Grace Theological
Journal 3.2 (1982) 221-33.
[Copyright © 1982
Grace Theological Seminary; cited with permission;
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
THE PROMISE OF THE ARRIVAL
OF ELIJAH IN MALACHI
AND THE GOSPELS
WALTER C. KAISER, JR.
Was John the Baptist the fulfillment
of Malachi’s prediction
about Elijah the prophet who
was to come before that great day of
the Lord comes? The hermeneutical solution
to this question is
offered in a generic
fulfillment. or what the older theologians called
the novissma. Therefore, Elijah has
come "in the spirit and power"
witnessed in John the Baptist and
will yet come in the future.
Generic
prophecy has three foci: (1) the revelatory word, (2) all
intervening historical events which
perpetuate that word, and (3) the
generic wholeness (one sense or
meaning) in which the final or
ultimate fulfillment
participates in all the earnests that occupied the
interim between the original
revelatory word and this climactic
realization.
* *
*
THE
NT's interest in the prophet Elijah may be easily assessed
from the fact that he is the most frequently
mentioned OT figure
in the NT after Moses (80 times), Abraham (73),
and David (59);
Elijah's
name appears 29 or 30 times.1
Even more significant, however, are
the six major and explicit
references to Elijah in the Synoptic Gospels.
There, some of Jesus'
contemporaries identified our Lord--in
the second of three opinions--
as Elijah (Mark
of this popular confusion, for they too repeated
it (Matt
Mark
8:27-30; Luke 9:18-21). This connection between Jesus and
Elijah
continued to hold its grip on many even up to the time of the
crucifixion, for those who heard Jesus' fourth word
from the cross
thought he was calling on Elijah to rescue him
(Matt 27:45-49; Mark
1 J. Jeremias,
"h[l(e)iaj,"
TDNT 2 (1964) 934. The disparity of
29 or 30
is
due to textual problem in Luke 9:54.
222
GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
but Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus (Matt
17:1-19; Mark 9:2-10;
Luke
9:28-36)?
But there were two other references in the Synoptics which
referred to a future coming of Elijah. One came
when Jesus' disciples
asked why the scribes claimed it was necessary that
Elijah had to
come first (Matt
"Elijah
had come" and said it in such a way that the disciples knew
that he meant he was John the Baptist. If any doubt
remained, Jesus
said just that in Matt 11:14--"he is Elijah,
the one who was to come."
However, when one turns from the Synoptics to the Fourth
Gospel,
none of these six references are present. Instead, we find
John
categorically denying that he was either Christ, "that [Mosaic]
prophet," or Elijah (John
by way of contrast with the way he is presented in
the Synoptics that
the Synoptics and John
appear to contradict one another flatly. What
explanation can be offered for this phenomenon? And
what impact
does it have on the question of the NT author's use
of OT citations?
THE ISSUES
At stake in this discussion are three critical
points of tension: (1)
the identity of that coming messenger or future
prophet named
Elijah,
(2) the time of his coming, and (3) the task(s) assigned to him.
Each
of these three questions raises a number of hermeneutical and
theological issues that have left their mark on
various traditions of
interpretation.
However, even before these three tension points
have been
joined, perhaps there is a prior question which asks
if Elijah's coming
is at all connected with the coming of the
Messiah. A recent study by
Faierstein concludes that:
. . . contrary to the
accepted scholarly consensus, almost no evidence
has been preserved which
indicates that the concept of Elijah as
forerunner of the Messiah was
widely known or accepted in the first
century C.E. . . . The only datum. . . is the baraitha in b. Erubin 43a-b,
a text of the early third
century C.E. . . . The further possibility, that the
concept of Elijah as forerunner
is a novum in the NT must also be
seriously considered.2
2 Morris M. Faierstein,
"Why Do the Scribes Say That Elijah Must Come First?"
JBL 100 (1981) 86. John H.
Hughes, "John the Baptist: The Forerunner of God
Himself,"
NovT 14
(1972) 212 is of the same opinion: "There is no reliable pre-
Christian
evidence for the belief that Elijah was to be the forerunner of the Messiah,
and this helps support the suggestion that the
conception originated with Jesus." [!]
KAISER:
THE PROMISE OF THE ARRIVAL OF ELIJAH 223
Faierstein, while conveniently avoiding the strong
evidence of Mal 3:1;
4:4-5
and the repeated NT allusions, tends to assign either a post-
Christian
date or to reserve judgment on a whole series of evidences
to the contrary from the Jewish community.
