Passage

Malachi 4.6

Book: Malachi · ASV

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"4. Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, even statutes and ordinances. 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of Jehovah come."

"6. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers; lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." (Malachi 4:4-6, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"4. “Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded to him in Horeb for all Israel, even statutes and ordinances. 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of Yahweh comes."

"6. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”" (Malachi 4:4-6, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"4. Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. 5. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD:"

"6. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." (Malachi 4:4-6, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"4. Remember ye the law of Moses My servant, That I did command him in Horeb, For all Israel, statutes and judgments. 5. Lo, I am sending to you Elijah the prophet, Before the coming of the day of Jehovah, The great and the fearful."

"6. And he hath turned back the heart of fathers to sons, And the heart of sons to their fathers, Before I come and have utterly smitten the land!" (Malachi 4:4-6, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: YHWH through Malachi, closing the prophetic-canon
Audience: post-exilic Judah; canonically, all who hear the prophetic-word at the threshold of the four-hundred-year inter-testamental silence
Location: post-exilic Judah (Persian-period Yehud)
Time period: mid-5th century BC (c. 430s BC), contemporary with Ezra-Nehemiah's reform-work

Theological reading

The verse is the last word of the Hebrew prophetic-canon. (In the Hebrew canonical order, Malachi is the last of the Twelve, with the prophets followed only by the Writings; Christian Bibles preserve Malachi as the final OT book, making this verse the OT's closing word.) Two features are theologically-decisive. (1) The closing-word is a [[H2763 - charam|charam]] warning: the verb-cognate cherem (the noun-form) is rendered "curse" in the ASV/KJV/most English versions. The construction pen avo ve-hikkeiti et-ha'aretz cherem names the eschatological-threat in cherem-vocabulary, the inter-generational-covenantal-breakdown unrepaired triggers the cherem-judgment on the Land at YHWH's "great and terrible day." The OT closes on the same cherem-frame it opened in the conquest-narrative; the canonical-symmetry is structural. (2) Inter-generational-reconciliation as the lever: the trigger-condition for averting the cherem is the prophetic-figure ("Elijah", eschatological-Elijah) turning "the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers." The covenantal-restoration is intergenerational, the failure-mode that prompts the cherem is inter-generational-discontinuity. The NT-canonical identification of John the Baptist as the Elijah-figure (Mt 11:14; 17:10-13; Mk 9:11-13; Lk 1:17, "to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children") directly cites this verse as fulfilled in John's prophetic-restoration ministry preparing the way for Christ. The eschatological-charam threatened here is then absorbed at the cross, Christ becomes anathema (Gal 3:13) bearing what would otherwise smite the earth with cherem. The verse anchors the OT-NT transition: the prophetic-word closes with a cherem-warning that the gospel answers with the cross-bearing of the cherem by Christ Himself.

Key words

H2763 - charam, cherem (cognate-noun construction with the verb), "lest I come and smite the earth with a curse"; the OT's closing-cherem-warning.
H2764 - cherem, the noun-form at the verse.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.