Abide: Malachi

Joseph Stuart: Malachi is the last book in the Old Testament, a book that has peculiar resonances for Latter-day Saints. It's quoted by Moroni and by the Lord in revelations to Joseph Smith found in the Doctrine and Covenants. The spirit of Elijah, as described in Malachi is one of the doctrinal underpinnings of our understanding of the redemption of the dead. However, it's not only specific doctrines that Latter-day Saints have to learn from Malachi, we can learn how to read scripture as well. We'll explore specific teachings, structure, and much more in today's episode of Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast. My name is Joseph Stuart. I'm the Public Communications Specialist of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship- Brigham Young University, Kristian Heal is a Research Fellow at the Maxwell Institute. Each week we discussed the week's block of reading from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “Come, Follow Me” curriculum. We aren't here to present a lesson but rather to hit on a few key themes from the scripture block, so as to help fulfill the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and fortify Latter-day Saints in their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and engage the world of religious ideas. Today, we are joined by Garrett Maxwell, a research assistant here at the Maxwell Institute. Garrett is studying Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern studies in Arabic. He currently works at the Institute conducting research on the history of early Christianity, as well as a comparative project on the Quran and the Book of Mormon. After graduation, Garrett plans to continue his studies in graduate school. Welcome back, Garrett.

Garrett Maxwell: Thanks for having me again.

Stuart: It is our pleasure. Now, Kristian, a lot of Latter-day Saints may feel like they're pretty familiar with Malachi. But what should we know before we begin our discussion today?

Kristian Heal: It does feel like Malachi might only have six verses in it –sometimes when we think of, of Malachi in our minds, but there's more going on. Scholars date the book Malachi to the Persian period, sometime around the administration of Ezra, so towards the end of the sixth century. The book consists according to the reckoning of John Collins, of six speeches, or disputations, with two brief appendices at the end. After the superscription in verse one that identifies the author as Malachi, which simply means “my messenger”, the first section, chapter one, verses two through five, defends God's love of Israel by contrasting Israel's fate with Eden. “I love Jacob,” declares the Lord, “but I hate Esau.” This hatred is borne out in the desperate fate of Esau’s descendants, the Edomites. The next section, chapter one, verse six through chapter two, verse nine, comprises a long critique of the priesthood in the Persian period. The essence of the Lord's complaint is that the priests are offering up the worst animals to God. Instead of sharing the Lord the respect he’s due and offering up the best animals. The priesthood have turned off the covenant path, fulfilling their office in a perfunctory manner, rather than sincerely dedicating their best to the Lord. As a result, they have caused others to stumble. The third disputation that begins in chapter 2 verse 10, and goes through verse 16, is directed towards divorce. Divorce is permissible in Deuteronomy 24, and Ezra compels the Jews who had married foreign wives to divorce them. But the book of Malachi suggested there was a competing doctrine, the sort of divorces breaking the one flesh that God joined in marriage, as was the case with Adam and Eve, and so condemns divorce. This view was developed in the Dead Sea Scrolls community later in Jewish history, and seems to stand behind Jesus's famous statement in Matthew 19:6. This is very tricky stuff. And it is with good reason that John Collins calls this the most difficult passage in Malachi. And one of the most difficult in all of the Hebrew Bible. The fourth section, beginning in chapter 2, verse 17, and going through chapter 3, verse 5, responds to the people's wearying the Lord with their cries against the injustice in the world. Where is the Lord while all of this evil doing and injustice is going on around them? The response is to promise the sudden appearance of the Lord at his temple to restore order. The concerns of injustice seem to have included the behavior of the Levitical priesthood, as mentioned earlier in the book, because part of what the Lord will do when he appears is to purify the sons of Levi and ensure that acceptable offerings are made. The fifth section begins in chapter 3 verse 6 and goes through verse 12, is the well-known passage concerning tithes and offerings. For covenant Israel to withhold their tithes, is likened to cheating God. Of course, no one would consciously want to cheat God. But in this passage, holding back and offering is equated with actively trying to cheat God. Instead the Lord invites Israel to bring the tithes and offerings into the storehouse and promises to bless, protect and prosper them in return.

