Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.
Behold. Calling especial attention to the momentous truths which follow. Ye unbelievingly ask, "Where is the God of judgment?" (Malachi 2:17.) "Behold," therefore, "I send," etc.
I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me. Your unbelief will not prevent MY keeping my covenant, and bringing to pass in due time that which ye say will never be fulfilled.
I will send my messenger, and ... he shall come. The Father sends the Son as "Messenger of the covenant:" the Son comes. Proving the distinctness of personality between the Father and the Son.
My messenger - John the Baptist; as Matthew 3:3; Matthew 11:10; Mark 1:2-3; Luke 1:76; Luke 3:4; Luke 7:26-27; John 1:23 - prove. This passage of Malachi evidently rests on that of Isaiah his predecessor (Isaiah 40:3-5). Perhaps, also, as Hengstenberg thinks, "messenger" includes the long line of prophets headed by Elijah (whence his name is put, in Malachi 4:5, as a representative name), and terminating in John, the last and greatest of the prophets (Matthew 11:9-11). John, as the representative prophet (the forerunner of Messiah, the representative God-man) gathered in himself all the scattered lineaments of previous prophecy (hence, Christ terms him "much more than a prophet," Luke 7:26), reproducing all its awful and yet inspiriting utterances: his coarse garb, like that of the old prophets, being a visible exhortation to repentance; the wilderness in which he preached symbolizing the lifeless, barren state of the Jews at that time, politically and spiritually; his topics, sin, repentance, and salvation, presenting for the last time the condensed epitome of all previous teachings of God by His prophets; so that he is called preeminently God's "messenger." Hence, the oldest and true reading of Mark 1:2 is, "as it is written in Isaiah the prophet;" the difficulty of which is, how can the prophecy of Malachi be referred to Isaiah? The explanation is, the passage in Malachi rests on that in Isaiah 40:3, and therefore the original source of the prophecy is referred to, in order to mark this dependency and connection.
And the Lord - Haa'aadown (H136) in the Hebrew. The article marks that it is Yahweh (Exodus 23:17; Exodus 34:23: cf. Joshua 2:11; Joshua 2:13). Compare Daniel 9:17, where the Divine Son is meant by "for THE Lord's sake." God, the speaker, makes "the Lord," the "messenger of the covenant," one with Himself: "I will send ... BEFORE ME," adding, "THE LORD ... shall ... come;" so that THE LORD must be one with the "ME" - i:e., He must be God "before" whom John was sent. As the Divinity of the Son, and His oneness with the Father, is thus proved, so the distinctness of personality is proved by "I send" and "He shall come," as distinguished from one another. He also comes to the temple as "His temple:" marking His Divine Lordship over it, as contrasted with all creatures, who are but "servants in" it (Haggai 2:7; Hebrews 3:2; Hebrews 3:5-6).
Whom ye seek ... whom delight in. At His first coming they "sought" and "delighted in" the hope of a temporal Saviour; not in what He then actually was. In the case of those whom Malachi in his time addresses, "whom ye seek ... delight in" is ironical. They did seek a Saviour to glorify the Jewish nation and themselves, but not the meek and lowly Jesus of Nazareth. They unbelievingly asked, When will He come at last? Malachi 2:17, "Where is the God of judgment" (see the note there; also, Isaiah 5:19; Amos 5:18; 2 Peter 3:3-4). In the case of the godly, the desire for Messiah was sincere (Luke 2:25; Luke 2:38). He is called "the Angel of God's presence" (Isaiah 63:9), also the Angel of Yahweh. Compare His appearances to Abraham (Genesis 18:1-2; Genesis 18:17; Genesis 18:33), to Jacob as "the angel of God" (Genesis 31:11; Genesis 31:13, and "the God which fed me all my life long, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil," Genesis 48:15-16), to Moses in the bush (Exodus 14:2-6); He went before Israel as the Shekinah (Exodus 14:19; and of Him God said, "Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way," Exodus 23:20); and delivered the law at Sinai (Acts 7:38).
Shall suddenly come to his temple - "suddenly," "as a thief." This epithet marks the second coming rather than the first; the earnest of that unexpected coming (Luke 12:38-46; Revelation 16:15) to judgment was given in the judicial expulsion of the money-changing profaners from the temple by Messiah (Matthew 21:12-13), where also, as here, He calls the temple His temple. Also, in the destruction of Jerusalem, most unexpected by the Jews, who to the last deceived themselves with the expectation that Messiah would suddenly appear as a temporal Saviour. Compare the use of "suddenly" in Numbers 12:4-10, where He appeared in wrath (see note, Malachi 2:17).
The messenger of the covenant - namely, of the ancient covenant with Israel (Isaiah 63:9) and Abraham, in which the promise to the Gentiles is ultimately included (Galatians 3:16-17). The Gospel at the first advent began with Israel, then embraced the Gentile world; so also it shall he at the second advent. All the manifestations of God in the Old Testament, the Shekinah and human appearances, were made in the person of the Divine Son (Exodus 33:20-21; Hebrews 11:26; Hebrews 12:26). He was the messenger of the old covenant as well as of the new.