Criswell Theological
Review 2.1 (1987) 99-117
[Copyright © 1987 by
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
ELIJAH, ELECTION,
AND THE USE OF MALACHI
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
CRAIG L. BLOMBERG
Denver Seminary, Denver,
CO 80210
At
first glance, the book of Malachi seems not to play a prominent
role in the NT. To be sure, key themes from this
last oracle of OT
prophecy reappear in the later Scriptures. One
may compare, for
example, the Jews' contemptuous treatment of
their sacrifices (Mal
1:7-14)
with Paul's admonitions to the Corinthians concerning the
Lord’s
Supper (1 Cor
Levites
(Mal 2:1-12) with Jesus' consistent critique of many of the
Pharisees
and Sadducees in his day, God's hatred of divorce and his
monogamus designs for marriage
(Mal
Paul’s
teachings on the same topics (Mark 10:1-12 pars.; 1
Corinthians
7),
the promise of the Lord's coming in righteousness to his temple
both to save and to judge (Mal 3:1-4; 4:1-3) with
the repeated NT
emphasis on the fulfillment of these prophecies
in Christ's first and
second comings, or the insistence that God's blessings
are contingent
upon the faithful stewardship of one's tithe (Mal
3:8-12) with Paul's
teaching on the collection for
explicit quotations from Malachi find their way
into the pages of the
NT. These two passages, however, by virtue of
their theological
importance more than compensate for their lack of
companions.
1 In each case, the OT teaching is not
adopted without qualification. The salvation-
differences between the testaments make it clear
that the nature and role of
priesthood, temple, and tithe, and the exceptions
to the prohibition
divorce are all altered in NT times. The precise
nature of those alterations is
and usually determined on the basis of larger
theological systems.
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CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
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I. The
Coming of Elijah
"See, I will send my messenger, who will
prepare the way before
me" (Mal. 3:1a).
A.
Text and Attribution
All three Synoptic gospels contain quotations of
this statement
(Mark
1:2; Matt
it to John the Baptist. Matthew and Luke have
virtually the same
Greek
verbatim: ]Idou> (e]gw) a]poste<llw to>n a@ggelo<n mou pro> prosw<-
pou
sou, o{j kataskeua<sei th>n o[do<n sou e@mprosqe<n sou, while
Mark
merely deletes the final two words. The first clause
of this quotation
parallels the LXX of Exod
equivalent there. Both clauses are paralleled more
loosely in the LXX
of Mal 3:1, where kai>
e]pible<yetai o[do<n occurs before the phrase
pro>
prosw<pou, instead of o!j kataskeua<sei to>n o[do<n after it. Also the
personal pronouns are first person mou's in Malachi, while the
verb
a]poste<llw
has the prefix e]c attached.
In Exodus, the promise of a divinely sent
messenger occurs in the
context of preparation for guidance during the
Israelites' trek from
Sinai to the Promised Land. Malachi's prophecy may
deliberately
echo the Pentateuchal
text;2 if not, a later rabbinic juxtaposition of
these two texts may suggest that their combination
was already tra-
ditional in Jesus' day.3
Interpreters of the gospels should therefore not
read too much into this reminiscence of Exodus.4
At the same time,
Mark's
juxtaposition of this conflation of Exodus and Malachi with a
quotation of Isa 40:3
(Mark 1:3), highlighting the wilderness theme
which Isaiah's "crying voice" and John the
Baptist share, may suggest
that the gospels' wording was designed to call to
mind the remote
setting of the Israelites in Exodus.5
The change from e]pible<yetai
to
kataskeua<sei follows the Massoretic pointing of the Hebrew (pinna
rather than pana).6 The addition of the definite article
before o[do<n
enhances the parallelism with the Isaiah quote in
Mark 1:3,7 and
2 C. L. Feinberg, The Twelve Minor Prophets (Chicago: Moody, 1977) 260.
45, citing Exod. Rab.
