The day is initially described as “burning like a furnace,” and the
effect it will have on the wicked is figuratively but emphatically stated in
two stages. First, God will make stubble (qaš)
of them, chaff that is easily burned (Ps 83:13–15; Isa 5:24; 33:11). In Isa
40:24 it is what blows away after young immature plants are hit by a lethal hot
wind that withers them. The term is often used of something worthless. Then, as
if that were not enough, the wicked will be “set on fire,” the final result of
which will be that not even a root or a branch will be left.
The day announced here is also similar to the day of the Lord in Joel
2:1–3.
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who
live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at
hand—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like dawn
spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was
of old nor ever will be in ages to come. Before them fire devours, behind them
a flame blazes [lāhaṭ]. Before them
the land is like the garden of Eden, behind them, a desert waste—nothing
escapes them.
S. L. Cook notes that the verb translated “set on fire” in Mal 4:1 is
the same one rendered “blazes” in Joel 2:3. Fire, “an important end-time
element in Joel 2:3, 5 and 3:3 (Eng. 2:30), often appears in apocalyptic
descriptions.” (Richard A. Taylor and E. Ray Clendenen, Haggai, Malachi [The New American
Commentary 21A; Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2004], 450-51).
The day of judgment will be to the ungodly like a burning furnace. “A
fire burns more fiercely in a furnace than in the open air” (Hengstenberg). The
ungodly will then resemble the stubble which the fire consumes (cf. Isa. 5:24,
Zeph. 1:18, Ob. 18, etc.). זֵדִים
and עֹשֵׂה
רִשְׁעָה
point back to v. 15. Those who are called blessed by the murmuring nation will
be consumed by the fire, as stubble is burned up, and indeed all who do wickedness, and therefore the
murmurers themselves. אֲשֶׁר
before לֹא
יֲעַזֹב is a conjunction, quod; and the subject is not Jehovah,
but the coming day. The figure “root and branch” is borrowed from a tree—the
tree is the ungodly mass of the people (cf. Amos 2:9)—and denotes total
destruction, so that nothing will be left of them. (Carl Friedrich
Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, 10 vols.
[Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1996], 10:662)
Further Reading:
Dempsey
Rosales Asosta and A. E. Hill on the Background to Malachi 4:1 (Hebrew: 3:19)
