøk√rI;b_tRa to the feminine singularsuffix of DhyItwørDa MÅg◊w suggests a distributive nuance of the latter: “each oneof them.”44

“The seed” (2:3a) is interpreted in an agricultural sense by the Jewishtraditional commentators and this meaning suits best the context.45 In fact,the expression oår‰ΩzAh_tRa MRkDl rEoOg yˆn◊nIh “Behold, I am about to rebuke the seed

43.The invitation in 1:9a is dropped for the time being (it will be taken up again in 3:7c-12) because there is a need for the priests to recognize their misbehavior and repent. There-fore, the invitation is followed by an accusation (1:9b-10) and by a double motivationintroduced by yI;k, one positive (the religiosity of the nations, 1:11) and the other negative(the priests’ improper cult, 1:12-14b). The passage concludes with a second positive moti-vation also introduced by yI;k (1:14c, 14e), parallel to the first (1:11). The structure of 1:11 isas follows: a) wøawøbVm_dAo◊w vRmRv_jår◊zI;mIm yI;k, b) Mˆywø…gA;b yImVv lwødÎ…g, c) …yImVvIl vÎ…gUm rDfVqUm MwøqDm_lDkVb…w, b’)Mˆywø…gA;b yImVv lwødÎg_yI;k. Differently, Smith, 309 interprets, on the authority of J. Swetnam, the yI;kin 1:11a as “but,” while disregarding the occurrence of this conjunction in 1:14c.

44.This is well noted by Keil, 443. He also rightly observes that yItwørDa “is a perfect, whichaffirms that the curse has already taken effect” (ibid.).

45.Thus, e.g., Ibn Ezra: “I will rebuke the seed—that it should not grow—because My tableis empty” (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 406). But Keil, 443 disagrees: “But since thepriests did not practise agriculture, it is impossible to see how rebuking the seed, i.e., caus-ing a failure of the crops, could be a punishment peculiar to the priests. We must thereforefollow the LXX, Aquila, Vulg., Ewald, and others, and adopt the pointing AoOrV…zAh, i.e., the

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because of you” parallels 3:11a: lEkOaD;b MRkDl yI;t√rAoÎg◊w “I will rebuke for you thedevourer.”46 The meaning is, of course, reversed: in 2:3a God threatens thepeople with sterility of the fields while in 3:11a he promises to curb ani-mals devouring the harvest.

The subject of the verb aDcÎn◊w (2:3d) is generic: “and one will take,” whilethe suffix of wyDlEa refers back to “dung.”47 With very severe language Godannounces that he will spread the dung of the sacrifices on the faces of thepriests (2:3b-c) as a sign of utter contempt and, as a result, people willthrow them away together with the dung of the sacrifices (2:3d).48

The consequence of this punishment is indicated as follows: “So shallyou know (MR;tVoådyˆw) that I have sent this dispensation (taøΩzAh hÎwVxI;mAh) to you, /that my covenant (yItyîrV;b) may be with Levi” (2:4a-b).49 From the point ofview of text, the expression taøΩzAh hÎwVxI;mAh tEa MRkyElSa refers back to 2:1, whileyItyîrV;b (2:4b) looks forward to 2:5a and 2:8c. As a consequence of the pun-ishment sent on them as a hÎwVxIm “dispensation,” the priests shall understand

arm… It is with the arm that a man performs his business or the duties of his calling; andrebuking the arm, therefore, signifies the neutralizing of the official duties performed at thealtar and in the sanctuary.” However, while the sterility of the fields can certainly be seenas a punishment for all the nation, an interpretation of oår‰ΩzAh “seed” as descendants is alsofeasible (compare 2:12b below). For a discussion of the passage see Barthélemy, Critiquetextuelle, 1023-1024 (here the meaning “descendance” is preferred), R.A. Kugler, “A Noteon the Hebrew and Greek Texts of Mal 2,3aa,” ZAW 108 (1996) 426-429, and Hill, 200-201 (also interpreting “offspring”).

46.A small grammatical difference is that the object of the verb is governed by tRa in 2:3a,by V ;b in 3:11a. Both constructions are actually attested—with ; Vb (Gen 37:10; Jer 29:27; Ruth2:16; Isa 17:13; 54:9; Nah 1:4; Zech 3:2; Psa 106:9) and with direct object (Psa 9:6; 68:31;119:21).

47.See discussion by Barthélemy, Critique textuelle, 1026-1027, where the subject of theverb is likewise taken as impersonal, while for Hill, 202-203 the subject is God himself.

48.“The dung of the sacrificial animals was to be carried away to an unclean place outsidethe camp and burned there, in the case of the sin-offerings, upon an ash-heap (Lev. 4:12;16:27; Ex. 29:14). Scattering dung in the face was a sign and figurative description of themost ignominious treatment” (Keil, 443).

49.Some commentators find problems with this “covenant” with Levi. See a brief exposi-tion in Smith, 317, and more fully in Hill, 204-206. In my opinion, the term “covenant”need not be taken technically, at least not as technically as assumed by some modern schol-ars. In fact, two more “covenants” are mentioned in Malachi, that of the fathers (tyîrV;b

…wnyEtObSa, 2:10d) and that of the legitimate wife ( ÔKRtyîrV;btRvEa◊w, 2:14d). This may suggest that theterm tyîrV;b is used here to broadly designate different divine dispositions for the life of God’speople. Compare Jer 33:20, where God speaks of his “covenant” (yItyîrV;b) with the day andwith the night, meaning the regular succession of day and night. In any case, what disturbsmodern scholars did not apparently disturb Medieval Jewish interpreters (see next footnote).


that God intends to continue his “covenant” with Levi.50 Personally, Leviremained faithful to God’s covenant (2:5-6) while the priests addressedhere have departed from the right way and for this reason God has madethem contemptible in the face of the people (2:8-9).

The recounting of the fidelity of Levi to the covenant of the Lord be-gins with a x-qatal (2:5a), continues with two ‘x | wayyiqtol’ constructions(2:5b-c, on which see the next paragraph) and is further specified with fivex-qatal constructions (2:5d-6d; in 2:6b the qatal is negated). Now, while thefirst x-qatal represents the main line of an oral narrative, the other suchconstructions represent a secondary line of communication, the specificfunction of which has to be determined case by case through interpreta-tion.51 In the present case, the five x-qatal constructions seem to specifythe initial main-line information by emphasizing the ‘x’ element that pre-cedes the verb form: “before my name he stood… a law of truth was… nowrong was found… in peace and uprightness he walked… and many heturned…”

Instead of x-qatal in 2:5b-c we find two ‘x | wayyiqtol’ constructions,52

i.e., with a ‘x’ non-verbal element preceding a sentence with wayyiqtol.53

50.“That my covenant may be with Levi” seems the most natural translation of yItyîrV;b twøyVhIl

yˆwEl_tRa, despite Keil’s contention that hyh “does not mean to continue, or to be maintained”(p. 444); therefore he supplies hÎwVxI;mAh “dispensation” as the subject from the previous clauseand translates: “that it may be my covenant with Levi.” God’s purpose in threatening thepriests is that they repent and thus they may have a share in the covenant of their fatherLevi. In this way explained Rashi: “for I wish that you will exist with Me with the cov-enant that I formed for the tribe of Levy” (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 406). Instead of“that you will exist… with the covenant,” it may be better to translate: “that you will ex-ist… in the covenant” (tyrbb …wmyyqttv). Similarly explained Rabbi Joseph Kara, a con-temporary of Rashi: “In order that you keep the covenant that I made with Aaron and withPhinehas, who belonged to the tribe of Levi” (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 406, He-brew).

51.According to normal use in direct speech, the main line of an oral narrative begins withqatal in the first place of the sentence or with second-place x-qatal without any discernibledifference (see no. 13 above). However, the continuation of the main line is not done withother qatal but with wayyiqtol form(s) as in historical narrative; eventual qatal (actually x-qatal) forms found in the continuation are not main-line but off-line constructions. For de-tails see my Syntax of the Verb §§ 74-78 (already quoted above).

52.Differently from the sign ‘-’ (x-qatal or x-yiqtol), the sign ‘|’ in the construction ‘x |wayyiqtol’ means that the ‘x’ element is not part of the same sentence with wayyiqtol.

53.This interpretation follows the BHS arrangement of the text and diverges from theMasoretic accents and from usual interpretation, i.e., “My covenant was with him life andsalvation, and I lent them to him for fear, and he feared me” (Keil, 444-445), or: “My cov-enant was with him—a covenant of life and peace, and these were what I gave him—a cov-enant of respect, and he respected me” (RSV). In my opinion, the similarity of 2:5b and

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Because wayyiqtol is found at the start of a sentence per se, bothMwølDÚvAh◊w Myˆ¥yAjAh (2:5b) and a∂rwøm (2:5c) are to be analyzed as instances of casuspendens. As such, they function as protasis: “as for life and peace, I gavethem to him; as for fear, he feared me.”54 The communicational effect ofthese ‘x | wayyiqtol’ constructions is probably similar to that of the five x-qatal in 2:5d-6d discussed above.

The verb tAjˆn in 2:5d may derive from the root tjn “to go down,” orpreferably from ttj “to terrify, to shake,” and therefore “to tremble” (seeKeil, 445).

The yiqtol forms in 2:7a-b express something that is natural, even suit-able for a priest and for the people (see on 1:6a above). In fact, the peopleis the subject of the generic 3rd-person plural verb form in 2:7b (contrastthe 3rd-person-singular verb form in 2:3d).

The address MR;tAa◊w “but you,” referring to the priests (2:8a), comes instrong contrast to what we read about Levi (2:5-6). I rendered this contrastas “But you, on your part…” The accompanying accusations are expressedwith first-place qatal (2:8b-c; contrast x-qatal in the praise of Levi in 2:5d-6d above). Afterwards, in 2:9a the main actor in the play, i.e., God himself,intervenes: yˆnSa_MÅg◊w “and I, on my part.” A shift from main-line qatal(MR;tVlAvVkIh/MR;tAjIv, 2:8b-c) to off-line waw-x-qatal (yI;tAtÎn yˆnSa_MÅg◊w, 2:9a) presentsGod’s intervention as a reaction to the behavior of the priests. It is note-worthy that God’s intervention is conveyed here with qatal, and thereforeas past, while earlier it was announced both as future (2:2e-f, 3a-d) and aspast as well (2:2g). This means that God’s judgment has been already initi-ated in the past and will be further implemented in the future if the priestsshall not repent.

