The Books of

HAGGAI and MALACHI

Pieter A. Verhoef

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

© 1987 William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Verhoef, Pieter A.

The books of Haggai and Malachi.

(The New international commentary on the Old Testament)

Bibliography: p. xv.

Includes indexes.

1. Bible. O.T. Haggai—Commentaries. 2. Bible.

O.T. Malachi—Commentaries. I. Title. II. Series.

BS1655.3.V47 1986 224´.97077 86-19830

ISBN 0-8028-2533-8

This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents:
Lodewijk Henricus Wilhelm Verhoef (1880–1955)
Antje Maria Verhoef-Poletiek (1883–1956)

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

Many years ago I was invited to write this volume, but its speedy completion was prevented by my involvement with the New Afrikaans Translation. In fact, I completed this manuscript just about the time that the New Afrikaans Translation was published on December 3,1983. Professor R. K. Harrison, the general editor of NICOT, had to apply both the carrot and the stick in order to expedite the completion of the commentary.

The books of Haggai and Malachi belong to the Minor Prophets, so-called—according to Augustine—not because they are of less importance than the Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) but because “their messages are comparatively short.”

The significance of both pbrophets has been variously assessed. In his important commentary on Haggai, W. Rudolph concludes that the message of this prophet has no relevance whatsoever for the Christian faith. This verdict is in accordance with a widely held view that the OT must be interpreted entirely on its own, without a perspective on the realities of the NT dispensation. This kind of approach ignores a major hermeneutical key to the understanding of the OT. In the Introduction and throughout the Commentary I have tried to stress the relevance of the prophet’s message in terms of continuity and discontinuity for the Christian church.

The same negative evaluation has been given to Malachi. According to B. Duhm, for example, the book of Malachi reflects the intellectual poverty of its time, and the prophet’s message cannot be compared with that of the “classical” prophets of preexilic times. These and similar views are subjective and do not comply with the real significance of Malachi’s message. The book of Malachi contains a number of high points in the history of the divine revelation in the OT, such as the stress on God’s enduring love for his covenant people (1:2–5) and the surprising emphasis on the importance of the priesthood’s teaching function that is unsurpassed elsewhere in the OT (2:1–9). Nowhere else do we find such an elevated view of marriage or such an explicit condemnation of divorce (2:10–16), and nowhere else is the antithesis between the righteous and the wicked explicated in such an eschatological perspective (3:13–21 [Eng. 4:3])....