We can only note in a sentence the recurrence in verse 1 of the phrases ‘the proud’ and they ‘that work wickedness,’ from verse 15 of chapter iii.  The end of those whom the world called happy, and who seemed stable and elevated, is to be as stubble before the fire.  We must also point out that ‘the sun of righteousness’ means the sun which is righteousness, and is not a designation of the Messiah.  Nor can we dwell on the picture of the righteous treading down the wicked, which seems to prolong the previous metaphor of the leaping young cattle.  Then shall ‘the upright have dominion over them in the morning.’

III.  The final exhortation and promise point backwards and forwards, summing up duty in obedience to the law, and fixing hope on a future reappearance of the leader of the prophets.  Moses and Elijah are the two giant figures which dominate the history of Israel.  Law and prophecy are the two forms in which God spoke to the fathers.  The former is of perpetual obligation, the latter will flash up again in power on the threshold of the day.  Jesus has interpreted this closing word for us.  John came ‘in the spirit and power of Elijah,’ and the purpose of his coming was to ‘turn the hearts of the fathers to the children’ (Luke i. 16, 17); that is, to bring back the devout dispositions of the patriarchs to the existing generations, and so to bring the ’hearts of the children to their fathers,’ as united with them in devout obedience.  If John’s mission had succeeded, the ‘curse’ which smote Israel would have been stayed.  God has done all that He can do to keep us from being consumed by the fire of that day.  The Incarnation, Life, and Death of Jesus Christ made a day of the Lord which has the twofold character of that in Malachi’s vision, for He is a ‘saviour of life unto life’ or ‘of death unto death,’ and must be one or other to us.  But another day of the Lord is still to come, and for each of us it will come burning as a furnace or bright as sunrise.  Then the universe shall ’discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not.’

THE LAST WORDS OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS

     ’Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.’—­MALACHI iv. 6.

     ’The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. 
     Amen.’—­REVELATION xxii. 21.

It is of course only an accident that these words close the Old and the New Testaments.  In the Hebrew Bible Malachi’s prophecies do not stand at the end; but he was the last of the Old Testament prophets, and after him there were ‘four centuries of silence.’  We seem to hear in his words the dying echoes of the rolling thunders of Sinai.  They gather up the whole burden of the Law and of the prophets; of the former in their declaration of a coming retribution, of the latter in the hope that that retribution may be averted.