Thus the logic of God’s “dispensation” (or “command”) for the priests(2:1, 4a) can be outlined as follows: a) “If you will not listen… / to give gloryto my name… / then I will send the curse upon you… / because you are notlaying it to heart – Behold, I am about to rebuke the seed because of you, / Iwill spread dung upon your face… / Thus you will know that I have sent thisdispensation to you, / that my covenant may be with Levi” (2:1-4); b) “In-deed, my covenant was with him…” (2:5-7); a’) “But you, on your part, have

2:5c and the plausibility of the ‘x | wayyiqtol’ construction in 2:5c make this analysis pref-erable for 2:5b as well. Smith, 309 translates 2:5b as construction with casus pendens, butnot 2:5c: “Life and peace, / I gave them to him in fear and he feared me.” See discussion inHill, 206-207.

54.See my Syntax of the Verb § 119, and “Finite Verb in the Second Position of the Sen-tence. Coherence of the Hebrew Verbal System,” ZAW 108 (1996) 434-440 (pp. 436-437).


turned aside from the way… – and I, on my part, have made you despised…/ inasmuch as you are not keeping my ways…” (2:8-9).55

3.1.5. Mal 2:10-16

A new literary section begins in 2:10 with verb dgb “to be faithless” as akey-word (2:10c, 11a, 14c, 15f, and 16f). It indicates to be faithless towardeach other (2:10-12) as well as toward one’s wife (2:14-16). The startingargument is that God is the common Father and Creator of the nation(2:10a-b): this should foster faithfulness among brothers. A similar argu-ment was evoked at the beginning of the second section in order to recom-mend respect toward God (1:6). Another key-word is dDjRa, both as anadjective modifying “Father” (2:10a) and “God” (2:10b) as well as substan-tive (2:15a, 15c). In my opinion it always refers to God, but this is disputed(see below).

The use of the 1st person plural in 2:10—“Have we not… created us…our fathers?”—indicates that the voice of the prophet as the spokesman ofthe nation resounds here. While Malachi’s prophecy usually reports directdivine words in the 1st person singular (as the formula “thus said the Lordof hosts” shows, attested 25x), in this section God is spoken of in the 3rdperson. This stylistic variation, however, does not signal any significantchange because, as usual, the voice of God and that of the prophet merge.

The prophet denounces Judah/Israel’s unfaithfulness as past with a qatalform (2:11a) followed by its background construction waw-x-qatal (2:11b),and further motivates it with yI;k + qatal (2:11c). The following weqatal(2:11d) is not coordinate to the previous qatal forms, but rather specifiesthem by describing a custom:56 i.e., the faithlessness/profanation commit-

55.Two expressions of God’s reproach mention the divine Law: h∂rwø;tA;b MyI;bår MR;tVlAvVkIh (2:8b)and h∂rwø;tA;b MyˆnDÚp MyIaVcOn◊w (2:9d). The first means: “ye have made the law to many a lwøvVkIm, in-stead of the light of their way, through your example and through false teaching, as thoughthe law allowed or commanded things which in reality are sin”; and the second: “Battöra ®h,in the law, i.e., in the administration of the law, they act with partiality. For the fact itselfcompare Mic. iii:11” (Keil, 447). See various opinions in Hill, 214-215, and 217-218.

56.In prose, the coordinate verb form of qatal is wayyiqtol, not weqatal; among other things,this means that the so-called “copulative, non-inversive waw” is a ghost of BH syntax andshould disappear from our grammars (see, e.g., Joüon-Muraoka § 115c). Both qatal (actu-ally x-qatal) and weqatal occur in the course of a narrative as off-line verb forms. Betweenthe two, there is a difference in aspect: x-qatal indicates a single event or state while weqatalindicates a repeated or habitual event or state. For more information see my Syntax of theVerb §§ 78, 157.

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ted by Judah/Israel consists in the fact that people usually marry “thedaughter of a foreign god.”

Two peculiar phrases are found here. One is “the sanctity of the Lord”(hÎwh◊y v®dOq, 2:11c), that could indicate the Temple, Israel, or the sanctity ofGod himself; the other is “the daughter of a foreign god,” that is used todesignate a non-Jewish woman (2:11d).57 In the light of what follows (see“the offspring of God”, 2:15d), the meaning Israel, the sons of the “oneFather” (2:10), seems preferable.58 Indeed, Judah/Israel is the people whom“he loves.”59 In this perspective, also the designation “daughter of a for-eign god” becomes significant, i.e., a woman belonging to a people thatadores a god different from the Lord.

Although it is commonly translated with simple future, first-placeyiqtol térVkÅy (2:12a), rightly vocalized as jussive, expresses purpose (see 1:4band 1:5c above); lit. “in order that the Lord may cut off.” Since this conse-quence is obviously not intended by those who marry non-Jewish womenbut by God, the volitive form may indicate that the consequence is unavoid-able, i.e., “only to the effect of letting God cut off.”

The order of the complements governed by térVkÅy would be unusual inprose but is understandable in poetry, where parallel pieces of informationare distributed in subsequent lines (see § 1.2 above). The order is as fol-lows: verb + subject + indirect complement in 2:12a; first direct comple-ment (h‰nOo◊w rEo) + indirect complement in 2:12b, second direct complement(hDj◊nIm vyˆ…gAm…w, parallel to the first) + indirect complement in 2:12c. Thus theMT is in order and needs no corrections. However, the fact that in 2:12athe indirect complement follows the direct one has caused misunderstand-ing among the interpreters.60

57.This problem is delineated in Ezra 9-10; see Rashi (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 409).

58.Compare Rashi: “For Judah has profaned—himself, who was the holy one of the Lord,the first of His grain.—[…quoting Jer. 2:3]” (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 409). Seefurther Hill, 230.

59.On the (unlikely) correction adopted by D.L Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1-8. ACommentary, London 1984, 194—∑aåërä(h) ∑ahëb “He [i.e., Judah] loves Asherah,” insteadof the MT bEhDa rRvSa, see a critique by Hill, 231. The latter scholar, though, takes rRvSa as aconjunction, i.e., “for Yehud [i.e., the name of the province of Palestine during the Persianperiod] has profaned the holiness of Yahweh, because he loved and married the daughter ofa strange El.” The expression rDk´n lEa_tA;b (2:11d) designates a goddess according to M.A.Shields, “Syncretism and Divorce in Malachi 2,10-16,” ZAW 111 (1999) 68-86 (pp. 72-73).

60.Direct object of God’s punishment is the descendant of the sinner rather than the sinnerhimself. Thus Rabbi Kara: “To the one who will do such a sin, God, blessed be He, will cutoff to him any son and answerer (hnwow Nb) from the tents of Jacob” (Rosenberg, MikraothGedoloth, 409, Hebrew). Similarly Keil, 450-451; contrast Verhoef, 270-272, and Hill, 233-24. Also see Barthélemy, Critique textuelle, 1029.


The expression h‰nOo◊w rEo (2:12b) consists of two participles, lit. “one whois awake and one who answers.” While the exact meaning is obscure, thebasic idea should be that God will destroy “any living offspring” of the sin-ner,61 and any descendant “who presents an offering to the Lord of hosts,”i.e., “any one who might offer a sacrifice for him in expiation of his sin”(cf. Keil, 451). Because the expression “presenting an offering” (hDj◊nIm yEvyˆ…gAm)in 3:3d refers to the priests, the two designations “one who is awake andone who answers” (2:12b) and “who presents an offering to the Lord ofhosts” (2:12c) seem to suggest that the unit 2:10-16 is destined to thepeople in general as well as to the priests in particular.

The expression …wcSoA;t tyˆnEv taøz◊w (2:13a), a waw-x-yiqtol construction, em-phasizes the ‘x’ element placed before the verb, i.e., “Further, this secondthing you shall do.” This sentence continues 2:10c, also set in the future;62

however a new accusation, which one expects after the introduction 2:13a,only occurs in 2:14b-d, included in the answer of the Lord to a question ofthe addressees in 2:14a.63 The reason for this sequence is that before formu-lating a new accusation—unfaithfulness toward one’s wife (2:14b-d)—theprophet describes the consequences of this new unfaithfulness: people shall

61.Thus Radak, echoing older traditions: “He will not have living offspring” (Rosenberg,Mikraoth Gedoloth, 409). The rendering of the Vulgate “magistrum et discipulum” reflectsthe following Jewish interpretation: “Redak and extant editions of the Talmud (Sanh. 82a)read: an ingenious one among the sages and a student who knows the answer. rEo—An ex-pression of an ingenious person [Rashi]” (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 409). Strangelyenough, the reverse identification—“disciple and master” instead of “master and disciple”—occurs in Mezudath David: “ro is a diligent disciple who arises to ask his master about hisdoubts, hnwow is the sage who answers” (ibid., Hebrew). See various emendations and inter-pretations in Keil, 449-450, Barthélemy, Critique textuelle, 1027-1029, and Hill, 234-235.Petersen, on his part, proposes a rather bold new reading of the text in accordance with hisAsherah hypothesis (see no. 59 above). He reads „ör we„önäh instead of MT h‰nOo◊w rEo andtranslates 2:12a-b as follows: “May Yahweh cut off anyone from the tents of Jacob / whodoes such a thing—involving nakedness and improper cohabitation” (see his comment onpp. 194-195).

62.On the contrary, the LXX and the Vulgate interpret the verb forms as referring to theaxis of the past (a case of the ambiguity illustrated above; see comment on 1:4): kai« tauvta,a± e˙mi÷soun, e˙poiei√te: e˙kalu/ptete da¿krusin to\ qusiasth/rion kuri÷ou “and these thingsthat I hate [reading a verb anc ‘to hate,’ instead of tyˆnEv ‘second,’ or ‘for the second time’]you were doing: you were covering with tears the altar of the Lord”; “et hoc rursum fecistis:operiebatis lacrimis altare Domini” “and this again you did: you were covering with tearsthe altar of the Lord.” In any case, the correct tense to translate indicative x-yiqtol in theaxis of the past would be the imperfect, as in both instances of the LXX and in the secondof the Vulgate, rather then the simple past as in the first instance of the Vulgate.

63.Note that the question in 2:14a only consists of the syntactic predicate hDm_lAo (see com-ment on 1:7b above and 2:17b and 3:8c below). The implied subject can be recovered fromthe context, i.e., “Because of what [does this happen]?”