The final section begins in chapter 3 verse 13, and ends in chapter 4 verse 3, if you're reading the King James Version, or if you're reading a version that corresponds to the Hebrew Bible, ends in chapter three, verse 21, responds to the despondency of those who asked, What is the point of serving God? It is useless to serve God, they say, What have we gained by keeping his charge and walking in abject or of the LORD of hosts, they complain. And so they conclude, “We account the arrogant happy, they have indeed done evil and endured, they have indeed dared God, and escaped.” The Lord considers these harsh accusations -and they do seem rather bold- and even the faithful found themselves wondering what was going on. In the end of this section, we see the difference between human and divine reasoning. Within the limits of human observation, these cynical conclusions may seem justified, but for the Lord, the day of his coming is present alongside this suffering and injustice. So, He reassures the people “For lo, the day is at hand, burning like an oven. All the arrogant and all the doers of evil shall be straw, and the day that is coming shall burn them to ashes, and leave them neither stop nor bows.” The book concludes with two brief epilogues. The first is simply a reminder to be mindful of the teaching of my servant Moses, whom I charged at Hora with laws and rules for all Israel. The second is one of the most famous passages in the Old Testament, where we Latter-day Saints, and an appropriate way to end the book, and thus the Old Testament itself. In the last section, coming day of the Lord is promised. But in these final verses, we are taught that something has to happen first, “Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome fearful day of the Lord. He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents, so that when I come, I do not strike the whole land with utter destruction.”

Stuart: Thanks so much for that Kristian. Garrett, how does Malachi function within the context of the Bible, on a literary level?

Maxwell: Yeah, so as I've become more familiar with the way we read texts in the university setting, employing the tools of textual criticism and all sorts of other esoteric jargon that I'll refrain from listing, so as to prevent the inevitable eye-glazing such terms induce- I realized that such tools can actually prove to be illuminating for scripture study as well, insofar as meaning is not just contained propositionaly, or in other words, meaning, meaning in scripture is not just found in the bare reading and deciphering of words on a page. After all, reading is riddling to begin with. Now, one of the most fundamental principles we can start with to level up our scripture study is to look at the overall macro level structure of a text and how it fits in the context. Oftentimes, meaning is created by the positioning of texts in different relationships to one another, which is something we see in abundance in the Book of Mormon. Nephi, Mormon and Moroni as editors all appear to have labored for a long time over not just their words, but also the precise arrangement of the units of those words. And if you're familiar with any of Dr. Joseph Spencer's work on the Book of Mormon, you'll know what I mean. So we can ask ourselves, what does a book begin with? What does it end with? Is there a relationship between those? And if any thought went into the writing or arrangement? The answer is usually a yes.

Stuart: That's so crucial to keep in mind, what are some of the ways that Malachi’s structure is resonant for Latter-day Saint readers, or readers of any?

Maxwell: So I'll give a few different examples. So number one, if we look at Malachi within the canonical ordering of the Hebrew Bible, which is not what you're generally familiar with, it's arranged in order of the law, then the prophets, and then the writings. In this arrangement Malachi closes the middle unit, the prophets. So then what we can notice is that the prophets opens in Joshua with a reference to the mosaic Torah. In chapter 1, verse 7, “Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go.” Similarly, the end of Malachi reads, “Remember the teaching of my servant Moses, the statutes and ordinances that I commanded him at Hora for all of Israel.” So thus, the prophets’ book ended with references to the Torah, the laws that were conceived of as so crucial that they actually held the cosmos together. And this notion is here reflected at a canonical level wherein the thing that holds the middle section together is references to the Torah. Example number two, if we then turn to the Christian Bible, Malachi is the final book of the entire Old Testament. As Dr. Heal mentioned earlier, serving as the bookend opposite of Genesis. Now Genesis opens the Bible with the primordial waters of chaos, out of which God crafts order. Malachi brings it to a close with eschatological fire, burning that order to ashes. On the bright side, the Lord offers a caveat that the mutual turning towards of the hearts of parents and children could cancel the curse on the land and this curse is, from that angle, the consummation of the curse already uttered in Genesis 3:17, when they were exiled from the garden. Not only would the land be “filled with noxious weeds, but be made barren and ashen.” Example number three, the promised messenger of Malakai 4:5, then makes the book of Malakai a pivot point between the Old and New Testament. The promise of Elijah in this case is perceived to be fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist, from Matthew 3 of whom Jesus says, “For all the prophets in the law prophesied until John came. And if you're willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.” And number four, Latter-day Saints take this pivot even further forward in time as the angel Moroni reiterates the prophecy of Malachi to Joseph Smith, leading to Elijah's appearance in the Kirtland Temple to hand over the keys of sealing, which are to bind the hearts of parents and children together.