Certainly the
fragment J. Starcky
cited (lkn ‘slh l’lyh qd[m],
"therefore I will send
Elijah
befo[re].
. . .") is incomplete;3 but it should
have reminded
Faierstein to take another look at Mal 3:1; 4:4-5
[Heb
Faierstein also sets aside the same eighteen
rabbinic texts which
L.
Ginzberg analyzes differently.
Now, in no fewer than eighteen passages in the
Talmud, Elijah appears
as one who, in his
capacity of precursor of the Messiah, will settle all
doubts on matters of ritual
and judicial.4
But
the locus classicus
of these eighteen, m. 'Ed. 8.7, is exceptionally
clear. Elijah would establish legitimate Jewish
descent, family har-
mony, and resolve
differences of opinion and religious controversies.
He
would do all this, says m. ‘Ed. 8.7 ". . . as it is written, Behold I
will send you Elijah, the prophet. . . and he shall turn the
heart of the
fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their
fathers.”5
Once
again, we are brought back to the Malachi texts if we are to
make any decision on what was normative either for
pre-Christian
Judaism or the NT itself. To this day, Judaism
continues to reserve
for Elijah a distinguished place and loosely to
relate it to their fading
expectation of the coming of the Messiah. This can
best be seen in the
cup of Elijah and the seat reserved for him at
every Passover meal.
The
hope and prayer of every Jew at the conclusion of the Passover-
"next year in
coming Messianic era. And at the heart of it remains
the open door
for the new Elijah.
II. MALACHI 3:1; 4:4-5
A. The Identity of 'My
Messenger'
God's answer to the impious complaints of the
wicked men and
women of Malachi's day who mockingly sneered:
"Where is the God
of justice?" was to send his messenger to
prepare the way for the God
3 J. Starcky,
"Les Quatre Etapes du Messianisme a
505.
The fragment is 4QarP. See p. 498 as cited in Faierstein,
"Elijah Must Come
First?"
80, nn. 33-34.
4 L. Ginzberg, An Unknown Jewish Sect (
1976) 212. These 18 texts all end 18 talmudic discussions and are known by the term
teyqu which came to mean
"The Tishbite will resolve difficulties and
problems."
Ginzberg lists the location of these 18 passages
in n. 14 on p. 212.
224 GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
for whom they allegedly searched. He did not
promise merely a
messenger, but one that was already familiar to
them from the
informing theology of Isa
40:3, for the words used to describe this
messenger were the same as those used there: he
was "to prepare the
way."
No doubt the words "my messenger" (ykixAl;ma) were intended to be
both a play on the name of the prophet Malachi and
prophetic of a
future prophet who would continue his same work. But
he was
certainly to be an earthly messenger and not a
heavenly being. This
can be demonstrated from three lines of evidence:
(1) in Isaiah the
voice which called for the preparation of the nation
came from
someone in the nation itself; (2) this same
messenger in Mal 3:1 is
associated with Elijah the prophet in Mal 4:5; and
(3) he is strongly
contrasted with "The Lord," "even
the messenger of the covenant" in
Mal
3:1.6
Thus this messenger cannot be the death angel,
as the Jewish
commentator Jarchi
conjectured,7 or an angel from heaven as another
Jewish
commentator Kimchi alleged from Exod
23:20, a passage
which finds its context in a time when
journey into the desert. God's mouthpiece was an
earthly proclaimer.
B.
The Identity of the Lord and the Messenger of the Covenant
"The Lord" (NOdxAhA) can only refer to God
when used with the
article.8 That he is divine
personage is also evident from these
additional facts: he answers to the question of Mal
the God of justice?" (2) he
comes to "his temple" (Mal 3:1) and thus
he is the owner of that house in which he promised
to dwell; and
(3)
he is also named the "Messenger of the
covenant" (tyriB;ha
j`xl;ma).
Furthermore,
it is clear from passages such as Zech 4:14 and 6:5,
"NOdxA of the whole
earth," that NOdxA is used interchangeably
with
Yahweh.9
The title "Angel or Messenger of the
Covenant," is found nowhere
else in the OT. Nevertheless, the title is very
reminiscent of the more
5 Herbert Danby, The Mishnah (London: Oxford University, 1958) 437 [italics
his].
6 These three arguments are substantially
those of E. W. Hengstenberg, Christology
of the Old Testament (trans. James Martin) (Edinburgh: T & T
Clark, 1875) 4.164.