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weep and sigh because God does not accept their offerings and ask for thereason (2:13b-14a). Thus, the order of the exposition is reversed in the twoparallel passages: first accusation, then consequence in 2:10-12, vice versa,first consequence, then accusation in 2:13-16. In this section the people ofIsrael in general are addressed, rather than the priests alone.

The new accusation in 2:14b-d—“Because the Lord has been witnessbetween you and the wife of your youth, / to whom you have been faith-less ( ;hD;b hD;t√dÅgD;b hD;tAa rRvSa), / while she is your companion and the wife ofyour covenant,”64 refers to a similar accusation, with the same verb dgb, in2:10c: “Why then shall we be faithless (dÅ…gVbˆn) to one another…?”

Another similarity between the two passages consists in the term tyîrV;b

“covenant”: …wnyEtObSa tyîrV;b “the covenant of our fathers” in 2:10d and tRvEa

ÔKRtyîrV;b “the wife of your covenant” in 2:14d. Significantly, a close relation-ship links the verb dgb and the term tyîrV;b. Being unfaithful to one another,the Israelites—the sons of the “one Father… God”—profane the covenantof their “fathers” (2:10); likewise, being unfaithful to the wife of theiryouth, they break their covenant with her, a covenant to which God him-self was the witness (2:14).

Although the translation of 2:15a-d given above is rather unprec-edented, I think it does make sense. Further it has the advantage of inter-preting the four instances of dDjRa as referring to the same entity.65 I wouldparaphrase as follows: The One God who made you all is witness betweenyou and your legitimate wife; what he seeks is “divine seed,” i.e., descen-dants for Israel, his chosen people.66

64.G.P. Hugenberger, Marriage as Covenant. A Study of Biblical Law and Ethics Govern-ing Marriage Developed from the Perspective of Malachi, Leiden - New York - Köln 1994,defends the traditional interpretation that marriage itself is a covenant between husband andwife with God as witness against new interpretations that tend to deny this on the basis that,first, marriage has not the structure of a covenant (see no. 49 above) and, second, that anabsolute exclusion of divorce in this passage would contradict the regulations ofDeuteronomy. See further no. 69 below.

65.Thus seems to interpret the Vulgate, though: “Nonne unus fecit et residuum spiritus eiusest? Et quid unus quaerit nisi semen Dei?” Hill is among the few modern interpreters whoadopt a similar solution (p. 246). On the position of the traditional Jewish interpreters, seenext footnote.

66.On the ancient versions of this difficult passage see Barthélemy, Critique textuelle,1030. Among the disparate renderings attested, what the LXX has for 2:15c-d is notewor-thy: kai« ei¶pate ti÷ a‡llo aÓll∆ h· spe÷rma zhtei√ oJ qeo/ß “And/but you said: What else doesGod seek but a seed?” In this case the Greek interpretation is close to what I propose, atleast as far as God is made the subject of the verb “to seek” while the object is the “seed,”i.e., the offspring. Strangely enough, however, the LXX adds kai« ei¶pate, which has noparallel in the MT, and thus puts these words in the mouth of the people. Traditional


Syntactically, the expression wøl Aj…wr rDaVv…w (2:15b) may be taken as co-ordinated to the previous sentence, as in the translation above, or as cir-cumstantial to it: i.e., “while the rest of the spirit belongs to him,” andtherefore: “to whom the rest of the spirit belongs.” This expression hasbeen interpreted in different ways. In the light of the following instruction,“you shall take heed to your spirit” (2:15e, 16e), “i.e., beware of losingyour spirit” (Keil, 453), the above phrase seems to mean that the “rest” ofone’s “spirit,” i.e., the continuation of one’s life, depends on God.

In 2:15e-f a tense shift occurs from weqatal to waw-x-lAa + yiqtol, i.e.,from main line to off line. Weqatal resumes the main line of MR;t√rAmSaÅw in 2:14athat introduces the people’s objection and the following answer from God(2:14b-15d) and draws the conclusion, while dO…gVbˆy_lAa ÔKy®r…wo◊n tRvEaVb…w conveysan off-line specification of the preceding weqatal. This is a syntactic wayof presenting the two ideas as strictly linked together, not simply as subse-quent pieces of information. Above I have rendered this analysis as follows:“Therefore you shall take heed to your spirit, / indeed, to the wife of youryouth…” We also notice an abrupt change from the second-person-pluralpronoun—“you shall take heed… your spirit… your youth”, to the thirdperson singular with a generic subject, or an impersonal verb form—“letnone be faithless.” This phenomenon is frequently corrected by interpret-ers but is not unparalleled in BH.67 In the translation above, however, Iadopted the third person in the phrase “the wife of his youth” in order tohave an expression acceptable in English.

Jewish interpreters take dDjRa as referring either to Adam and Eve who were created as onebeing and from whom all living humans (“the rest of the spirits”) came, or to Abraham,who did marry a foreign woman, Hagar, but “had a different spirit,” i.e., he did not seekpleasure but only “the seed of God” (see Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 411). On his part,Hugenberger, Marriage as Covenant, also sees in the term dDjRa a reference to the first coupleand a basis for intimating fidelity in marriage: “Just as God made Adam and Eve to be ‘one’in their marriage, the husband and wife of Malachi’s day must also recognize that God madethem to be ‘one’” (p. 133). I would say that a reference to the original ideal established byGod for the human couple is justified even if dDjRa refers, as I think, to God himself (see no.68 below).

67.As Keil, 453-454 aptly remarks: “This interchange of thou (in wife of thy youth) andhe (in dO…gVbˆy) in the same clause appears very strange to our mode of thought and speech; butit is not without analogy in Hebrew (e.g., in Isa. 1:29; cf. Ewald[’s Hebrew grammar], §319, a), so that we have no right to alter dO…gVbˆy into dO…gVbI;t, since the ancient versions and thereadings of certain codices do not furnish sufficient critical authority for such a change. Thesubject in dO…gVbˆy is naturally thought of as indefinite: any one, men.” Other opinions are listedin Hill, 249.

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Thus, 2:15 reminds the unfaithful husbands that, on the one side, theirwomen enjoy equal dignity with them, and, on the other side, their ownlife depends on a positive relationship with their legitimate wives.68

Two further motivations for the condemnation are given—one positiveand one negative. Positively, what God desires is “the offspring of God”(2:15d), i.e., the persistence of the chosen people through lawful marriage;negatively, he hates divorce (2:16a). Concerning 2:16a, a´nDc is a participlefunctioning as the predicate and jA;lAv is an infinitive functioning as directobject. The subject of the sentence is left unnamed but most probably Godis meant,69 and the implied subject is “I” because of the accompanying for-mula “thus said the Lord the God of Israel.”

While the pronominal suffix of wøv…wbVl_lAo in 2:16c clearly accords adsensum with the divorcing husband (jA;lAv, 16a), the subject of hD;sIk◊w is either

68.This reminds of Gen 6:3: “Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not abide (NwødÎy_aøl) inman for ever, for he is but flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.’” Thesimilarity with Malachi is based on the interpretation of NwødÎy as “will abide, remain,” fol-lowing the LXX (ouj mh\ katamei÷nhØ) and the Vulgate (“non permanebit”). It is also basedon the fact that this divine decision concerning the span of human life is tied to some kindof incorrect behavior concerning marriage; compare Gen 6:2 (although the exact meaningof the phrase is rather obscure): “The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair;and they took to wife such of them as they chose” (Gen 6:2). See my paper, “Lo Spirito,forza divina del creato,” LA 50 (2000) 9-23 (pp. 15-16).

69.Other cases of God as the implicit subject are 2:13d-e. The Targum Jonathan gives adifferent interpretation, which is followed by traditional Jewish commentators. With refer-ence to a discussion in bGittin 90b, Rashi comments: “Some of them [i.e., our Sages] say:If you hate her [i.e., your wife], send her away with a bill of divorcement, so that she canmarry someone else” (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 412). Interestingly enough, a textfound at Qumran (4QXIIa) supports this interpretation. It reads as follows: jlChtnCMayk“but if you hate (her), send (her) away!”: see R. Fuller, “Text-Critical Problems in Malachi2:10-16,” JBL 110 (1991) 47-57 (pp. 50, 55). However, after comparing the different formsof the Greek translation and the Vulgate, Fuller concludes that, despite its obscurity, theMT is more original than the other forms of the text. On his part, Hugenberger, Marriageas Covenant, after observing that the interpretation of 2:16 as contrary to divorce is not only“the traditional Christian approach” but also one “traditional Jewish approach” (p. 62), ex-plains this text as a relative, not absolute, prohibition of divorce. In his words, “In sum-mary, we may paraphrase Mal 2:16, ‘If one hates and divorces [that is, if one divorcesmerely on the ground of aversion]…” (p. 76). In my opinion, however, an interpretation ofthe passage as an absolute prohibition of divorce is perfectly acceptable and the difficultieslisted by Hugenberger, Marriage as Covenant, 62-66, are not insurmountable. For instance,the supposed incongruity of Mal 2:16 with Deut 24:1-4 disappears if one accepts the opin-ion of D. Volgger, “Dtn 24,1-4 – Ein Verbot von Wiederverheiratung?,” BN 92 (1998) 85-96. Indeed, this author makes it likely that Deut 24:1-4 concerns the engagement rather thanthe actual marriage. His conclusion is as follows: “Dtn 24,1-4 beinhaltet somit nich einVerbot von Wiederverheiratung vollgültig geschlossener und vollzogener Ehen, sondern einVerbot von Wiederaufnahme inchoativ geschlossener Ehen” (p. 95).


the husband himself, as in the translation above, or sDmDj, i.e., “thus violenceshall cover his (i.e., the unfaithful husband’s) garment.”70 In fact the verbhD;sI;k is attested with lAo + object and simple noun as an “accusative ofmeans,” i.e., “to cover someone with something” (cf. 2:13b; Ezek 24:7; Job36:32); alternatively, the simple noun can function as the subject, i.e.,“something covers someone” (cf. Num 16:33; compare Keil, 454).