Heal: This is a really wonderful reading of Malachi. That reminds me of something which has really come into focus over the course of this year during our reading of the Old Testament. And that is, in reading the Old Testament, we're really reading three different books. We're reading the Hebrew Bible, this book written in a particular time and space, with prophets, writing to people in a particular time and space, read then four generations within the Jewish tradition. This is a particular book read with a particular set of interpretive lenses that came in later in its, in its history and its transmission. But we're also reading a Christian Bible, the Old Testament, a book that has to be read, or is inevitably read through the lens of the New Testament, in which the prophecies of Christ are littered throughout the volume. And many of these were picked up in by New Testament authors, mostly by later Christians. And this itself is a different Bible, it’s the same words, but a different text than that read by Jews, as you pointed out, actually ordered differently. So this sort of structure, this, this meta-structure is, is another way of signaling that this is a different book. But then, as Latter-day Saints, we have another Bible because we can't read either the New Testament or the Old Testament, except through the lens of The Book of Mormon, and The Pearl of Great Price, and The Doctrine and Covenants. So we end up with this, this third book that we read, and they’re laid over each other in really kind of interesting ways. And during the course of this podcast we've tried to focus on, we describe the structure of the book, we're trying to describe that Hebrew Bible. And when we talk about its Christological significance or psychological significance, or prophecies of Christ, we're looking at the Christian Bible. And when we read covenants and the promises to Israel, and talk about restoration, it's really wonderful to see you kind of do that with this single book here –to do that with the book of Malachi.

Maxwell: And that's part of what's so exciting about the Restoration is that we're promised that there are more things yet to come, more books yet to come to light, that we can then continue to layer on top of all these other books that we have, and the different interpretive lenses. So I think it's just gonna get more and more rich. Yeah, so when we think about it in this way, one can now see the book of Malachi as embedded in a vast web of cosmic significance, rather than just in relation to our own tradition. And this exercise can be reproduced for any number of biblical passages that we find particularly meaningful, such as the passage in Acts 3:21 regarding the restoration of all things. Doing this, I believe, both broadens our vision beyond parochial horizons, and beautifies what lies within that vision. When I read Malachi now, all of these associations and more are buzzing in my mind at the same time, like 10,000 fireflies, and admittedly the world contains way too much information for any one person to process no matter how many lifetimes we had. And the scriptures alone contain more structural resonances than one could uncover in a lifetime of study. But, we sure can enjoy the attempt to gather in as much of the good, the true and the beautiful as we can while we're here!

Stuart: Amen, and Amen. And we wanted to spend this last section reflecting a little bit on the podcast. We do have one more episode for Christmas next week. But we just wanted to think a little bit out loud -Kristian and I together- about what it's been like to put Abide together as a project. And the first question I have for Kristian may be a loaded question, but why did you say yes to this endeavor?

Heal: This is a, yeah, that is a good question. The roots of the Abide: Old Testament Podcast, of course are found in the Abide: Doctrine and Covenants Podcast that you and Dr. Denise Johnson worked on last year. Produced lots of wonderful episodes, taking people through the second half of the Doctrine Covenants. And that was such a success and so valuable, I think, to many listeners, that when you came to me with the idea of carrying on, it seemed like there was already a pattern in place. And that I would just have to step in and sort of follow along. I think I said yes, in part because it seemed like an inherently good idea. But also because this took me back to my own sort of roots of scholarship as an undergraduate studying Hebrew in the Old Testament at University College, London. And it was a delight to kind of get back and re-immerse myself in the scriptures in this way, in a way that would bring all of the things which I had learned and studied, and the things I've thought about in the Old Testament over the course of that undergraduate degree, and then subsequent degrees, thinking about the Old Testament in the Christian tradition, a chance to kind of talk about that. I've spent a lot of my life thinking about the story of Joseph. But it turns out, there's a lot more in the Old Testament than the story of Joseph, I said, yes with all of those, that all that kind of optimism in mind, and all of that promise, and all of that kind of excitement of doing something. And really, of giving something to a kind of a broader audience, much of what I do is written for a kind of a specialist, academic audience. And this is a chance to talk to a broader audience about a book that I really love.

