THE historical situation reflected in this prophecy is a further development of what has been seen in the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah. The exile is too much a thing of the past to leave any traces. The expression of the national life in religious ritual has become so far a matter of course as to be in danger of formality and laxity. In place of this, the source of religious inspiration has come to be the thought of "the Messenger of the Lord," and the expectation of his advent as a power for judgment. Faith even in this is through delay losing its power. The prophecy is a call for social and religious purification, and a pledge that this Messenger of the Lord shall surely come.
Malachi is cast in a dialectic form almost peculiar to itself: brief discourses on texts which appear as interruptions from a supposed adversary, and which therefore come not at the beginning but in the course of the argument. The whole falls into the usual seven sections: six of these discourses with interrogatory texts and a conclusion. The conclusion and the middle section are prophetic pledges of the Messenger to come.
—From "The Modern Reader's Bible," edited
