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For the Northern Irish singer songwriter, see Malachi Cush.

For the Iraq War protester, see Malachi Ritscher.

See also Book of Malachi

Malachi or Mal'achi (מַלְאָכִי "My messenger/angel", Standard Hebrew Malʾaḫi, Tiberian Hebrew Malʾāḵî) was a prophet in the Bible, the Christian Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh.

He was the last of the minor prophets, and the writer of the Book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament canon (Mal. 4:4, 5, 6) Christian editions, and is the last book of the Neviim (prophets) section in the Jewish Tanakh. No allusion is made to him by Ezra, however, and he does not directly mention the restoration of the temple. The editors of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia inferred that he prophesied after Haggai and Zechariah (Mal. 1:10; 3:1, 10) and speculated that he delivered his prophecies about 420 BCE, after the second return of Nehemiah from Persia (Neh. 13:6), or possibly before his return, comparing Mal. 2:8 with Neh. 13:15; Mal. 2:10-16 with Neh. 13:23).

Contents 1 In Rabbinic Judaism 2 In Christianity 2.1 Early Christian writings 2.2 Christian liturgy 3 In contemporary Biblical criticism 4 References

Malachi is identified with Mordecai by Rav Nachman and with Ezra by Joshua b. Karcha (Meg. 15a). The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel to the words "By the hand of Malachi" (i. 1) gives the gloss "Whose name is called Ezra the scribe." According to Soṭah 48b, when Malachi died the Holy Spirit departed from Israel. According to Rosh Hashanah 19b, he was one of the three prophets concerning whom there are certain traditions with regard to the fixing of the Jewish calendar.

Jerome, in his preface to his commentary on Malachi, mentions that in his day the belief was current that Malachi was identical with Ezra ("Malachi Hebræi Esdram Existimant"). A tradition preserved in pseudo-Epiphanius ("De Vitis Proph.") relates that Malachi was of the tribe of Zebulun, and was born after the Captivity. According to the same apocryphal story he died young, and was buried in his own country with his fathers.

On the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, his feast day is January 3.

According to the editors of the 1897 Easton's Bible Dictionary, the name is not a "nomen proprium" and is assumed to be an abbreviation of ("messenger of Yhwh"), which conforms to the Μαλαχίας of the Septuagint and the "Malachias" of the Vulgate. The Septuagint superscription is ὲν χειρὶ ἀγγήλου αὐτοῦ, (by the hand of his messenger).

Wellhausen, Abraham Kuenen, and Wilhelm Gustav Hermann Nowack consider ch. i. 1 a late addition, pointing to Zech. ix. 1, xii. 1. Carl Heinrich Cornill states that Zech. ix.-xiv. and Malachi are anonymous, and were, therefore, placed at the end of the prophetical books. Mal. iii. 1 shows almost conclusively that the term was misunderstood, and that the proper name originated in a misconception of the word. The consensus of opinion seems to point to 432-424 B.C. as the time of the composition of the book. This was the time between the first and second visits of Nehemiah to Jerusalem.

• This entry incorporates text from the public domain Easton's Bible Dictionary, originally published in 1897.
• This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.

• Article from the Catholic Encyclopedia