4 However, contra G. L. Archer and G. C. Chirichigno, Old
Testament Quotations
in the New Testament (Chicago: Moody, 1983) 165, eight consecutive
paralleled words
seem more than "purely verbal
resemblance," especially when Exodus and the Synop-
tics both contain the same shift in pronoun from the
text of Malachi.
5 This, rather than any innovative, christological interpretation of Mal 3:1 most
naturally accounts for the shift in person of the
pronouns.
6 H. B. Swete, The Gospel
according to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1909) 2.
7 So also A. Schlatter,
Der Evangelist Matthaus
(Stuttgart: Calwer, 1948) 363.
Blomberg: MALACHI IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT 101
e@mprosqen may reflect stylistic
variation from pro> prosw<pou.8 Not-
withstanding these minor changes,
the Hebrew text of Malachi is
represented very naturally by the Greek form of the
Synoptic passages
in question.
A more substantive preliminary puzzle arises
from the conjunc-
tion of Mal 3:1 with Isa 40:3 in Mark 1:2-3. Mark attributes the
composite quotation to Isaiah. The textual
variant, "in the prophets,"
adopted by the KJV, is too weakly attested and
obviously harmonistic
to be accepted as original. Hypotheses about later
textual errors or
glosses are even less supportable.9
The vast majority of commentators
not surprisingly claim that Mark has simply made a
mistake, although
reasons for that mistake range from Mark's
alleged distance from and
unfamiliarity with primitive gospel
tradition and its Jewish roots10 to
his uncritical adoption of early, traditional
materials in which the two
passages had already been linked (perhaps along
with others as well)
under one heading.11
Scholars who have not viewed Mark's attribution
as an error
have proposed alternate explanations. Some suggest
that a literary
convention existed in ancient Judaism by which a
reference to more
than one person's writings could be attributed
simply to the most
prominent author12 or to the source of
the more significant reference,
but without supplying extra-biblical examples of
this phenomenon.13
W.
Hendriksen sidesteps the real problem by encouraging
critics not
to complain that Mark supplies two things after
only promising one!14
The
most helpful solution is suggested by the example of the Dead
Sea
text 4QTestim, in which several quotes, not all from the Penta-
teuch, are juxtaposed under
the common head, "The Lord said to
Moses," irrespective of their relative
prominence or significance. Mark
most likely follows this practice, which was apparently
accepted in
8 R. H. Gundry, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew's Gospel (
Brill, 1967) 12.
9 As, e.g., with V. Taylor, The Gospel according to St. Mark (
1952) 153.
10 E.g., P. Parker,
"The Posteriority of Mark," New Synoptic Studies (ed. W. R.
Farmer; Macon: Mercer, 1983) 76.
11 E.g.,
Knox,
1970) 29; K. Stendahl, The
Testament (Lund: Gleerup, 1954) 51.
12 E.g., G. L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (
van, 1982).
13 E.g., D.
1974)
29; R. Pesch, Das Markusevangelium (2 vols.;
14 W. Hendriksen,
Exposition of the Gospel according to
Mark (
Baker, 1975) 34.
102
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
his day, but no conclusions may be drawn from it
concerning the
respective importance of the Malachi and Isaiah
quotations, nor may
Mark
fairly be accused of erring.
Matthew and Luke not surprisingly omit the
quotation from
Malachi
in their parallel accounts (Matt 3:3, Luke 3:4-6) and thus
dispense with the problem of the attribution to
Isaiah. These omissions
are accounted for far better by the hypothesis of Markan priority
than by any of its competitors; the idea of Mark
introducing this
ambiguity into a source which was free of it seems
odd in the
extreme.15 The two "minor
agreements" of Matthew and Luke against
Mark
do not offset this, since the three contexts in
question are not
parallel. Matthew and Luke cite Mal 3:1 as part
of Jesus' explanation
to the crowds concerning the identity and mission
of John, after the
Baptist
had been imprisoned, whereas Mark uses the quote as his
introduction to John's ministry.