Stuart: So what have been some of the highlights of recording and researching for this season of Abide?

Heal: I think the biggest highlight is, has to be working with such a great group of students. It's just been such a treat right from the beginning, to gather a group and to see them come together so quickly, and so easily. It’s often very difficult to find brilliant research assistants on this campus where there's so many faculty who want to work with them. But all of a sudden, very quickly, and sort of miraculously in some ways, one of our research assistants, Rachel Madson came to the show, because she met my wife at a yoga class, and started talking about this. So we had, like, people kind of coming from nowhere, and coming and saying smart things, as Garrett has today. Smart, interesting things about the the Old Testament. Now originally, we brought this group together to research and provide content for Joey and for me to say smart things based on their hard work, which is you know, how we'd like to do things.

Stuart: And then quickly realized that I knew next to nothing about the Old Testament, and we pivoted a little bit.

Heal: Haha. Well, we realized that there was a lot of capacity in this group and thought, Well, we're here and one of our mandates, as faculty working at Brigham Young University, is to provide inspiring learning opportunities for students. And so, this became that opportunity. And I think, I looked back at myself and thought, given the chance as a, as a 20, something year old to talk publicly about things that I was learning, my answer would have been firm and resounding NO, I would not have felt… but we live in a different age today. And I'd love the confidence in this sort of the, the brightness and the smartness of this kind of group of students, who are so well prepared and so interesting. And so I thought this would be a lovely chance. And it turned out, I didn't realize we were talking about this. And we've said it multiple times, we're so glad we made this decision. It has really made this a wonderful experience for us all. So, that turned out to be a real highlight just both getting this group together and talking with them about the Bible for a few months before we even started this podcast. And then to record each episode with the student participants. And many similar endeavors like this will try and get as much faculty involved as possible, because these are the people who have done years of study on this stuff. But I've actually loved, I've loved having a few faculty colleagues involved, but I've loved working with the students and sort of seeing them engage with and think about these various sections or books of the Old Testament, that's been a real treat.

Stuart: I agree. For many of our students, it’s fantastic to see them come alive when the recording starts. To see them, drop their imposter syndrome a little bit and recognize that they are smart and have things to contribute. And we would also be remiss if we didn't mention the great work of Whitney Watt, Clayton Rasmussen and Ashley Pun, who have done so much work on editing the audio for the podcast, and for Kylie Romano, who created all of the cover art for each episode.

Heal: Which is really wonderful. Thank you.

Stuart: So what surprises did you encounter as we've recorded this season?