7 R. Cashdan, Soncino Books of the Bible: The Twelve Prophets
(ed. A. Cohen;
8 So argues T. V. Moore (The Prophets of the Restoration: Haggai,
Zechariah and
Malachi [
34:23;
Isa 1:24; 3:1;
Son.
9 So argues Joyce G. Baldwin (Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi [Tyndale Old
Testament; 1).
KAISER:
THE PROMISE OF THE ARRIVAL OF ELIJAH 225
frequently used, "Angel of the Lord."
That was the same "Angel"
who had redeemed
gone before the army as they crossed the
led
with his glory. He was one and the same as Yahweh
himself. This
Angel
was God's own self-revelation, the pre-incarnate Christ of the
numerous OT Christophanies.10 He is
the same one discussed in Exod
23:20-23;
("Behold, I send an Angel. . . My name is in him") 33:15
("My
Presence [or face] shall go with you") and Isa
63:9 (The Angel
of his Presence or face").
The covenant of which he is the messenger is the
same one
anciently made with
33:14)
and later renewed in Jer 31:31-34 as repeated in Heb
8:7-13
and
all ages, this context addressed mainly the Levitical priesthood (Mal
1:6-2:9)
and the nation
covenant relationship.
Still, it must be stressed that there are not
two persons represented
in "The Lord" and the "Messenger of
the Covenant" but only one, as
is proven by the singular form of "come"
(xBA).11 Thus the
passage
mentions only two persons: "The Lord"
and the preparing messenger.
C.
The Connection Between
the Announcer’s Task and the Work of the Lord
The preparing messenger was "to clear the
way before [the
Lord]."
The striking similarity between this expression (hnApAl;
j`r,D, hn.APiU)
and that found in Isa
40:3, (hvhy
j`r,D, Un.Pa) 57:14 and 62:10 is too
strong
to be accidental. The resemblance between Isaiah
and Malachi was
drawn out even to the omission of the article from j`r,D,, "way"; the
only difference is that in Malachi the messenger
is to prepare the way
while in Isaiah the servants of the Lord are
urged to prepare the road.
Under the oriental figure of an epiphany or
arrival of the
reigning monarch, the text urged for a similar
removal of all spiritual,
moral, and ethical impediments in preparation for the
arrival of the
King of Glory. Whenever a king would
visit a village, the roadway
would be straightened, leveled, and all stones and
obstacles removed
from the road that the king would take as he came to
visit the town.
The
only other instance of this expression is in Ps 80:9 [Heb 10]: tAyn.iPi
hAyn,pAl;, "You cleared [the
ground] before it [= the vine (or the nation
10 See W. C. Kaiser, Jr., Toward an Old Testament Theology (
Zondervan,
1918) pp. 85, 120.
251-58. See references to the "Angel of the Lord" in
such texts as Gen 16:1;
11 So argues E. W. Hengstenberg.
Christology,4.168.
226
GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
was necessary to do some clearing away as a preparation before the
nation
and to take deep root in the land.
This future messenger would likewise clear out
the rubbish,
obstacles, and impediments "before me"--the same one who was iden-
tified in the next sentence as
"The Lord," "even the Messenger of the
Covenant." The equation of these
three terms can be argued for even
more convincingly when it is noticed that the waw,
"and," which
introduces the phrase "and the messenger of
the covenant whom you
desire" is an epexegetical
waw used in
apposition to the phrase "The
Lord
whom you are seeking." Therefore we translate the whole verse:
Behold, I will send my messenger. He will clear
the way ahead of me.
Suddenly, the Lord whom you are seeking will
come to his temple;
even the messenger of the
covenant, whom you desire, will come says
the Lord of hosts.
Over against this preparatory work, the Lord and
Messenger of
the Covenant was to arrive "suddenly" (MxAt;Pi) at his temple. The
people had longed for the coming of God in judgment as
a redress to
all wrongs (Mal
"unexpectedly.”12 The ungodly hoped for a temporal
deliverer, but
Mal
3:2 warned that most would not be able to stand when that day
of judgment came. Not only would the heathen
gentiles be judged,
but so too would the ungodly in
judgment associated with the second advent has
been blended in this
passage with the Lord's arrival in his first
advent. It was necessary to
be prepared for both!
