Evidence Supporting Malachi as Author
Verhoef also provides the following evidence in favor of seeing Malachi as a named person who penned this oracle:
• Titles are used elsewhere in the prophetic literature where an author is identified.
• A proper name always follows the statement that “the word of the Lord” came to someone.
• Extensive manuscript and translation tradition supports “my messenger” being translated as Malachi.
• 2 Esdras (second-century ad) includes Malachi as part of the Minor Prophets.
• Although the Septuagint (LXX) renders the name for the book as “Malachias,” which changes the meaning of the term to “his messenger,” it does not deny Malachi as the author. Kaiser notes that changes in a person’s name often accentuated, instead of detracted from, the meaning (Malachi, 13).
The argument cannot be irrefutably proved either way. Thus, we can only uphold the tradition that a prophet named Malachi, about whom we know virtually nothing, served as God’s “messenger” for this oracle (compare Baldwin, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, 211–13).
Rob O’Lynn. (2016). Malachi, Book of. In J. D. Barry, D. Bomar, D. R. Brown, R. Klippenstein, D. Mangum, C. Sinclair Wolcott, … W. Widder (Eds.), The Lexham Bible Dictionary. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