Undoubtedly the quotation had come
down to the evangelists in at least two traditions
(Mark and the
material common to Matthew and Luke).
B. Meaning and Pedigree
of the Passages
No one disputes that the Synoptic evangelists use
Mal 3:1 to
elucidate the ministry of the Baptist nor that
they do so in a way
which presupposes that the messenger of 3:1 is none
other than
Elijah,
whose coming is foretold in 4:5-6 (MT
questions which are debated, however, include: (1)
Did Jesus himself
understand John to be Malachi's prophesied
messenger in this sense?
(2)
In what way, if any, did John understand himself in this role,
especially in light of his denial of it in John
1:21? (3) Are the gospels'
interpretations fair to the original
text and context of Malachi?
1. Jesus'
Understanding of John.
The passage common to
Matthew
11 and Luke 7 explicitly attributes the quotation of
Mal 3:1
to Jesus. Matthew's account is longer and more
detailed, but this is
15 Similarly A. T. Hanson, The Living Utterances of God (
Longman & Todd, 1983) 36.
16 A few scholars argue that Luke, in
contradistinction to Matthew and Mark,
downplays or altogether obliterates this John =
Elijah typology, possibly because he
sees Jesus as the new Elijah instead. This type of
hypothesis might account for Luke's
omission of Mark 9:11-13 but it does not explain
his retention of
of the unparalleled statement in
Elijah.
Luke may well have seen parallels between Jesus and Elijah too; typologies are
by nature fluid and often somewhat
interchangeable. For a fuller discussion of the
various views, see J. A. Fitzmyer,
The Gospel according to Luke I-IX (Garden
City:
Doubleday,
1981) 320, and R. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah (Garden City:
Double-
day, 1977) 276-77.
Blomberg: MALACHI IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT 103
probably due to Luke's customary abbreviation of
his sources rather
than to Matthean
expansion. Matthew's most noteworthy distinction
occurs with Jesus' words in
this is Elijah, the one about to come." The
conditional clause suggests
that the interpretation may be a novel one and will
not meet with
universal acceptance. The same equation is again
attributed to Jesus
in Mark 9:11-13 (par. Matt 17:10-13) when the
disciples who were
descending from the Mount of Transfiguration ask
Jesus about the
coming of Elijah. Here Jesus replies more elliptically
by simply
remarking that Elijah has come, but Matthew adds
that the disciples
understood their master to be referring to John.
Older commentators often took this equation for
granted, and
assumed without question that pre-Christian
Judaism widely believed
that Elijah would return from heaven as a Messianic
forerunner. Since
Jesus
believed himself to be the Messiah, his application of Mal 3:1 to
his forerunner, John, would have been entirely
natural, and the ele-
ment of uncertainty
introduced by "if you are willing" would have
stemmed only from the fact that John was not the
literal Elijah
returned from heaven but simply an ordinary human
personage whose
prophetic ministry paralleled that of Elijah in
important respects.17
This line of interpretation (along with
traditional views of Jesus'
self-understanding more generally) has
been sharply criticized by
recent studies, which take their starting point from
the claim that no
unambiguous evidence exists for a pre-Christian
Jewish belief in
Elijah
as a Messianic forerunner.18 The rabbinic
texts traditionally
cited on behalf of this belief are all post-Christian
and mostly Tal-
mudic,19 while demonstrably pre-Christian
references to Elijah's
return (most notably Sir 48:10) do not link the
prophet with a Messiah.
No
convincing explanation has been given, however, for the post-
Christian
Jewish adoption of a perspective which supported the
Christian
interpretation of Mal 3:1. In light of rabbinic Judaism's
censorship of numerous Christian beliefs which
earlier Jews seem to
17 Cf., e.g., Jeremias,
" [Hl(e)i<aj,"
TDNT 2 (1964) 928-41. More recently, cf.