2:16e-f repeats almost verbatim 2:15e-f. There are, however, two smallvariations in 2:16f with respect to 2:15f: the negation is aøl instead of lAaand the verb is in the second person plural instead of in the third generic.According to normal use, …wdO…gVbItaøl◊w is the negative counterpart of indica-tive weqatal, therefore: “and you shall not be faithless,” while dO…gVbˆy_lAa is thenegative counterpart of jussive yiqtol, therefore: “let none be faithless.”71

Looking back at this elusive unit, one discovers a remarkable composi-tional plan. It begins with a principle of faith: “Have we not all one Fa-ther? / Has not one God created us?” (2:10a-b), linked to an ethicaldemand: “Why then shall we be faithless (dÅ…gVbˆn) to one another, / to profanethe covenant of our fathers?” (2:10c-d), both expressed with rhetoricalquestions. It continues by denouncing Judah’s unfaithfulness (h∂d◊gD;b) andabomination (hDbEowøt) consisting in profaning God’s people (“the holiness ofthe Lord”) by marrying foreign wives (2:11). The unavoidable consequenceof this misbehavior is that God will wipe out the people’s descendants(2:12). A second movement of thought (cf. “this second thing you shalldo”) begins with the announcement of a consequence, i.e., people’s lamentthat God no longer accepts the offerings (2:13). Prepared by a questionfrom the people, a new divine denunciation follows concerning unfaithful-ness (hD;t√dÅgD;b) toward legitimate wives (2:14). The unit concludes with a re-statement of the initial principle of faith: “Yet has not the One (God) made(you) / and the rest of the spirit is not his? / And what does the One (God)seek? / The offspring of God!” (2:15), meaning that not only God madethe people at the beginning but he also wants it to continue through correct

70.4QXIIa has wsky instead of hD;sIk◊w, a reading that, according to Fuller, “Text-Critical Prob-lems in Malachi 2:10-16,” is “unsupported by any other witnesses to the text… [and] doesnot make sense” (p. 56).

71.Although the semantic difference may seem small to our understanding, it has to be re-spected because Biblical Hebrew is consistent in its use of the two constructions both intheir positive form (i.e., indicative weqatal and x-yiqtol, on one side, vs. jussive weyiqtoland [x-] yiqtol, on the other) and in their negative counterpart (i.e., indicative aøl + long-form yiqtol vs. jussive lAa + short-form yiqtol). See my Syntax of the Verb §§ 57-65, andmy paper “A Neglected Point of Hebrew Syntax: Yiqtol and Position in the Sentence,” LA37 (1987) 7-19.

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human generation. As in 2:10, the principle of faith is linked to an ethicaldemand formulated as a warning that comprises a positive aspect: “There-fore you shall take heed to your spirit” (2:15e), parallel to “Therefore youshall take heed to your spirit” (2:16e), and a negative aspect: “and to thewife of his youth let none be faithless” (2:15f), parallel to “and (you) shallnot be faithless” (2:16f). In between these parallel phrases that frame thesub-unit 2:15-16 as an inclusio, the reason for divine opposition is explic-itly stated: “‘For (I) hate divorce,’ / said the Lord the God of Israel” (2:16a-b), and the consequence of unfaithfulness is further spelled out by God:“thus he (i.e., the divorcing husband) shall cover his own garment with vio-lence” (2:16c-d).72

3.2.1. Mal 2:17-3:7b

A new section begins here with a sentence that is a new divine accusationconveyed with the past verb form qatal like other cases in the first part (see1:9b; 2:8a-c; 2:11a-c, 14c); its phrasing, however, resembles that of 3:13a.God’s accusation reads as follows: “You have wearied (MR;tVoÅgwøh) the Lordwith your words” (2:17a).73 It seems that the addressees here are commonpeople who surrendered to discouragement, seeing the prosperity of theimpious.

The question in 2:17b consists of the syntactic predicate hD;mA;b and thesyntactic subject …wnVoÎgwøh while the answer only consists of the syntacticpredicate MRk√rDmTaR;b (as in 1:7c).74 What follows is governed by MRk√rDmTaR;b andconstitutes the answer to a question that refers to the past: “In what havewe wearied ( …wnVoÎgwøh) (him)?” (2:17b); therefore, I have placed the passage inthe axis of the past although it contains three non-verbal sentences(2:17c-e). From the point of view of interpretation, what wearied the Lord

72.Thus, the overall composition of the unit with its two parts (2:10-12 and 2:13-16) iscircular or chiastic: a) principle of faith and ethical demand, b) denunciation of unfaithful-ness, c) consequence; c’) consequence, b’) denunciation, a’) principle of faith and ethicalwarning.

73.God seems to be the speaker here although he refers to himself in the third person (see§ 4.3 below). Similar cases of MR;tVoÅgwøh are found in Isa 43:23-24, especially the latter verse:ÔKyRtOnOwSoA;byˆnA;tVoÅgwøh “you (i.e., Israel) have wearied me with your iniquities.” The full expres-sion MRkyérVbîdV;b hÎwh◊y MR;tVoÅgwøh is similar to Mal 3:13a: MRkyérVbî;d yAlDo …wq◊zDj “your words have beenharsh against me.”

74.See no. 30 above. According to Polotsky’s analysis quoted there, the verb MR;tVoÅgwøh is thenew information and predicate in 2:17a while in 2:17b it becomes the known informationand the support or the subject of the new information.


is the opinion that he positively accepts the evildoers, i.e., that he is amoralor immoral, or, alternatively, that his judgment remains uncertain. In fact,this should be the meaning of “Where is the God of judgment?”75

A participial non-verbal sentence headed by yˆn◊nIh in 3:1a introduces theannouncement of an impending divine intervention that will redress thesituation denounced until here. This kind of sentence is well attested forthis purpose, e.g., in the announcement of the plagues of Egypt (Exod 7:17,27; 8:17; 9:3, 18; 10:4). The verb form used to continue this participial non-verbal sentence is weqatal, which actually appears in 3:1b and then seventimes in 3:3-5. As usual, weqatal constitutes the main line of communica-tion in direct speech with reference to the future. The waw-x-yiqtol con-struction in 3:1c does not carry on the main line but rather expresses aspecification (secondary line); in this case, it emphasizes the adverb “sud-denly” that precedes the verb. In other words, the fact that weqatal isavoided in 3:1c serves the purpose of presenting the coming of God asimmediate, or sudden, rather than as simply sequential to the sending ofhis messenger. Because weqatal is the leading verb form in the passage, theparticiples of 3:2a-c are assigned to the axis of the future.76

The “messenger” that God will send, will “prepare the way before” theLord (3:1a-b, as in Is 40:3; 57:13 and 62:10). He will come unexpectedlyto “his temple” to be the Lord whom people have just been seeking (3:1c-d; cf. 2:17e, “Where is the God of Judgment?” although hardly in goodfaith).

Mal 3:1 poses a problem of identification concerning the messengerand the Lord. In fact, God who speaks in the first person in 3:1a, shifts tothe third in 3:1d. This originates an ambiguity in 3:1d-e: Are the expres-sions “the Lord whom you are seeking” and “the messenger of the cov-enant” equivalent, or do they indicate two distinct persons? In grammaticalterms, is “the messenger of the covenant” a second subject of the verb “willcome” (3:1c), or is it part of the following sentence? As a consequence, arewe to translate with Keil, “and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenlycome to His temple, and the angel of the covenant, whom ye desire; be-

75.Similar questions implying doubt if not sheer negation of the question itself are, e.g.,Judg 6:13; Jer 17:15; Joel 2:17; Mic 7:10; Psa 42:4, 11 and 79:10. Compare Rashi’s com-mentary: “And so is the interpretation of the language of this verse: Every evildoer is goodin His sight; therefore, He causes them to prosper. Or, if this is not so, where is the God ofjudgment, for He does not requite them” (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 413).

76.In fact, besides functioning as present tense when it belongs to the axis of the present,the participle can also convey contemporary information in the axis of the future as well asin that of the past; see, e.g., Joüon-Muraoka § 121j.

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hold he comes,” and interpret the two as identical persons,77 or are we totranslate as I suggested above and interpret 3:1e as referring to the mes-senger as distinct from the Lord?

The latter alternative is preferable in my opinion because what followsclearly characterizes the activity of the messenger (3:2c-3c) as distinct andprevious to that of the Lord (3:5-7). And since the identity between themessenger and God cannot be understood as absolute but only as func-tional, there seems to be little justification for the first alternative.78

Thus, the two similar announcements AjElOvyˆn◊nIh (3:1a) and aDb_h´…nIh (3:1e)both concern the messenger—the second resumes the first in order tospecify the mission of the messenger. Consequently, the order of the text isas follows: a) announcement of the coming of the messenger (3:1a-b), b)announcement of the coming of the Lord (3:1c-d), a’) mission of the mes-senger (3:3:1e-4b), and b’) judgment of the Lord (3:5-7). In the translationabove, I have rendered the resumption in 3:1e as: “For his part, the mes-senger… is about to come.”

One problem remains in 3:1e: if the phrase “the messenger of the cov-enant” is not a second subject of the previous “will come to his temple,”what is its function in the following sentence. Given the fact that the rela-tive clause MyIxEpSjMR;tAa_rRvSa is an adjectival specification of the precedingtyîrV;bAhJKAaVlAm…w and therefore together they represent one nominal element,two possible analyses are feasible. First, the whole 3:1e constitutes a singlesentence with MyIxEpSjMR;tAa_rRvSatyîrV;bAhJKAaVlAm…w as the subject, h´…nIh as the predi-cate, and aDb as a participle functioning as predicative complement of thesubject (see analysis of 3:2-3 below); second, MyIxEpSjMR;tAa_rRvSatyîrV;bAhJKAaVlAm…w

does not belong the same sentence with aDb_h´…nIh but is put in front of it ascasus pendens (see 1:12b and 2:5b-c) while the subject of aDb_h´…nIh is implied,lit., “and as for the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, (he) isabout to come.” Although both analyses are possible, the second one seemspreferable because it is attested in some clearer passages.79

77.According to Keil, though, “this identity does not indeed exclude a distinction of person”(p. 458).

78.Differently, according to Hill, “Both the context and the construction of Mal 3:1 indi-cate that the two central characters of the verse, the angel of the covenant and the Lord, arenot to be identified with the forerunner messenger. Rather, the relationship of these twocharacters (‘the angel/messenger of the covenant’ and ‘The Lord’) is the question” (p. 265).Also see Hilll’s long discussion on the passage. For the interpretations of some Jewish tra-ditional commentators, see Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 413.

