[947] In the tenth month the siege of Jerusalem had begun (2 Kings xxv. 1); on the ninth of the fourth month Jerusalem was taken (Jer. xxxix. 2); on the seventh of the fifth City and Temple were burnt down (2 Kings xxv. 8); in the seventh month Gedaliah was assassinated and the poor relics of a Jewish state swept from the land (Jer. xli.). See above, pp. [30] ff.
[948] LXX. the citizens of five cities will go to one.
[949] מלאכיה or מלאכיהו. To judge from the analogy of other cases of the same formation (e.g. Abiyah = Jehovah is Father, and not Father of Jehovah), this name, if ever extant, could not have borne the meaning, which Robertson Smith, Cornill, Kirkpatrick, etc., suppose it must have done, of Angel of Jehovah. These scholars, it should be added, oppose, for various reasons, the theory that it is a proper name.
[950] Cf. the suggested meaning of Haggai, Festus. Above, p. [231].
[951] And added the words, lay it to your hearts: ἐν χειρὶ ἀγγέλοῦ αὐτοῦ θέσθε δὴ ἐπὶ τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν. Bachmann (A. T. Untersuch., Berlin, 1894, pp. 109 ff.) takes this added clause as a translation of וְשִׂימוּ בַלֵּב, and suggests that it may be a corruption of an original וּשְׁמוֹ כָלֵב, and his name was Kaleb. But the reading וְשִׂימוּ בַלֵּב is not the exact equivalent of the Greek phrase.
[952] מַלְאֲכִי דְיִתְקְרֵי שְׁמֵיהּ עֶזְרָא סָפְרָא.
[953] See Stade, Z.A.T.W., 1881, p. 14; 1882, p. 308; Cornill, Einleitung, 4th ed., pp. 207 f.
[954] So (besides Calvin, who takes it as a title) even Hengstenberg in his Christology of the O. T., Ewald, Kuenen, Reuss, Stade, Rob. Smith, Cornill, Wellhausen, Kirkpatrick (probably), Wildeboer, Nowack. On the other side Hitzig, Vatke, Nägelsbach and Volck (in Herzog), Von Orelli, Pusey and Robertson hold it to be a personal name—Pusey with this qualification, “that the prophet may have framed it for himself,” similarly Orelli. They support their opinion by the fact that even the LXX. entitle the book Μαλαχιας; that the word was regarded as a proper name in the early Church, and that it is a possible name for a Hebrew. In opposition to the hypothesis that it was borrowed from chap. iii. 1, Hitzig suggests the converse that in the latter the prophet plays upon his own name. None of these critics, however, meets the objections to the name drawn from the peculiar character of the title and its relations to Zech. ix. 1, xii. 1. The supposed name of the prophet gave rise to the legend supported by many of the Fathers that Malachi, like Haggai and John the Baptist, was an incarnate angel. This is stated and condemned by Jerome, Comm. ad Hag. i. 13, but held by Origen, Tertullian and others. The existence of such an opinion is itself proof for the impersonal character of the name. As in the case of the rest of the prophets, Christian tradition furnishes the prophet with the outline of a biography. See (Pseud-)Epiphanius and other writers quoted above, p. [232].
[955] iii. 16 ff.
[956] See above on Obadiah, p. [169], and below on the passage itself.