Malachi 1

The Lord’s Love and the Polluted Offerings

The Lord tells His people that He has loved them, and when they ask how, He points to Jacob and Esau. Then He turns on the priests, who despise His name by laying blind and lame animals on His altar, and says that His name will be great among the nations.

Malachi chaptersChapter 1 of 4

Uncertain. The Bible Dictionary dates the prophecy to about 430 B.C., and the Bible Chronology places it at 432 B.C., with Nehemiah’s second mission to Jerusalem. Scripture Helps says the exact timing is uncertain and the book is generally dated between 500 and 350 BC. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

Start reading

Background

Malachi is “the last book in the Old Testament,” and its prophet “preached to the Jews in Jerusalem after they returned from Babylonian exile.”

Malachi is “the last book in the Old Testament,” and its prophet “preached to the Jews in Jerusalem after they returned from Babylonian exile.” By his time the temple had been rebuilt and its worship restored “for a considerable time,” and the people had a governor over them (verse 8). Malachi “addressed the spiritual decline among the Jews.” In this chapter the service of the altar has become “a weariness” (verse 13), and the animals brought to it are the blind, the lame, and the sick.

The book has a “distinctive literary form: a series of exchanges in a dialogue between the Lord and the people.” The Lord states a charge or a promise, the people ask “Wherein?”, and the Lord answers. This chapter holds three of those exchanges, at verses 2, 6, and 7. The first part of the book, Mal. 1:1–2:9, “is addressed to the priesthood,” and this chapter belongs to it, although the opening verses speak to all Israel.

The Savior quoted all of Malachi 3 and 4 to the Nephites (3 Ne. 24–25); chapter 1 is not among them. Paul quotes its second and third verses (Rom. 9:13). The meaning of the name Malachi is taken up in a note on verse 1.

The thread through the chapter

The chapter is about a name. The Lord opens with love (“I have loved you”), and the people ask for proof.

The chapter is about a name. The Lord opens with love (“I have loved you”), and the people ask for proof. He gives it in the history of two brothers. Then He turns on the priests: if He is a father and a master, “where is mine honour?… where is my fear?” They “despise my name.” Everything after that is evidence for the charge: the bread on the altar is polluted, the animals are blind and lame, the service is a weariness.

The name frames the chapter. It is despised in verse 6 and profaned in verse 12, and between them, in verse 11, it is to be great “among the Gentiles” from the rising of the sun to its going down. The nations’ regard for the name is set against the priests’ contempt for it. The Hebrew of verse 14 returns to a word of verse 6. There the Lord asks where His “fear” (mora’) is; here His name is “dreadful” (nora’, from the same root) among the nations. The word “great” recurs as well: the Lord “will be magnified” in verse 5, His name is “great” twice in verse 11, and He is “a great King” in verse 14.

So the chapter does not set love against judgment. The love is the ground of the charge: the comparison with Esau may be meant “not only to reassure the people of His love for them but also to remind them of their responsibility to live faithfully as His covenant people.” A people who have been loved owe the Lord honour and fear, and the charge falls first on the priests, who stand at His altar.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verse 1

The burden of the word

In plain words

This is the message the Lord gave to Israel through Malachi.

1 The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.

Language #

Burden, a load and an oracle

“Burden” is the King James rendering of the Hebrew massa’. One word so spelled means “load, burden,” such as a donkey’s or a mule’s.

“Burden” is the King James rendering of the Hebrew massa’. One word so spelled means “load, burden,” such as a donkey’s or a mule’s. Another, listed separately, means a prophetic “utterance, oracle,” and it is the one found here and in the same heading, “the burden of the word of the LORD,” in Zech. 9:1 and Zech. 12:1. The Updated NRSV accordingly prints “An oracle.” Whether a sense of weight still sounds in the heading is not something the evidence settles.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Language #

A name that means “my messenger”

The name Malachi is Hebrew for “my messenger,” and it is listed as the name of an Israelite prophet.

The name Malachi is Hebrew for “my messenger,” and it is listed as the name of an Israelite prophet. It is spelled exactly like the “my messenger” the Lord promises to send in Mal. 3:1, which is why some scholars have asked whether Malachi is a title and not a personal name. The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, reads “by the hand of his messenger.”

That is a question, not a finding. Malachi is described as “a prophet who preached to the Jews in Jerusalem after they returned from Babylonian exile,” and the chapters here treat Malachi as his name.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.