79.See Ezek 21:12: hDtÎyVhˆn◊w hDaDb h´…nIh “Behold, (it, i.e., the already-mentioned report of an im-pending divine punishment) is about to come and will be fulfilled.” The following passages


In 3:2-3 three verbs of purifying appear in the following order: PérDxVm(3:2c) - PérDxVm / rEhAfVm…w (3:3a) - rAhIf◊w (3:3b) / qå;qˆz◊w (3:3c). The participlesrEhAfVm…w PérDxVm (3:3a) are used as substantives with adverbial force: “as a re-finer and purifier”.80 In the translation of 3:3d I follow the original closely,h∂q∂dVxI;b hDj◊nIm yEvyˆ…gAm hÎwhyAl …wyDh◊w, “they shall be for the Lord presenting an offer-ing in justice,” because the word order is peculiar—half way between aconstruction of possession (with hyh + lamed, “to belong to” somebody, andthe participle used as a noun, i.e., “people who present”) and the periphras-tic construction (with hyh + participle).81

The messenger “will prepare the way before” the Lord who “will cometo his temple (wølDkyEh_lRa).” As a matter of fact, God’s voice is heard lDkyEhEm

while he is repaying his enemies (Is 66:6); he has come to judge all thepeoples wøv√d∂q lAkyEhEm (Mic 1:2); his “day,” …w…nRlyIk◊y yIm…w “who shall be able toendure it?” (Joel 2:11); he will first destroy two thirds of his people andwill then “refine them (i.e., the remaining third of his people) as one re-fines silver (PRsR;kAh_tRaPOrVxI;kMyI;tVpårVx…w), and test them as gold is tested” (Zech13:8-9).

On the one side, the purification will affect the Levites and, as a conse-quence, “they shall be for the Lord presenting an offering in justice” (3:3d),while earlier God accused them of presenting unsuitable offerings (2:8).82

On the other side, that purification will also have a beneficial repercussionon the whole people: “and (thus) the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will

are similar: Ezek 30:9; 37:11; Am 7:1, 4. The first analysis, i.e., subject + h´…nIh as predicate+ participle as complement of the subject, is proposed by E. König, Syntax der hebräischenSprache, Leipzig 1897, 464, § 349a, for Jer 10:22: hDaDbh´…nIhhDo…wmVvlwøq “The voice of a re-port, behold, is about to come,” but others prefer to divide into two sentences, e.g., “Hark,a rumor! Behold, it comes!” (RSV).

80.Cf. Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley § 118r. In equivalent terms, the participles are used aspredicative complements of the subject; see Joüon-Muraoka § 126b. Differently, the Vulgatetakes the two participles as verbal predicative complements and thus interprets the phrasenot as a comparison but rather as a description: “et sedebit conflans et emundans argen-tum.” Similarly the LXX that, under the influence of 3:3c, inserts wß “as” after the secondparticiple and also inserts a reference to gold: kai« kaqiei√tai cwneu/wn kai« kaqari÷zwnwß to\ aÓrgu/rion kai« wß to\ crusi÷on “and he will sit smelting and purifying as (it were)silver and as (it were) gold.” See discussion in Barthélemy, Critique textuelle, 1035.

81.The latter analysis is explicitly preferred by Keil, 459: “that they may be offering toJehovah His sacrifice in righteousness.” To this translation I would object, at least, that …wyDh◊w,being weqatal, that is an indicative verb form, expresses (non-volitive) consequence (“andthus they shall be…”) rather than (volitive) purpose (see no. 71 above).

82.Rabbi Kara aptly comments: “Since he stated above (2:8): ‘You corrupted the covenantof the Levites,’ he states here that God will cure them, for He will purify the children ofLevi” (Rosenberg, Mikraoth Gedoloth, 414).

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be pleasing to the Lord” (3:4a), while earlier the people wept because Godwould not accept their offerings (2:13).

In 3:5 God again speaks in the 1st person as in 3:1a. After the prepara-tion done by his messenger (3:2-4), God intervenes personally: “Then I willdraw near to you for judgment (fDÚpVvI;mAl)” (3:5a), against those who previ-ously asked: “Where is the God of judgment (fDÚpVvI;mAh)?” (2:17e), and in gen-eral against those who are addressed throughout the prophecy along withthe priests.

God’s judgment will concern well-known classes of sinners among thepeople that are already condemned in the Law of Moses: sorcerers and adul-terers, those who swear falsely and oppress the weak members of society—the widow, the orphan and the sojourner, and do not fear the Lord (3:5c-f).

The conjunction yI;k in 3:6a is linked to yI;tVbår∂q◊w (3:5a). God explains thereason for coming to judge his people with two off-line sentences type x-qatal (yItyˆnDv aøl hÎwh◊y yˆnSa, 3:6a) and waw-x-qatal (negative: aøl bOqSoÅy_y´nV;b MR;tAa◊w

MRtyIlVk, 3:6b) that underline a correlation between the two parts in the dispute:God, for his part, “did not change,” i.e., remained faithful to his love forJacob (1:2) and his promise, and the people, for their part, “did not perish,”according to divine promise, and still did not fulfill the condition of thispromise, i.e., to observe God’s commandments. According to the accusation,this happened “from the days of your fathers” (3:7a), an expression thatseems equivalent to “as in the days of old and as in former years” (3:4b), i.e.,from the very beginning of the people.83

Syntactically, 3:7a is a third off-line x-qatal sentence that specifies theprevious one (3:6b) by emphasizing the complement placed in front of theverb (lit., “it is from the days of your fathers that you have turnedaside…”), while the negative construction waw-aøl + qatal in 3:7b is coor-dinate to it being the negative counterpart of wayyiqtol.

3.2.2. Mal 3:7c-12

A new literary section starts here with an imperative followed by aweyiqtol, a structure already found in 1:9a. Because the imperative and

83.It is not clear in the MT whether this reference to the “fathers” has a positive connota-tion as in 3:24 (see comment below), or a negative one as in the LXX (which shows a partlydifferent text): (…) oujk aÓpe÷cesqe aÓpo\ tw◊n aÓdikiw◊n tw◊n pate÷rwn uJmw◊n “(but you, sonsof Jacob,) have not refrained from the iniquities of your fathers” (3:6b-7a). On various in-terpretations of the expression “from the days of your fathers” see, e.g., Verhoef, 300-301,and Hill, 298-299.


weyiqtol are both volitive verb forms, the logical link between them is tight,expressing purpose: “Return to me, that I may return to you” (3:7c).84

A second case of an idiomatic use of yiqtol for natural and habitual in-formation (compare 1:6a) is found in 3:8a as part of a rhetorical questionthat implies a negative answer: “Will ever man be able to rob (oA;bVqˆySh) God,”or “should ever man rob God?” The folly of such an attempt is made clearby Prov 22:22-23: “Do not rob the poor, because he is poor, / or crush theafflicted at the gate; / for the Lord will plead their cause / and despoil oflife those who despoil them (vRpÎn MRhyEoVbOq_tRa oAb∂q◊w).”85

From the syntactic point of view, God’s questions in 3:8a are genericand the particle _Sh renders the verb interrogative and forms a grammaticalunit with it without taking an extra place for itself in the sentence.86 Instead,the people’s reported questions in 3:7e and 3:8c are specific and the inter-rogative pronoun hR;mA;b takes the first place of the sentence in both cases. Theinterrogative pronoun represents the new information and is the predicatebecause the sentence would be incomplete and tautological without it; inother words, the resulting construction is an off-line x-qatal (see commenton 1:6f-7c and 2:17b). In the answer to 3:8c, hDm…wrV;tAh◊w rEcSoA;mAh (3:8d) are theterms corresponding to hR;mA;b and as such they are also the predicate of thesentence while the subject, i.e., the verb, is left out because it is the knownelement.

The short answer of 3:8d is then explained in 3:9-12. In the two parti-cipial sentences in 3:9a-b, special emphasis falls on the two complementsplaced at the beginning: “with a curse…, me…” The two sentences are se-mantically related as it appears from the explanation that follows: “With acurse you are being cursed because me you are robbing,” i.e., the curse onyour harvest (see comment on 2:3a above) depends on the fact that you arecheating me in the offerings. Grammatically, the phrase wø;lU;kywø…gAh (3:9b) isan apposition to the subject that specifies the identity of the accused, i.e.,“the whole nation.”

84.Zech 1:3 has the same text as Mal 3:7c-d: twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa MRkyElSa b…wvDa◊w …yAlEa …wb…wv, the onlydifference being that in Mal the volitive weyiqtol form is written with a “paragogic he”:hDb…wvDa◊w. Surprisingly enough, this exhortation comes together with a negative view of the“fathers” of the people in Zechariah while in Malachi the “fathers” enjoy a positive consid-eration at least in certain passages (see comment on 3:24 below).

85.On various views on the root obq see Barthélemy, Critique textuelle, 1037-1038, andHill, 303-304.

86.This means that the sentence is not of type x-yiqtol but rather (interrogative) yiqtol-x.However, since a sentence-initial yiqtol is jussive/volitive, an indicative yiqtol like the onehere could not occupy the first position without being governed by interrogative _Sh (or elseby negative aøl or lAa).

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A new imperative in 3:10a, parallel to that of 3:7c, carries on God’sexplanation. It is followed by two more volitive forms: a weyiqtol (3:10b)and a waw + imperative (3:10c). The weyiqtol can be either coordinate tothe preceding imperative: “Bring the full tithes… and let there be food…,”or subordinate to it: “Bring the full tithes… that there may be food…”without significant difference.87 God’s argument continues after the formula“said the Lord of hosts” of 3:10d (and also after that of 3:11d):88 “and thenput me to the test herewith… if I will not open…,” i.e., to see “whether ornot,” etc. (Keil, 464). The negative aøl + indicative yiqtol construction in3:10e corresponds, in the positive, to weqatal; in fact these two construc-tions alternate in 3:10e-11c, and 12a.89 Semantically, the last weqatal an-nounces as a conclusion the reaction of the peoples to God’s blessings:“Then (or, Thus) all nations will call you blessed.…” (3:12a). God’s prom-ise concludes with a causal clause headed by yI;k that summarizes the argu-ment. In its formulation the personal pronoun MR;tAa is inserted, in order toemphasizes the subject although it is grammatically unnecessary: “for you,even you…” Finally, the epithet XRpEj X®rRa “land of delight” (3:12b) attrib-uted to the “sons of Jacob” (3:6b) contrasts the one attributed to Esau—hDoVvîr l…wb◊…g “territory of wickedness” (1:4e), as God’s “love” for Jacobcontrasts his “hatred” for Esau (1:2).90

87.For this structure ‘imperative → (volitive) weyiqtol’ see § 1.2 above and comment on 1:9aand 3:7c. No syntactic criteria are available to distinguish the coordinate from the subordinatefunction; one has to decide through interpretation: see my Syntax of the Verb § 159.

