religion; and it is such decision, a clear recognition of what the service of Yahweh means, a purging of His professed worshippers from hypocritical and half-hearted service (iii. 3) that Malachi with his intense religious earnestness sees to be the only salvation of the nation. In thus looking to the return of the ancient prophet to do the work for which later prophecy is too weak, Malachi unconsciously signalizes the decay of the order of which he was one of the last representatives; and the somewhat mechanical measure which he applies to the people's sins, as for example when he teaches that if the sacred dues were rightly paid prosperous seasons would at once return (iii. 10), heralds the advent of that system of formal legalism which thought that all religious duty could be reduced to a system of set rules. Yet Malachi himself is no mere formalist. To him, as to the Deuteronomic legislation, the forms of legal observance are of value only as the fitting expression of Israel's peculiar sonship and service, and he shows himself a true prophet when he contrasts the worthless ministry of unwilling priests with the pure offering of prayer and praise that rises from the implicit monotheism of even Gentile worship[7] (i. 11), or when he asserts the brotherhood of all Israelites under their one Father (ii. 10), not merely as a ground of separation from the heathen, but as inconsistent with the selfish and cruel freedom of divorce current in his time.[8] The book is a significant landmark in the religious history of Israel. Its emphasis on the observance of ritual finds fullest development in the Priestly Code, subsequently promulgated; its protest against foreign marriages is made effective through the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah;[9] the influence of its closing words on later expectation is familiar to every reader of the new Testament.[10] The style of Malachi, like his argument, corresponds in its generally prosaic character to that transformation or decay of prophecy which began with Ezekiel; and Ewald rightly called attention to the fact that the conduct of the argument already shows traces of the dialectic manner of the schools. Yet there is a simple dignity in the manner not unworthy of a prophet, and rising from time to time to poetical rhythm. LITERATURE.--Nowack, _Die kleinen Propheten_ (1897; 2nd ed., 1904); Wellhausen, id. (iii. 1898); G. A. Smith, _The Book of the Twelve_ (ii. 1898); A. C. Welch, art. "Malachi" in Hastings's _Dict. of the Bible_, iii. 218-222 (1900); C. C. Torrey, id. in _Ency. Bib._ iii. c. 2907-2910 (1902); Marti, _Dodekapropheton_ (1904); Stade, _Biblische Theologie des Alten Test._ § 141 (1905); Driver, _The Minor Prophets_, ii. (Century Bible, 1906). (W. R. S.; H. W. R.*) FOOTNOTES: [1] A Hebrew tradition given in the Targum of Jonathan, and approved by Jerome, identifies Malachi with Ezra the priest and scribe.