Heal: I think first and foremost how much work it was. I said yes, not really appreciating how much work it required or would take for me to do this. I think Janiece is just a lot cleverer than I am and a lot more prepared. She really knows the Doctrine and Covenants remarkably well. It turned out that I knew the story of Joseph really well. Hahaha. So. But, you know, I knew the Old Testament, but you kind of dig in. And, and so that was a surprise to just, and it was surprising how fun that was. I mean, this was captivating and taking up a lot of my time. But I never ever felt sort of bored. I never felt as though, oh, I have to slug through another book. It's just all of that I wanted to have months to prepare for every, every, every book just because it's such compelling and interesting stuff. I think another thing is, it's just a reminder, this isn't really a surprise, but it's just a reminder how thoroughly strange the Old Testament is. And we tend to sort of steer around. These strange bits are like, sort of rocks in a river as we're going down to in the rapids, where you steer around these things. But they're there, they're the parts of this, this lovely, I kind of opened it up and made a point of it deliberately when we spoke about the book Malachi. That we have this kind of section here in which God says, I love Jacob, and I hate iEsau How wonderfully sort of wrong and challenging, I would sort of think that this, God doesn't talk like this. So we're immediately thrown into this sort of different world is different conceptual, intellectual, cultural, and we have to wrestle with that, the challenges, I think that's marvelous. The other thing that was surprising, perhaps, is just a reminder of how vital the Old Testament is. But understanding all the rest of scripture, there is really, and I think, probably, I don't know if this is just simply a, you know, a kind of an obvious observation, but you cannot understand the New Testament, if you don't know what's going on in the Old Testament. If you can't, if you're not capturing these references, the things that Jesus is doing the ways that he is both drawing on and building on the Old Testament and challenging it and sort of interpreting it, the ways that he's fulfilling prophecy, all of these things that we can't understand the Book of Mormon, if we don't understand the altar, we can't even understand the Doctrine and Covenants. The Old Testament is this kind of vital text. One of the scholars who I’ve really grown to appreciate over the course of this year, John Goldingay, wrote a book recently called “Do We need the New Testament?” And he titled it deliberately, because most Christians, are like we don't need the Old Testament, really, we let's just read the Gospel of John and Romans, and we're fine. And so he wanted to say, No, there's something there's more to scripture. And there's a reason we still have the Old Testament. And there's a reason we, we read it and cherish it. And I think it is this different perspective on God and religion, and faithfulness, and covenants, and all of the things that are so foundational. I mean, I really see Latter-day Saint Christianity as an Old Testament Christianity, of course, Christianity is actually Old Testament Christianity. The Old Testament is the thing that I think just reminded me again, that it's the thing that shapes so much of what we do, and how we practice, and what the restoration project was all about.

Stuart: So what's changed for you and how you read the Old Testament because of your study and research this year?

Heal: I think the thing that's changed most is the appreciation of God's faithfulness, and God's sort of constancy in calling his children back to repentance. I've spent more time with the kind of narratives of the Old Testament and less time with the poetry and the prophets. I think. Reading the prophets is just this wonderful sort of mind expanding experience. It's difficult. But it's, it's delightful. And to remember that the prophets wrote largely in poetry, and evoking so sort of beautifully, and using imagery to sort of teach us, but their ministries, and their writings are this clarion call from God to His children to, you know, to his covenant people to come back and they're going to be chastened, they're going to be brought back. There's never a prophecy of calamity without a promise of restoration, that God is constantly sort of, and they're almost they kind of give us whiplash. We've seen that in many of the books that we've read, because God, whatever he's trying to do to sort of effect reformation in his covenant people, the promise is always there to sort of bring them back. And I think that's really become important as I’ve read. And also realizing sort of more fully the significance of the kind of exile and the, the trauma and the surprise of that moment. I think of it in terms of Latter-day Saint history, when, when this kind of hope for rebuilding Zion was dashed, that there was this you know, the cornerstone

that was laid, was this, was a city that was going to be built. And then all of this, that thing that they were working towards that was going to bring about the return of the Lord was just thrown into chaos. And all of a sudden we find all of a sudden, but eventually we find ourselves here in the desert, sort of wondering what happened. And it feels like that a little bit reading the Old Testament.

Stuart: So what's next for you? And is it Old Testament related?

Heal: So there are a couple of things on the immediate horizon. One is this exciting book that I'm co-editing with Jason Combs and Catherine Taylor and Mark Ellison, called Ancient Christians: An Introduction for Latter-day Saints. And that will be published at the end of the year and be sort of an offering, an invitation to come and explore this world of Ancient Christianity, and it was lovely to be part of that, as a project and as a contributor, and that I think it will be a stunningly beautiful volume. We're really excited. We're looking at proofs as we're recording this episode. And by the time this episode is out, you this book should be on the shelves and ready to buy. We hope so, everything going our way. I'm also working on sort of a number of projects related to Joseph in the Syriac tradition, that sort of the academic world, but I am excited to take the research and the work done for these episodes and turn them into a book that can be, Joey gave me the title for this afternoon, Making Sense of the Old Testament. This is the book that I want to sort of write based on the work that we've done to this so that and to work on that over the next couple of years and hopefully have it out by the next time we joyfully and gladly pick up the Old Testament again for our Come, Follow Me study.

Stuart: That's a great place or a stand today. Have a blessed week y'all.

Thank you for listening to Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast. Could you please rate review and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to this podcast? And follow us on social media at @byumaxwell, on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and sign up for our newsletter at mi.byu.edu. Thank you and have a great week.