88.The formula “said the Lord of hosts,” with its variants (see comment on 1:2a above),mostly occurs in the course of an argument, never at the beginning, not even in its completeform twøaDbVx hÎwh◊y rAmDa hO;k (only found in 1:4c), and three times at the end (1:8e; 3:12c; 3:21d).Here is the complete list of the formula in all its variants as occurring in the various units(the numbers in parentheses identify the ten units of the prophecy, subdivided into two partsas indicated above, while the sign ‘+’ connects the occurrences within the same unit): (1.1)1:2a + 4c; (1.2) 1:6d + 8e; (1:3) 1:9d + 10d + 11f + 13c + 13g + 14d; (1.4) 2:2d + 4c + 8d;(1.5) 2:16b + 16d; (2.1) 3:1f + 5g; (2.2) 3:7d + 10d + 11d + 12c; (2.3) 3:13b + 17a; (2.4)3:19d + 21d. The last unit (2.5) has no such formula.

89.V.A. Hurowitz, “lka in Malachi 3:11–Caterpillar,” JBL 121 (2000) 237-330, maintains,on the basis of Akkadian, that the term lEkOa in 3:11a “is not a general name for unspecifiedpests or even locusts, but designates a specific stage in the metamorphosis of insects and inparticular a larva or a caterpillar” (p. 330).

90.On other Biblical texts on Esau/Edom see, e.g., Verhoef, 202; Weyde, Prophecy andTeaching, 77-80; and J.D. Nogalski, “The Day(s) of YHWH in the Book of the Twelve,”in: Society of Biblical Literature 1999 Seminar Papers, Atlanta (GA) 1999, 617-642, (pp.635-641). Little is known of the history of Edom in Persian times; see, e.g., J.R. Bartlett,“Edom (Place),” Anchor Bible Dictionary II (1992) 287-295, esp. 293-294. Full bibliogra-phy is found in Meinhold, 19-21; also see his discussion in pp. 35-38.


3.2.3. Mal 3:13-18

A new section begins with a fresh divine accusation (3:13a) that resemblesthe one found at the beginning the second part of Malachi (2:17a). Theaccusation itself is also similar as it concerns in both cases popular discour-agement in the midst of a difficult situation. In fact, two opposite groupsof people are portrayed. On the one side, those who “conversed” amongthemselves against God ( ÔKyRlDo…wn√rA;b√dˆ…n_hAm); on the other side, “those whofeared the Lord,” or “those who value his name,” who also “conversed withone another” (…wrV;b√dˆn, 3:16a). The first group complained of the fact thatthere was no advantage in serving the Lord and were therefore proclaim-ing blessed the arrogant and the evildoers who prosper (3:13c-15).91 Whatthe second group actually said is not mentioned but obviously they ex-pressed faith and hope in God’s promise.92

As in 2:17a, God’s accusation refers to the past—“Your words havebeen harsh” ( …wq◊zDj, 3:13a)—and is followed by an objection of the peoplereported by God himself as future (with MR;t√rAmSaÅw, 3:13c). However, its con-tents comprises both past (x-qatal constructions in 3:13c, 14c, 15b-c; ini-tial qatal in 3:14a) and present tenses (non-verbal sentences in 3:14a, 14b,15a). The two x-qatal constructions in 3:15b-c are off-line verb forms em-phasizing the two particles MÅ…g that establish a correlation between the two

91.There is a certain discussion among the interpreters on whether actually two differentgroups are speaking here or only one; the former opinion is preferable: see, e.g., Smith, 338,and Verhoef, 319-320. It seems probable that the two groups reflect the socio-religious situ-ation in Judah under Persian domination, with two distinct parties—the “returnees” and the“non-exiled Judaeans,” the first being the rebellious people outlined here and the second“those who feared the Lord.” On the socio-religious situation at the times of Malachi, alsoconsult J. Kessler, The Book of Haggai. Prophecy and Society in Early Persian Yehud,Leiden - Boston - Köln 2002, 262-263.

92.S.D. Snyman, “A Structural Approach to Malachi 3:13-21,” OTE 9 (1996) 486-494,correctly recognizes that two groups of people are speaking in this passage (see previousfootnote). In his opinion, they alternate as speakers as follows: 3:13-14 “righteous people”;3:15 “evil people”; 3:16 “righteous people”; 3:17 “righteous people”; 3:19 “evil people”;and 3:20-21 “righteous people” (see structured text in pp. 487-488). However, there is noindication in the text to justify a change of speakers in 3:15 with regard to 3:13-14; on thecontrary, hD;tAo◊w in 3:15a introduces a conclusion drawn by the same speakers of 3:13-14. Areal change takes place in 3:16, where the group of “those who feared the Lord” is men-tioned, while the group speaking in 3:13-15 is not explicitly qualified here. Both groups arementioned again later, and their opposite fate is announced, as “those who fear the Lordand those who value his name” (3:16d), and as “the arrogant and all the evildoers” (3:19b),respectively. Thus, the two groups epitomize the opposite pair qyî;dAx - oDv∂r “righteous -wicked” characteristic of Biblical wisdom tradition as well as the other pair MyIhølTa dEbOo -wødDbSo aøl rRvSa “one who serves God - one who did not serve him” (3:18).

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93.The LXX has: tauvta katela¿lhsan oi˚ fobou/menoi to\n ku/rion “These words (i.e.,3:14-15) spoke perversely those who feared the Lord.” Thus the LXX eliminates any dis-tinction in the people (see nos. 91 and 92 above) and makes it as a whole rebellious.

94.Such “book of remembrance” written before God reflects a custom of the Ancient NearEastern kings (cf. Est 6:1; Dan 7:10; Ezra 4:15; cf. Est 2:23). It is not clear whether themeaning of the expression wømVv yEbVvOjVl…w hÎwh◊y yEa√rˆyVl is “concerning” or “for those who fear theLord.” The first possibility would suggest a book with a list of names while the second abook of instruction. See discussion in Nogalski, Redactional Processes in the Book of theTwelve, 207-209, and critical remarks by Hill, 340.

95.Or complement of the predicate: Joüon-Muraoka § 125w.

96.For this analysis of the sentence and for the temporal value of lamed in Mwø¥yAl, see Keil,467. Both the LXX and the Vulgate agree with this analysis.

sentences. Above, I have rendered this correlation with “not only… butalso…”

The conversation of the second group is presented as a reaction to theremarks of the first group as the introduction shows: …wrV;b√dˆn zDa “Then (they)conversed” (3:16a).93 Coordinate to this by means of two continuationwayyiqtol (bEvVqÅ¥yÅw and bEtD;kˆ¥yÅw, which continue …wrV;b√dˆn zDa of 3:16a), there followsthe reaction of God himself, who accords special attention to them and “abook of remembrance was written before him / concerning those [or, ‘forthose’] who fear the Lord and value his name” (3:16b-d).94

God’s future action toward the pious is expressed with two weqatalforms that make it a consequence of 3:16 (probably spoken by the prophet:see § 4.3 below): hD;l¨gVs …yIl…wyDh◊w “thus they shall be for me… as (my) spe-cial possession” (3:17a-b), and MRhyElSo yI;tVlAmDj◊w “I will have compassion onthem” (3:17c) like a father (cf. 1:6a; 2:10a) “will (always) be compassion-ate (lOmVjÅy) on his son” (for this value of yiqtol compare 2:7a-b). Note thathD;l¨gVs is linked to yIl …wyDh◊w as predicative complement,95 while the phrasehRcOo yˆnSa rRvSa Mwø¥yAl “on the day when I am about to act” is added as a tempo-ral specification.96 As in 2:12a-c, the order of the complements is ratherunusual in prose but understandable in poetry.

The fate of the wicked is not mentioned but it is easily inferred fromthe consequence that is drawn for everybody, again with weqatal: “Thenyou shall again distinguish (MRtyIa√r…w MR;tVbAv◊w) between the righteous and thewicked, / between one who serves God and one who did not serve him”(3:18). Note in this expression the hendiadys “you shall return and youshall distinguish…” with an adverbial use of the verb bwv meaning “again”(see 1:4b above). This will become possible once the wicked are con-demned (3:19) and the righteous vindicated (3:20-21).


97.On the subject consult Nogalski, “The Day(s) of YHWH in the Book of the Twelve,”and R. Rendtorff, “Der ‘Tag Yhwhs’ im Zwölfprophetenbuch,” in: E. Zenger (ed.), “WortJHWHS, das geschah...” (Hos 1,1). Studien zum Zwölfprophetenbuch, Freiburg etc. 2002,1-12.

98.See, e.g., Keil, 468, and Hill, 348-349.

Thus, one appreciates the role of the two temporal expressions “on theday when I am about to act” (3:17b and 3:21c, with preposition lamed inthe first case, with beth in the second) that link the units 3:13-18 and 3:19-21. One should further notice that 3:18 represents the divine reply to thepeople’s objections above: “‘Every one who does evil is good in the sightof the Lord, / and in them he delights’; / Or, ‘Where is the God of judg-ment?’” (2:17c-e).

3.2.4. Mal 3:19-21 (Engl. 4:1-3)

On the one side, 3:19 is introduced by an explicative conjunction that linksit to the previous unit; on the other, the clause aD;bMwø¥yAhh´…nIh_yI;k “For behold,the day is about to come” (3:19a; cf. 3:19c) recalls announcements withh´…nIh in 3:1a and in 3:23a. That is why 3:19 is taken to begin a new unit,though tightly linked to previous context.

God announces here that his judgment of the impious as well as of thepious is to take place in a specific “day” that is about to come, equivalentto the prophetic “day of the Lord” (3:23b).97 As a consequence, “all thearrogant” who were earlier declared “blessed” by the unfaithful (3:15a),“and all the evildoers” who, according to the same people, “have… beenbuilt up… have put God to the test and escaped” (3:15b-c), “will bestubble, / the day that is coming shall devour them” (3:19b-c).

The expression “it (i.e., that day) will leave them neither root norbranch (PÎnDo◊w v®rOv MRhDl bOzSoÅy_aøl)” (3:19e) is formulated with the technique ofmerismus, which consists on naming the extremes to indicate totality, in away similar to Am 2:9: “I destroyed his fruit above, and his roots beneath(tAjD;tIm wyDv∂rDv◊w lAoA;mIm wøy√rIÚp).”98 Compare Mal 2:12a-b: “only to the effect ofletting God cut off, to the man who shall do this, / anyone who is awakeand answers (h‰nOo◊w rEo).” In the following lines, the opposite fate of thosewho fear the name of God is further illustrated (3:20-21; see 3:16-17).

