Malachi 4:6
And he [the coming prophet] shall turn (bring back; convert)
the hearts of the fathers
to the sons (children)
and the hearts of the sons (children)
to their fathers
so that I will not come
and smite the land with a curse (annihilation; complete destruction).
[The last verse forms a chiasm. Both fathers and sons are in the plural, while heart is in the singular. A style of writing that reinforces unity – one heart. Fathers (in the plural) can also include the concept of parents, just as sons can include the concept of children. One aspect of this prophecy is that families will be reconciled. The verse can also be interpreted as fathers and sons together turning their hearts to God. It then becomes a call to both the younger and older generations to repent together and return to God, see .]
[Although Malachi is the last book in our Western Bibles, it is not so in the Hebrew Bible, where the Book of Chronicles, which is not divided but consists of a single scroll, comes last. In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Samuel and the Book of Kings are also one book, and Ezra/Nehemiah was also a scroll from the beginning. The text is exactly the same, but instead of 39 books, the text is divided into 24 scrolls (the twelve minor prophets, for example, are collected in one scroll). The Hebrew Bible is called Tanach, which is an acronym for the first letters of the three parts of the Hebrew Bible:
Torah (Ta) – The Teaching (the Books of Moses)
Neviim (na) – The Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Mic. (Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi)
Ketuvim (k/ch) – The Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra/Nehemiah, and Chronicles)
The initial letters of the three Hebrew names are Tav–Nun–Kaf. This gives the word Ta-na-ch. The letter kaf is pronounced k when it begins a word and ch when it ends a word.
At first glance, the Book of Chronicles can be seen as a repetition of Israel's history from Adam to the end of the Babylonian captivity, but in the retelling, a new narrative is created through the choice of content. The kings of the Kingdom of Judah are mentioned, while no one from the northern kingdom is mentioned. The book begins with the genealogy from up to David, who is to bless the nations, see . Great emphasis is placed on the temple, and throughout the book there is a growing expectation of the coming Messiah. The Book of Chronicles ends with an unfinished sentence from Cyrus in Hebrew: "And let him go up ..." (). Here there is a connection to the seventy weeks in the Book of Daniel and a coming jubilee year, see . The unfinished sentence indicates yet another exile before the Kingdom of God would come into full force. When Jesus reads from in , he ties in with this common thread.]