Verses 2–5

“I have loved you”

In plain words

The Lord says, “I have loved you.” The people ask, “How have you loved us?” He answers, “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? Yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau, and I laid his mountains and his inheritance waste for the jackals of the wilderness.” If Edom says, “We are shattered, but we will come back and rebuild the ruins,” the Lord of hosts says, “They may build, but I will throw down. They will be called the border of wickedness, the people the Lord is angry with forever.” Your own eyes will see it, and you will say, “The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel.”

2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,

Literary Structure #

The question the book keeps asking

This question is the first of six replies in Malachi that begin with the same word.

This question is the first of six replies in Malachi that begin with the same word. The Hebrew is bammeh, “in what?”, and it opens the people’s answer in Mal. 1:2, Mal. 1:6, Mal. 1:7, Mal. 2:17, Mal. 3:7, and Mal. 3:8, each time “Wherein” in the King James. (Two more replies, in Mal. 2:14 and Mal. 3:13, are worded differently.) Five of the six answer a charge or a summons: you despise my name, you offer polluted bread, you have wearied the Lord, return to me, you have robbed me. This is the only one that answers a declaration of love.

The Lord answers it with two brothers: “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?… yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau” (Mal. 1:2–3). The next two notes take up what that means.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

3 And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

Language #

Did the Lord hate Esau?

In the Bible “the word translated as hate can sometimes mean ‘not to choose’ rather than being an expression of contempt,” and “that appears to be the case in this passage.”

In the Bible “the word translated as hate can sometimes mean ‘not to choose’ rather than being an expression of contempt,” and “that appears to be the case in this passage.” The same Hebrew verb, sane’, is used of Leah: Jacob “loved also Rachel more than Leah,” and so “the Lord saw that Leah was hated” (Gen. 29:30–31). The law uses the same word of one of a man’s two wives, “one beloved, and another hated,” whose firstborn son must still be given the double portion (Deut. 21:15–17). The note on Gen. 29:31 says more about the word.

The choice here is a covenant one: “The Lord had made a covenant with Jacob and his descendants that He did not make with Esau and his descendants.” That setting bears on the words themselves. In the ancient world “love” and “hate” “had less to do with emotion and more to do with a vassal’s covenantal relationship with a lord,” and the “love” of these verses has been read in that way, as the language of alliance.

What the verse itself describes is not the man Esau but his “mountains” and “heritage” laid waste. Esau “is Edom” (Gen. 36:1), and the Church’s footnote on “waste” leads to Ezekiel’s oracle against that nation, which gives its reason: “Because that Edom hath dealt against the house of Judah by taking vengeance… I will make it desolate” (Ezek. 25:12–13). So the verse speaks of a covenant choice and of a nation’s judgment. It does not describe contempt for a person.

Sources: Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Scripture Central, “Why Did Samuel Say the Lord “Hated” the Lamanites?”, KnoWhy #186, Aug. 27, 2020.

4 Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.

Context #

Edom’s failed rebuilding

Verses 3–4 describe Edom already in ruins and the Lord’s answer to its plan to rebuild.

Verses 3–4 describe Edom already in ruins and the Lord’s answer to its plan to rebuild. The text gives no date for the devastation, and the date is disputed. One reading is that the Babylonians did it: Jeremiah foretells Edom’s ruin (Jer. 49:7–10), and in the chapter where the Lord brings Nebuchadnezzar “against all these nations round about” (Jer. 25:9), Edom is among the nations named (Jer. 25:21). Others put it much nearer Malachi’s own day. The verse says only that it had happened. Where the King James has Edom say “We are impoverished,” the Updated NRSV has “We are shattered” and the Septuagint “Idumea has been overthrown.”

What matters for the people’s question is the contrast. If the blow was Babylon’s, it fell on both nations, and Jacob had recovered “in consequence of the love of Jehovah” while Esau’s land still lay in ruins. Either way, the answer to “Wherein hast thou loved us?” is something the people are to watch: “your eyes shall see” (verse 5). Edom’s attempt to rebuild is met with “They shall build, but I will throw down,” and “The border of wickedness” (“border” in the sense of territory) is the name others will give a land whose ruin does not end, taking it “as a practical proof that the wrath of God is resting for ever upon both people and land on account of Edom’s sins.”

Verse 5 gives the people’s response, and translators divide over it. The King James has the Lord magnified “from the border of Israel.” The Updated NRSV reads “Great is the Lord beyond the borders of Israel!” and the Septuagint “upon the borders of Israel.” The crux is the Hebrew preposition, me’al. One argument is that it means “over” or “above” and not “beyond,” so that the Lord shows Himself great over Israel’s own land, “when He makes known His greatness to men, by His acts of power or grace.” The translations show that the point is not agreed.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway.