D. The Identity of
Elijah the Prophet
Does Malachi expect the Tishbite
to reappear personally on the
earth again? It would not appear so, for Mal 4:5-6
specifically said,
"Behold,
I will send you Elijah the13 prophet, before the great and
terrible day of the Lord comes." Only the
LXX reads "Elijah the
Tishbite." The reason Elijah was
selected is, (1) he was head of the
prophetic order in the nation
12 T. Laetsch (Bible Commentary: The Minor Prophets [
1956]
531) says "Suddenly, pit‘om, is never used to
denote immediacy; it always means
unexpectedly, regardless of the
lapse of time (Joshua 10:9; I 1:7; Num. 12:4; Ps. 64:5, 8,
A.
V. 4, 7;
13 Jack Willsey
("The Coming of Elijah: An Interpretation of Malachi 4:5,"
[unpublished Master's dissertation, San Francisco
Conservative Baptist Theological
Seminary,
1969] 31) notes that the use of the article with xybinA refers "to Elijah:
specifically, the Elijah who was
known to the readers as the prophet (as opposed to any
other possible Elijah)."
KAISER:
THE PROMISE OF THE ARRIVAL OF ELIJAH 227
indirectly received the same spirit and power that
divinely was
granted to him. There was, as it were, a
successive endowment of his
gifts, power, and spirit to those who followed in his
train.
This phenomenon is known already in the OT, for
2 Chr 21:12
mentions "a writing from Elijah the prophet"
during the reign of King
Jehoram when Elijah had already been in heaven
for many years.
Furthermore,
many of the acts predicted by Elijah were actually
carried out by Elisha
(2 Kgs
(2
Kgs 9:13).
Indeed, Elisha had asked for a double portion,
the
portion of the firstborn (OHUrB;, 2 Kgs
2:9), as his spiritual inheritance
from Elijah. Thus, just as the spirit of Moses came
on the seventy
elders (Num
(2
Kgs 2:15).
We are to expect a literal return of Elijah no
more than we
expect a literal return of David as the future king
over
passages like Jer
30:19; Hos 3:5; Ezek 34:23; and 37:24 promise a new
David.
But it is universally held that this new David is none other
than the Messiah himself who comes in the office,
line, and promise
of David. Consequently, we argue that the new
Elijah will be endowed
with this same spirit and power without being the
actual Elijah who
was sent back long after his translation to heaven.
E. The Connection Between Elijah and the Forerunner
There can be little doubt that Elijah the
prophet is one and the
same as the messenger whom the Lord will send to
prepare the way
before him. Mal 4:5 marks the third great
"Behold" in this book (3:1;
4:1,
and here) and therefore carries our mind and eye back to the
other two passages. A second similarity is to found
in the participial
phrase, "I am sending." There is also, in
the third place, a similarity
of mission; for both the verbs "to clear the
way" (hOn.Pa) and "to
restore" (bUw) are based on verbs
which also mean "to turn" and
hence imply a repentance or turning away from evil
and a turning
towards God. In the fourth place, the play on sending
"my messenger"
with Malachi's name in 3:1 is matched in 4:5 by sending
"Elijah."
Finally,
both 3:1 and 4:5a are followed by references that speak of the
awesomeness of the day of the Lord (3:2; 4:5b).
F.
The Time of Day of the Lord
This messenger, who is called the prophet
Elijah, is to appear
"before that great and terrible day of the Lord comes."
That day was
14 For a long discussion of the Christian
history of interpretation of the NT identity
of Elijah, see E. B. Pusey,
The Minor Prophets, (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1950) 2. 499-
502 and E. W. Hengstenberg,
Christology, 4. 195-200.
228
GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
described in similar terms in Joel 2:11, 31 and Zeph 1:14. A number
of the OT prophets view that day as one day and a collective
event
which entailed this three-way puzzle: (1) though five
prophets refer to
that day as "near" or "at hand,"
their prophecies are spread over four
centuries
(Obad 15; Joel 1:15; 2:21; Isa
3:6; Zeph 1:7, 14; Ezek 30:3);
(2)
these prophets also saw different immediate events
belonging to
their own day as being part of that "day of the
Lord" including
destruction of
day in which the Lord "destroyed the whole
earth" (Isa 13:5) and
reigned as "King over all the earth"
(Zech 14:1, 8-9), a day when "the
elements will be dissolved. . . and the earth and
the works that are in
it will be laid bare" (2 Pet
deliverance (Joel
It is just such a day that Mal 3:2; 4:1, 5
mention. The principle of
generic or successive fulfillment is most
important if we are adequately
to explain and be faithful to all the biblical
data. T. V. Moore stated
it this way:
There are a number of statements by the sacred
writers that are
designed to apply to distinct
facts, successively occurring in history. If
the words are limited to
anyone of these facts, they will seem
exaggerated, for no one fact can
exhaust their significance. They must
be spread out over all the
facts before their plenary meaning is reached.