A,. Wiener, The Prophet Elijah in
the Development of Judaism (
Kegan Paul, 1978) 42, who uncritically assumes that
the Gospels' reference to the
scribes' belief in Mark 9:11 par. combined with
Justin's 2nd century Dialogue with
Trypho (
ordinary Jewish people as well as the spiritual
elite expected the return of Elijah as the
precursor and attendant of the Messiah from the
house of David."
18 See esp. M. M. Faierstein,
"Why Do the Scribes Say that Elijah Must Come
First?"
JBL 100 (1981) 75-86. Cf. J. A. Fitzmyer, "More about Elijah Coming First,"
JBL 104 (1985) 295-96.
19 For a relatively full list of texts, see
L. Ginzberg, An
Unknown Jewish Sect
(New York: Jewish Theological Seminary,
1976)212, n. 14.
104
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
have held, it seems likely that some pre-Christian
Jewish precedent
must have given rise to these traditions.20
But this cannot be proven,
and such traditions, if they existed, may well not
have been
widespread.
What both the traditional and the more recent
sides of this
debate fail to grasp is that the gospels do not
suggest that the logic of
Jesus'
equation of John with Elijah follows from his self-understanding
as Messiah and belief in Mal 3:1 and 4:5-6 as
Messianic prophecies.
There
is no clear reference to the Messiah in Malachi and no indication
that the NT writers found one there. Rather the
texts speak of God
himself coming (3:1b) to usher in the day of
judgment and salvation
(3:2-5).
Whatever Jesus' specific beliefs about the ministry of the
Messiah,
it is widely admitted that he believed himself to be some
kind of special envoy from God who was to usher in
God's kingdom,
at least in inaugurated form, incipiently bringing
both salvation for
those who would turn from their sin and judgment for
those who
would not. The logic of the John = Elijah equation
may thus be
encapsulated as follows: (1) Malachi
speaks of Elijah, the messenger,
preparing the way for the Day of the Lord. (2)
Jesus' ministry brings
at least a partial fulfillment of the prophecies
concerning the Day of
the Lord. (3) The one who prepared the way for
Jesus must therefore
at least partially fulfill the role of Elijah
according to Malachi.21
Nevertheless,
there is high Christology here, all the more significant
as it is merely implicit, since Jesus is
appropriating a text about the
coming of God and applying it to himself.22
The above syllogism clearly does not reflect
pre-Christian Jewish
thought and was replaced early on in the history
of the church with a
more specifically Messianic interpretation.23
The criterion of dissimi-
larity can therefore be
invoked to support the authenticity of Jesus'
equation of John with Elijah. The multiple
attestation of this tradition
in Mark, the teachings common to Matthew and Luke,
and the
distinctively Lucan
material (Luke
ness, as does the incidental reference to scribal
tradition vis-a-vis
clear scriptural teaching24 and the
enigmatic nature of Jesus' comments
on the topic more generally.25
Tradition-critical dissections of Mark
20 Cf. D. C. Allison,
"Elijah Must Come First," JBL
103 (1984) 257.
21 Cf.
H.
Schiirmann, Das Lukasevangelium (Freiburg:
Herder, 1969) 1.417.
22 R. T. France, Matthew (Leicester: InterVarsity,
1985) 194.
23 Fitzmyer,
Luke I-IX, 673.
24 Allison, “Elijah,” 256.
25 A. Plummer, An Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St.
Matthew (London: Robert Scott,
1915) 240.
Blomberg: MALACHI IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT 105
within the passages, which are highly subjective and sometimes
self-
canceling.26 W. Wink's notion of a Markan "Elijanic
secret" modeled
after his Messianic secret fails to shore up the
numerous weaknesses
in the latter hypothesis.27 G. B. Caird's conclusion, with specific refer-
ence to the Moses and Elijah
typology applied to John in Luke 7:27,
could quite naturally embrace all the texts in
question: "it is far more
likely that such a synthesis of ideas as this had its
origin in the creative
mind of Jesus."28
2. John's
Own Views.
