Heading.
‘The burden of the word of YHWH to Israel by Malachi.'
The heading tells us what the contents of the book are. It contains ‘the burden of the word of YHWH to Israel by Malachi'. The word ‘burden' can mean something heavy to bear. It was never easy to be a prophet. They had to speak of distressing things to come, and they had to say unpopular things about both the present. Especially unpopular were their criticisms, for people like to hear nice things about themselves, and do not like to be told that they are in the wrong. Nor do they like responsibilities being laid on them. Thus the prophets never had an easy time.
However, the word translated ‘burden' can also mean ‘oracle', a ‘lifting up of the voice'. But if it simply meant that here it would tend to make the noun ‘word' redundant. This suggests that the idea of burden has to be retained, indicating that it is ‘the burden of the word of YHWH', something which is not easy to bear. So the book contains the word of YHWH spoken to Israel which was a heavy burden on the prophet's heart.
But who are we intended to see as indicated by the term Israel? Israel had originally been the name for the whole of the twelve tribes, but when the kingdom was divided it was used of the ten tribes of the northern kingdom. However, the prophets continued to use the term Israel to denote the whole of Israel within Palestine made up of whichever of the tribes were present, for they did not acknowledge the division. And once the various exiles had taken place it was very much used to indicate ‘all Israel'. Thus that is its major significance here. However, we may also see it as having a wider application in general to Israelites in exile who still looked to Jerusalem, wherever they were.
The word came ‘by Malachi'. As it stands the word in Hebrew malachi can mean ‘my messenger', but a yod (translated ‘my') could equally be added to a noun to make a proper name, so that this could simply be a proper name signifying ‘messenger'. The Septuagint translates it as ‘your messenger'. If this was an actual translation it would assume Malacho. But that may simply have arisen from the idiosyncrasy of the translators who read Malachi, but then read a significance into the name. Later tradition in the Talmud spoke of Malachi as a person,
But what was this word of YHWH to Israel? Malachi commences by declaring that it was a word of love.