There is nothing in this principle that is at
variance with the ordinary
laws of language. The same
general use of phrases occurs repeatedly. . . .
Every language contains these formulas, which
refer not to anyone
event, but a series of
events, all embodying the same principle, or
resulting from the same cause.
[Thus] . . . the promise in regard to the
"seed of the woman," (Gen.
and includes every successive
conquest of the religion of Christ. . .
[This] class of predictions.
. . is . . . what the old theologians called the
novissima. . .15
Thus,
the "Day of Yahweh" is a generic or collective event which
gathers together all the antecedent historical
episodes of God's judgment
and salvation along with the future grand finale
and climactic event
in the whole series. Every divine intervention
into history before that
final visitation in connection with the second advent
of Christ con-
stitutes only a preview, sample,
downpayment or earnest on that
climactic conclusion. The prophet did not think of
the day of the
15 T. V. Moore, Zechariah, Malachi, 396-99:
KAISER:
THE PROMISE OF THE ARRIVAL OF ELIJAH 229
Lord
as an event that would occur once for all, but one that could
"be repeated as the circumstances called for it".16
Now, the future Elijah, the prophet, will appear
"before that
great and terrible day of the Lord comes,"
Furthermore, as shown in
Mal
3:1 and Isa 40:3, he will prepare the way for Yahweh.
But which
coming of the Messiah is intended by Malachi--the
first or second
advent? Since most conclude along with the NT writers
that the
messenger's preparation was for the first advent of
our Lord, and
since the events included in that day in Mal 3:2ff and
Mal 4:1ff
involve the purification of the Levites, the
judgment on the wicked
and the return of the Yahweh to his temple, it is
fair to conclude that
that day embraces both advents, This is precisely
the situation which
Joel
2:28-32 presents. The fulfillment of Joel's words at Pentecost is
as much a part of that day as the seismographic
and cosmological
convolutions connected with the
second advent,
The basic concept, then, is that Malachi's
prophecy does not
merely anticipate that climactic fulfillment of the
second advent, but
it simultaneously embraces a series of events
which all participate in
the prophet's single meaning even though the
referents embraced in
that single meaning are many.17 In this
way, the whole set of events
make up one collective totality and constitute only
one idea even
though they involve many referents which are spread
over a large
portion of history. Perhaps the best way to
describe this phenomenon
is to call it a generic prediction which Willis J.
Beecher defined as:
. . . one which regards
an event as occurring in a series of parts,
separated by intervals, and
expresses itself in language which may
apply indifferently to the
nearest part, or to the remoter parts, or to the
whole--in other words, a
prediction which in applying to the whole of
a complex event, also
applies to some of its parts.18
III.
JOHN THE BAPTIST AND NEW TESTAMENT FULFILLMENT
The NT question may now be asked: "Was John
the Baptist the
fulfillment of Malachi's prophecies or was he
not?"
16 Willis J.
Crowell, 1905; reprinted,
17 A most helpful distinction can be found
in G. B. Caird, The Language and
Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1980) chap. 2. He distinguishes
between meaningV
(= value: "This means more to me than anything else"), meaningE
(=
entailment: "This means war"), meaningR
(= referent: identifies person(s) or thing(s)
named or involved), meaningS
(= sense: gives qualities of person or thing) and meaning
(=
intention: the truth-commitment of the author).
18 W. J. Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise, 130.
230
GRACE THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
A. Three Basic Positions
Three basic answers have been given to this
inquiry: (1) John the
Baptist
fully fulfilled all that was predicted of the messenger who
would prepare the way and Elijah will not come again;19
(2) Elijah the
Tishbite will personally reappear and minister
once again at the end
of this age;20 and (3) John the Baptist
did come as a fulfillment of this
prophecy, but he came in "the spirit and the
power of Elijah" and is
thereby only one prophet in a series of
forerunners who are appearing
throughout history until that final and
climactically terrible day of
Yahweh
comes when it is announced by the last prophet in this series
of forerunners.21
B. A Generic Fulfillment
of the Elijah Prophecy
From our examination of Malachi's prophecy it is
clear that we
should adopt the third alternative. The identity,
timing, and tasks of
this messenger in Malachi all argue for his
appearance in two
different individuals, if not a series of them,
rather than a single
individual such as John the Baptist.
The NT evid