The Synoptics never report John's own
opinions concerning his identity. But all three
agree on information
which is generally acknowledged to be historical
about the nature of
his ministry: he preached a message of repentance
thoroughly con-
sonant with the oracles of the OT prophets, he adopted
the dress of
an Elijah-like figure (camel's hair and a leather
girdle; cf. 2 Kgs 1:8),
and the location of his ministry in the wilderness
easily conjured up-
memories of both Elijah and Moses who spent so
much time in
similar locations.29 While it cannot
be proven that John consciously
set out to model Elijah specifically, he should
hardly have been
surprised to find others pointing out the
similarities.
Why then does the Fourth Gospel report John's
response to his
Jerusalemite
inquirers in terms of a flat denial to their question,
"Are
you Elijah?" (John 1:21)? Most modern
scholarship affirms that this is
just another Johannine
inaccuracy, where theology has outrun history.
A
popular theory has been to assume that an important but divisive
element in the Johannine
community was a group of over-zealous
followers of the Baptist, who perhaps even saw him
as a Messiah, and
that the fourth evangelist deliberately modified the
more authentic
tradition reflected in the Synoptics
in order to try to combat their
26 So, e.g., A. H. McNeile,
The Gospel according to St. Matthew (
Macmillan,
1915) 54; D. Hill, The Gospel of Matthew (London: Oliphants, 1972) 200;
on which see D. A. Carson, "Matthew," Expositor's Bible Commentary (12 vols.;
ed.
F. Gaebelein;
based on implicit false dichotomies; e.g., J. Gnilka (Das Evangelium nach Markus [2
vols.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener;
Mark
9:9-13 a "Gemeindedisput"; or V. Schonle (Johannes, Jesus
und die Juden
[
implicit. Both observations may be correct, but
neither needs impinge on the authen-
ticity of the sayings involved.
27 W. Wink, John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition (
Press, 1968) 16.
28 G. B. Caird, The Gospel of St. Luke (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1963) 113.
29 Cf. C. H. H. Scobie, John the
Baptist (London: SCM, 1964) 127, 129.
106
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
devotion.30 J. A. T. Robinson has stood this approach on its
head,
arguing that the Fourth Gospel, here and
elsewhere, is more historic-
ally accurate than the Synoptics
where they seem to contradict one
another, and that only later did John's status
become elevated, accom-
panying the early church's
development of a higher Christology.31
There are several plausible hypotheses, though,
which find neither
John nor the Synoptics
involved in a contradiction. The most common
is that the Baptist was simply denying that he was
the literal Elijah
returned from heaven as some Jews were expecting.32
It might be
asked if this would not have been self-evident to
John's inquirers.
Others
think that John did not genuinely know he was fulfilling the
function of an Elijah,33 but in light
of his historical actions, noted
above, this seems somewhat dubious. Perhaps a better
approach is to
side with M. de Jonge, who
notes the popularity of an expectation of
a purely human Messiah who would not know his
identity until Elijah
revealed him; John would naturally deny this type
of Elijanic role.34
Alternately,
J. R. Michaels proposes that the series of denials in John
1:19-21
(that the Baptist was not the Christ, the Prophet, or Elijah) all
refer to the same fact--that John was not the
Messiah.35 The type of
role for Elijah which John would have disclaimed
would then be one
which was Christological in nature itself, perhaps a
development
from the facts that Malachi's messenger could easily
be seen as
priestly (Mal 2:7) and that the
the doctrine of two Messiahs--a priestly as well as
a Davidic one.36 It
is difficult to choose among all of these options,
but objective histori-
ography demands that a viable,
harmonistic solution be preferred to
one which requires that the gospels contradict
themselves.37
30 For a detailed discussion from this perspective, see Wink, John
the Baptist,
89-93.
31 J. A. T. Robinson, "Elijah, John
and Jesus: An Essay in Detection," NTS
4
(1957-58)
263-81; cf. B. Lindars, The Gospel of John (London: Oliphants, 1972)
103-4.