In this context we find peculiar or even unique expressions such as “thesun of righteousness” (3:20a) and “with a healer in its wings

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( DhyRpÎnVkI;b aEÚp√rAm…w)” (3:20b). For aEÚp√rAm, also spelled hEÚp√rAm…, “a healing, healer”coming from God, see Jer 8:15 (= 14:19) and 33:6.99

Another rare expression describing the irresistible force of the restoredpeople of God is taken from the animal kingdom: “You shall go forth andleap like calves of the stall, / and you shall tread down the wicked, / forthey will be ashes under the soles of your feet” (Mal 3:20c-21b). A similarimage is attested in Mic 5:7-8 (Engl. 5:8-9): “Then the remnant of Jacobshall be among the nations, / in the midst of many peoples, / like a lion(h´y√rAaV;k) among the beasts of the forest, / like a young lion (ryIpVkI;k) amongthe flocks of sheep, / which, when it shall go through, shall tread down, /and when it shall tear in pieces, there shall be none to deliver; / your handshall be lifted up over your adversaries, / and all your enemies shall be cutoff.” Also compare Zech 10:3: “and (the Lord) will make them (i.e., thehouse of Judah) like his proud steed (wødwøh s…wsV;k) in battle.”100

3.2.5. Mal 3:22-24 (Engl. 4:4-6)

A new imperative, recalling the previous two in the second part of Malachi(3:7c and 3:10a), introduces the concluding unit: “Remember the law of myservant Moses” (3:22a).101 Indeed, the Law of Moses epitomizes all the obli-gations of the people of the covenant. From the point of view of composi-tion, enough indications have been already provided by the text to show thatthis unit is linked to the rest of the prophecy and constitutes an integral partof it, not a later addition (see comment on 2:17a; 3:7a; 3:19).102

99.Various opinions on these rare expressions are listed in Hill, 349-352. The conceptionof the sun with wings may well come from old-Egyptian mythology: see O. Keel, The Sym-bolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms,New York 1978, 27-28.

100.See my essay, Un profeta tra oppressori e oppressi. Analisi esegetica del capitolo 2 diMichea nel piano generale del libro, Jerusalem 1989, 49-51, 129-130.

101.Differently, in the LXX this verse comes at the end of the prophecy, i.e., the order isas follows: TM 3:22 = LXX 3:24, TM 3:23-24 = LXX 3:22-23. The LXX order “most likelyreflects an attempt to end the book on a less threatening note” than in the MT (Verhoef,169). The Vulgate follows the same order of the MT but begins chap. 4 with 3:19 of theMT. In this it is followed by English translations.

102.However, Mal 3:22-24 [4:4-6] is usually considered secondary for a number of rea-sons: it supposedly lacks continuity with the preceding prophecy, dialogue characteristic ofMalachi is absent, and a dependence on Deuteronomy is assumed; see a presentation inVerhoef, 163-164, and Hill, 26-33. More precisely, 3:22-24 [4:4-6] is regarded as an addi-tion of a later redactor who intended to link Malachi to a larger Biblical corpus; see Verhoef,


God’s promise at the start of the second part is taken up again in theconclusion. In fact, “Elijah the prophet” is in all probability the unnamed“messenger” announced in 3:1.103 Indeed, a very similar phrase is used forboth: ayIbÎ…nAhhÎ¥yIlEatEaMRkDlAjElOvyIkOnDa h´…nIh (3:23a) versus yIkDaVlAm AjElOv yˆn◊nIh

(3:1a).104 Further, the expression “before the coming of (awø;b y´nVpIl) the greatand terrible day of the Lord…105 / lest I will come (awøbDa_NRÚp) and smite theland with a curse” (3:23b, 24c) echoes “He will prepare the way before me(yÎnDpVl), / and suddenly there will come (awøbÎy) to his temple / the Lord whomyou are seeking” (3:1b-d).

The task of Elijah, which is described in 3:2-3 as the work of a refinerof metals and of a fuller of cloths, is epitomized here as “turning the heartsof fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers”(3:24a-b).106 The “fathers” are the Patriarchs who embody for their descen-dants an example of fidelity to the Lord; compare the reference to an idealpast at the beginning of the nation in 3:4: “and the offering of Judah and

337-338, and Hill, 363-366. Indeed, in recent years a good number of studies have beendevoted to the “Book of the Twelve” as a literary unit and to the import of Mal 3:22-24 inthe editorial process involved; see an overview in P.L. Redditt, “Recent Research on theBook of the Twelve as One Book,” CR:BS 9 (2001) 47-80. Appropriate caution against“holistic approaches” of this kind has been voiced by Floyd, Minor Prophets, 563, 579-580.

103.Various opinions on the identity of the “messenger” and Elijah are listed in Verhoef,340-341, and the apocalyptic program of Malachi is outlined in Hill, 383-386.

104.Grammatically the two sentences are slightly different. In 3:1a h´…nIh is part of the sen-tence—it is the predicate while its pronominal suffix is the subject and the following parti-ciple is circumstantial to it; lit., “Here I am while sending…” Instead, in 3:23a h´…nIh is notpart of the sentence grammatically because yIkOnDa is the subject and the following participleis the predicate, and therefore the sentence is complete without h´…nIh. This particle, however,plays a role in a pragmatic level as it makes the following sentence and its information par-ticularly relevant for the moment of communication. Consult my Syntax of the Verb §§ 67-73.

105.Exactly the same phrase is found in Joel 3:4 [Engl. 2:31].

106.Mal 3:23-24 is rephrased in Sir 48:10 as follows: “(Elijah,) you who are written downas ready for the appointed time, / to calm the wrath before [the coming of the day of theLord?], / to turn the heart of the fathers to the sons (Mynblotwbablbyvhl), / and to re-store the tri[bes of Isra]el.” The Greek translation of the last sentence is slightly different—with singular “father” and “son” instead of their plural forms: “…to turn the heart of thefather to the son (e˙pistre÷yai kardi÷an patro\ß pro\ß ui˚o÷n), / and to restore the tribes ofJacob.” In turn, the LXX of Mal 3:23 [3:24] is different from the MT and partly identicalwith the Greek of Sir 48:10: o§ß aÓpokatasth/sei kardi÷an patro\ß pro\ß ui˚o\n kai«kardi÷an aÓnqrw¿pou pro\ß to\n plhsi÷on aujtouv “who shall turn again the heart of the fa-ther to the son, and the heart of a man to his neighbor.” Further, Mal 3:24 is quoted in Luke1:17; see J. Lévêque, “Le portrait d’Élie dans l’éloge des Pères (Si 48,1-11),” in: R.Kuntzmann (ed.), “Ce Dieu qui vient”. Mélanges offerts en hommage à Bernard Renaud,Paris 1995, 215-229 (pp. 223-225).

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Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord / as in the days of old and as informer years.”107

In sum, the Lord will send Elijah the prophet with the task of bringingthe nation back to its origins and in full communion with its founders. Onthis condition, the coming Lord will restore the nation, bring victory andprosperity; otherwise, he would bring destruction to the land (3:24c).

4. Internal Coherence

4.1. The First Part—1:2-2:16

The first part comprises five units: (1.1) 1:2-5, (1.2) 1:6-8, (1.3) 1:9-14,(1.4) 2:1-9, (1.5) 2:10-16.108 It is characterized by a series of terms indicat-ing family relationships (although some of them also occur in the secondpart): verb bha “to love” (1:2, three times; 2:11); bDa “father” in the singu-lar, said of human beings and of God (1:6, twice; 2:10), and twøbDa in theplural, said of the Patriarchs and of Levi (2:10; 3:7; 3:24, twice); NE;b “son”

107.See, e.g., Keil, 472, and Verhoef, 342-343.

108.Yet, there is broad agreement among the scholars that Malachi comprises six oracles:1:2-5; 1:6-2:9; 2:10-16; 2:17-3:5; 3:6-12; 3:13-21 [4:3], besides a superscription (1:1) andan appendix (3:22-24 [4:4-6]). According to Hugenberger, 23-25, the six oracles are sixdisputations arranged in a “concentric outline” with 3:22-24 as closing exhortations thatsummarize the main points of Malachi, while according to Th. Lescow, “DialogischeStrukturen in den Streitreden des Buches Maleachi,” ZAW 102 (1990) 194-212, Malachioriginally comprised a series of prophetic teachings (“Lehrgespräke,” or “Torot”) whichwere later transformed into disputation speeches (“Streitreden”). Without entering into de-tails, I would note that, on the one side, the unit 1:6-2:9 is defensible because it starts witha declaration of principle (1:6a: “A son will honor his father…”) and is followed by twoparallel subunits each introduced by hD;tAo◊w “and now” (1:9a and 2:1), a particle that serves todraw consequences of the same principle; on the other side, however, the units 2:17-3:5 and3:6-12 are less justified because 3:6a starts with a declaration introduced by the conjunc-tion yI;k (“for I the Lord did not change”) that evidently makes it part of the previous unit(note that the situation in 3:19a is different; see comment above). Besides, the above divi-sion in six oracles overlooks the linking function of a triple announcement introduced byh´…nIh “behold,” i.e., 3:1a: “Behold, I am about to send my messenger”; 3:19a: “For behold,the day is about to come”; and 3:23a: “Behold, I am about to send you Elijah the prophet.”This announcement, on the one side, helps identify a second part in the oracle, differentfrom the first also for its characteristic calls to repentance (cf. § 4.2 below); on the otherside, it casts doubts on the rather common assumption that 3:22-24 is a later addition. Astructure in two main parts—1:6-2:16 and 2:17-3:24—similar to the one I propose abovebut with a different internal organization, is given by Floyd, Minor Prophets, 561-572.Floyd also maintains that “the material in 3:22-24 not only forms an integral part of thefinal unit but also leads the thematic development of the book to its climax” (p. 571).


both toward God and a human father (1:6; 3:3, 6, 17; 3:24, twice); and jDa

“brother” (1:2; 2:10).The first part is enveloped by two rhetorical questions that match one

another: bOqSoÅyVlwDcEojDa_awølSh “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” (1:2c) and…wnD;lUkVldDjRabDaawølSh “Have we not all one Father?” (2:10a). Thus the twoexternal units of the first part (1.1 and 1.5) parallel one another and consti-tute major starting points for the divine/prophetic argument together with1:6a-c: “A son will honor his father (bDadE;bAk◊y NE;b), and a servant his master./ If then I am a father, where is my honor (yîdwøbVk h´¥yAa yˆnDa bDa_MIa◊w)? / And if Iam a master, where is my fear?”