C.
S. Mann, Mark (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1986) 364-68, generally endorses Robin-
son's perspective but argues that Jesus himself first
made the switch in identification.
32 Classically, B. F. Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John (
millan, 1908) 34; cf. also L.
Morris, The Gospel according to John
(
Eerdmans,
1971) 134-35; Carson, "Matthew," 269.
33 C. F. D. Moule,
The Phenomenon of the New Testament (London:
SCM, 1967)
70;
cf. also Morris and Carson as in n. 32 above.
34 M. de Jonge,
"Jewish Expectations about the 'Messiah' according to the Fourth
Gospel," NTS 19 (1972-73) 246-70.
35 J. R. Michaels, John (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984) 12.
36 Cf., in part, B. V. Malchow,
"The Messenger of the Covenant in Mal 3:1," JBL
103 (1984) 252-55.
37 See esp. C. L. Blomberg,
"The Legitimacy and Limits of Harmonization,"
Hermeneutics, Authority
and Canon
(ed. D. A. Carson and J. D. Woodbridge; Grand
Rapids: Zondervan,
1986) 139-74.
Blomberg: MALACHI IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT 107
3. The
Context of Malachi.
Even if the authenticity and non-
contradictory nature of the gospel
texts can be maintained, the final
and perhaps most important question of the meaning
of Mal 3:1 in its
original context must be faced. Has the NT fairly
utilized this Scrip-
ture by interpreting it
first in light of 4:5-6 on Elijah and then by
applying it to John the Baptist? With respect to
the first question, it
must be admitted at once that the referent of the
messenger in 3:1 is
not self-evident. Commentators have suggested a
host of different
figures besides Elijah; the more significant
include Malachi himself
(whose name means "messenger"), God himself (taking
v 1b as
parallel), the angel of the Lord (as God's
heavenly representative on
earth), an ideal figure (and thus not to be equated
with any historical
individual), and the whole line of divinely
ordained prophets.38 But
scholars also tend to agree that the function of
4:5-6 is to identify the
messenger of 3:1 as Elijah.39 These
verses, along with 4:4, are fre-
quently considered, however, as
a later appendix to Malachi's proph-
ecy, added by a redactor
and therefore not determinative of the
original meaning of 3:1.
To these consensus views three replies need to
be made. First,
when a verse as ambiguous as 3:1 is interpreted both
by later verses
in the same book (whether or not they were added
by the same
hand) and by later works in the same religious
tradition in one and
only one way, that interpretation should receive at
least prima facie
priority.40 Even if it might be
plausibly construed in other ways as
well, Mal 3:1 makes sense as a reference to Elijah,
and that observation
bears considerable weight. Second, there is no clear
indication that
Mal
4:5-6 is a later addition, despite the popularity of that view.
There
is not a shred of textual evidence to support the hypothesis,41
even though conclusions to biblical books are often
the sources of
conflicting textual variants. Third, even if 4:5-6
were offering an
interpretation contradictory to that
intended by the author of 3:1,
Jewish
and Christian interpreters alike have historically affirmed that
38 On the alleged parallelism of vv la, b,
and c, see C. D. Isbell, Malachi (Grand
Rapids:
Zondervan, 1980) 58-59; for all the other views and
sample representatives, see
R.
L. Smith, Micah-Malachi (Waco: Word,
1984) 327-28.
39 E.g., J. M. P. Smith, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Book of
Malachi (Edinburgh: T & T
Clark, 1912) 62-63; A. Cohen, The Twelve Prophets
(London:
Soncino, 1948) 349; B. S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as
Scripture (London: SCM, 1979) 496. Childs even
acknowledges that while 4:5-6 go
beyond the prophet's original message, they do not do
injustice to it.
40 Cf. E. Achtemeier,
Nahum-Malachi (Atlanta: John Knox,
1986) 184, who notes
that regardless of its pedigree, this interpretation
"is just as valid as any of the many
others that have been proposed."
41