The key idea that God intends to convey is his fatherly love, to whichhis sons, both the priests and the people in general, have been ungrateful.This love requests, on the one side, respect toward the divine Father (1:6)and, on the other, respect toward the brothers, i.e., all the members of thenation (2:10). The first request, for both priests and common people, con-sists in presenting the various offerings exactly as prescribed in the Law ofMoses (1:6-8; 1:9-14; 2:1-9); the second, again for both priests and com-mon people, in behaving properly in family matters (2:10-16).

4.2. The Second Part—2:17-3:24 (Engl. 2:17-4:6)

The second part also comprises five units as the first, i.e., (2.1) 2:17-3:7b,(2.2) 3:7c-12, (2.3) 3:13-18, (2.4) 3:19-21 (Engl. 4:1-3), and (2.5) 3:22-24(Engl. 4:4-6).

On the one side, 2:17 conveys a new divine accusation that continuesin the same style of the first part; on the other side, however, it opens thesecond part (see § 3.2.1 above). What follows is an announcement of thesending of a “messenger” by God. Indeed, the second part begins and endswith an announcement that sounds very similar: AjElOv yˆn◊nIh (3:1a) andAjElOv yIkOnDa h´…nIh (3:23a). This compositional feature makes the second partsimilar to the first, which, on its turn, is enveloped by two rhetorical ques-tions (1:2c and 2:10a; see § 4.1 above).

The fact that an announcement of judgment follows in 3:5 after a brightpromise in 3:3d-4 and parallel to it, suggests that promise and condemna-tion go together in the day of the Lord. Indeed, this is what we observe bylooking at the development of the prophecy until the end.

Thanks to the purification brought about by God’s messenger, thepriests shall again present offerings in justice (3:3d-4). Then God himselfwill come and judge all kinds of sinners (3:5-7b). An imperative in 3:7c

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starts a new unit comprising a series of motifs: divine call to conversion(3:7c-d), people’s objection and God’s reply (3:7e-9), second call to con-version literarily connected with the first (the argument is tithes and offer-ings in both 3:8d and 3:10a), and finally promise of blessing in case ofobedience to the divine call (3:10-12—blessing instead of cursing, contrast-ing 1:14 and 2:2).

A new unit begins in 3:13 comprising a new series of motifs: divineaccusation (3:13a, with qatal like 2:17, recalling 1:14, i.e., cheating God inthe offerings), people’s objection (3:13c), God’s reply that contrasts a con-versation among unbelieving people (3:14-15) and one among “those whofeared the Lord” (3:16). The unit closes with promises for the latter group:they will again be God’s “special possession” (3:17a-b), God will havecompassion on them as a father on his obedient son (3:17c-d; compare Godas “Father” of the nation in 1:6 an 2:10), and the unbelievers will see againthe difference between the righteous and the wicked (3:18, contrasting2:17).

A second announcement of the day of judgment is found in 3:19a (re-calling that of 3:1) and its consequences are summarized: destruction forthose who are impious and victory over their enemies for those who fearthe Lord (3:19b-21).

A new divine call is heard in 3:22: “Remember the Law of my servantMoses,” which is probably connected with the announcement in 3:23a asfollows: “Remember the Law of Moses… (For) behold (h´…nIh), I am aboutto send Elijah…”; compare, explicitly in 3:19a: “For behold (h´…nIh_yI;k), theday is about to come…”). Together with similar instances in 3:7c (“Returnto me…!”) and 3:10a (“Bring the full tithes…!”), these calls to repentanceare characteristic of the second part in contrast with a much harsher lan-guage in the first part. Another characteristic of the second part is a dis-tinction in the people between unbelievers, or those who have lost theirhope, and believers, who have remained strong in their faith despite theturbulent situation they live. Instead, in the first part the people as a wholeare reprimanded for being corrupt, along with the priests.

A third announcement closely related to that of 3:1 concludes the proph-ecy (3:23). The short unit 3:22-24 makes it clear that the sending of a “mes-senger,” here identified as “Elijah the prophet,” happens “before the comingof the great and terrible day of the Lord” (3:23) and that his task will consistin implementing reunion and conversion in the people. The last sentence,“lest I come and smite the land with a curse” (3:24c) looks back to the ex-pression “before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord” (3:23b)and thus epitomizes the development of these eschatological events.


4.3. God the Speaker

The formula “said the Lord,” with its variants, occurring 25x in a proph-ecy of 55 verses leaves no doubts as to who is the main speaker inMalachi.109 Most of the times God speaks in the first person; sometimesalso in the third. For instance, in 1:9a and 1:9c God is referred to in thethird person although the formula “said the Lord of hosts” in 1:9d explic-itly makes him the speaker, and indeed from 1:10a onwards he speaks di-rectly in the first person. Similar cases are 1:14b (third person) vs. 1:14cand 1:14e (first person), and 2:17a (third person) vs. 3:1 (first person) vs.3:3d-4 (again third person) vs. 3:5 ff. (again first person).

In two cases only, 2:10-15 and 3:16, the speaker is most likely theprophet. As for the first case, the voice in 2:10-15 that speaks in the firstperson plural is most probably that of the prophet, who acts as the spokes-man of his people. In 2:16, however, God becomes the speaker as is shownby the formula “said the Lord the God of Israel,” although no grammaticalsigns are present to mark this change. Indeed, God continues the argumentof the prophet and thus reveals a perfect consonance with his voice. As forthe second case, from 3:5 until 3:15 God speaks in the first person; in 3:16he is referred to in the third person in a way that makes it very likely that theprophet is the speaker. Again, however, in 3:17 God resumes with the firstperson and goes on in the same way until the end of the prophecy, except acase of third person in 3:23b in the formula “the day of the Lord.”110

5. Verb forms in Malachi

I have classified all the verb forms and non-verbal constructions occurringin the book of Malachi according to the three temporal axes—present, pastand future. This classification reflects my theory of BH and the convictionthat the verb system in poetry is not basically different from that of prose,specifically from that of direct speech (§ 1.2 above).

My interpretation of Malachi is based on the principle of the absolutepriority of the grammatical and syntactic structure of the text. Until the in-

109.On God as the subject of Malachi’s dialogues, see Verhoef, 180-181.

110.Because of this complex situation, I am rather reluctant to subscribe to Meinhold’sclear-cut qualification as “Gottesrede” of the oracles at the beginning and end of the proph-ecy of Malachi (1:2-5; 1:6-2:9; and 3:6-12) and as “Prophetenrede” of those in the middle(2:10-16; 2:17-3:5) (p. 33). In the meantime, we wait for his complete commentary.

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terpreter will not strive as much as he can to understand this structure, hewill run the risk of misinterpreting the text.

I will now summarize the functions of the verb forms and the non-ver-bal constructions occurring in Malachi on the basis of the syntactic com-mentary and interpretation given above.

The non-verbal constructions belonging to the axis of the present con-vey statements of general validity (1:6b-c; 1:10c, 11a-e, 14a-c, 14e; 2:10a,14d, 15b), and also blasphemous quotes (2:17c-e), descriptions of behav-ior (1:12a-c; 2:9c-d; 2:15c-d, 16a) and of current events (2:1, 2h, 7c; 3:9a-b; 3:15a).

In the axis of the past we find (sentence-initial) qatal and x-qatalforms and also a few instances of their continuation form wayyiqtol (1:2d,3b; 2:5b-c; 3:15c, 16b-c). Apart from the 25 cases of qatal in the formula“said the Lord” with all its variants (§ 4.3 above), the verb forms of thepast are used to recall earlier actions of God (1:2a, 2d-3b; 2:5a-b, 9a;2:10b, 14b, 15a; 3:6a), of Levi (2:5c-6d) as well as a series of divineaccusations to the priests and the people (1:9b; 2:8a-c; 2:11a-c, 14c;2:17a-b; 3:6b-7b; 3:13a, 13c; 3:14, 15b-16d). In contrast with (x-) qataland wayyiqtol forms that convey unique information, x-yiqtol and weqataloccur in the axis of the past to provide habitual information, repetition,custom, or description (1:8a-b; 2:11d). The non-verbal sentence is alsoused in the axis of the past to communicate an event as contemporaneouswith the main event (1:8a-b).

In the axis of the future, indicative x-yiqtol and weqatal are used toexpress future tense along with the volitive verb forms—jussive yiqtol andweyiqtol and imperative. The indicative verb forms expressing future tenseoccur to announce an intervention of God (1:4d; 1:9c, 10e, 13f; 2:2e-f, 3b;3:1c-d, 5a-b; 3:10e-11a; 3:17c; 3:24c), or of his messenger, and also tocommunicate future objections of the addressees (introduced by MR;t√rAmSaÅw,1:2b; 1:6f, 7b; 1:13a; 2:14a; 2:17b; 3:7e, 8c; 3:13c), reactions of differentsubjects (1:4a, 4d-5b; 1:8d; 1:10b, 13b, 13d-e; 2:2a-b, 3d-4a; 2:10c, 13a,15e, 16c, 16e-f; 3:3-4; 3:11b-c, 12a-b; 3:17-18; 3:19b-c, 20a-21b; 3:24a).A special use of indicative x-yiqtol is to express a behavior that is naturaland expected (1:6a; 2:7a-b; 3:8a; 3:17d). The volitive forms communicateintention or purpose of various subjects (1:4b, 5c; 1:8c; 1:10a; 2:12a), andinjunctions (2:15f; 3:7c, 10a-c; 3:22a). The non-verbal sentence with parti-ciple is used to express futurum instans (‘to be about to…’) and to intro-duce a series of sequential weqatal forms (2:3a; 3:1a; 3:19a; 3:23a).111 The

111.Cf. Gesenius-Kautzsch-Cowley § 116p.


non-verbal sentence also occurs to indicate contemporaneity in the axis ofthe future (2:13d-e; 3:2a-b; 3:21c).

The past activity of both the Lord and the Israelites outlined in 1:2-8is the basis for a series of divine accusations against the people and thepriests throughout the prophecy. Every oracle is presented as delivered inthe past with the formula hÎwh◊y rAmDa “said the Lord,” as is always the casein prophetic literature, although this qatal is usually taken as expressingpresent tense.

The oracle switches from one temporal axis to the other according tovarious situations and intention. The dynamics of the text and its meaningresult from the interplay of the various temporal axes.

Alviero Niccacci, ofmStudium Biblicum Franciscanum, Jerusalem

2001-POETIC SYNTAX AND INTERPRETATION OF MALACHI

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