5 And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.

Verses 6–9

“Where is mine honour?”

In plain words

A son honors his father and a servant his master. “If I am a father, where is my honor? If I am a master, where is my fear?” says the Lord of hosts to the priests who despise His name. They ask, “How have we despised your name?” By offering polluted bread on His altar. They ask, “How have we polluted you?” By saying that the Lord’s table is contemptible. If they offer blind animals, or lame and sick ones, is that not evil? Let them offer such a gift to their governor and see whether he is pleased. Now let them beg God to be gracious to us. This has come from their hands; will He regard them?

6 A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?

Language #

Fear in verse 6, dreadful in verse 14

The “fear” the Lord asks of the priests in verse 6 and the “dreadful” name of verse 14 come from one Hebrew verb.

The “fear” the Lord asks of the priests in verse 6 and the “dreadful” name of verse 14 come from one Hebrew verb. The verse begins from two commonplaces, “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master,” and asks for the same: honour, if He is a father; fear, if He is a master. The charge is then aimed at one group, “you, O priests, that despise my name.”

The Hebrew for “fear” here, mora’, comes from the verb yare’, “to fear,” and its sense in this verse is reverence: “where is the reverence due to me.” The Updated NRSV has “where is the respect due me?” The word translated “dreadful” in verse 14, nora’, is a form of the same verb, used there “of the name of Yahweh,” and the Updated NRSV renders it “my name is reverenced among the nations.” What the priests are asked for in verse 6 is, in the Hebrew, what the name has among the nations in verse 14.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway.

7 Ye offer polluted bread upon mine altar; and ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee? In that ye say, The table of the LORD is contemptible.

Language #

How can bread pollute the Lord?

The priests’ question turns on one Hebrew verb: the “polluted” bread and “polluted thee” are the same word.

The priests’ question turns on one Hebrew verb: the “polluted” bread and “polluted thee” are the same word. The idea behind it is that touching or eating something unclean defiled a person, so that offering defiled food to God is spoken of as defiling God Himself. That is an explanation of the idiom, not something the verse states. The Lord’s answer is “In that ye say, The table of the LORD is contemptible.” The “table” is the altar. Ezekiel is shown an altar of wood and told, “This is the table that is before the LORD” (Ezek. 41:22), the verse the Church’s footnote at verse 12 points to. The “bread” is not the showbread but the sacrificial flesh, which the law calls “the bread of their God.”

The law that uses that phrase attaches a warning to it. Priests “shall be holy unto their God, and not profane the name of their God: for the offerings of the Lord made by fire, and the bread of their God, they do offer” (Lev. 21:6). Malachi’s charge in Mal. 1:12, “ye have profaned it,” uses the same Hebrew verb for “profane,” and the “it” is the Lord’s name.

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

8 And if ye offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? and if ye offer the lame and sick, is it not evil? offer it now unto thy governor; will he be pleased with thee, or accept thy person? saith the LORD of hosts.

Context #

Try it on the governor

The Lord proposes a test anyone could run: take the lame lamb to the governor.

The Lord proposes a test anyone could run: take the lame lamb to the governor. The Hebrew pechah is the title Zerubbabel bore as “governor of Judah” (Hag. 1:1), and Nehemiah after him, “appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah” under Artaxerxes (Neh. 5:14). Which governor Malachi means is not said; the verse need not point to a foreigner and “might also apply to Nehemiah.” Governors lived on what the people supplied. Nehemiah speaks of “the bread of the governor” and says those before him “had taken of them bread and wine” (Neh. 5:14–15), though Malachi’s words may be about gifts and not that levy. The argument goes from the lesser to the greater. If a governor would not be pleased with a blind or lame gift, how could the Lord be?

Verse 9 turns the argument on the priests’ own work. “Beseech God that he will be gracious unto us” reads best as a challenge whose answer is no: with such offerings coming from their hands (“this hath been by your means”), intercession “would be fruitless.” The verse has also been read as an earnest call to repentance, but what follows in verse 10, “neither will I accept an offering at your hand,” tells against that.

9 And now, I pray you, beseech God that he will be gracious unto us: this hath been by your means: will he regard your persons? saith the LORD of hosts.

Verses 10–14

“Neither will I accept an offering at your hand”

In plain words

Who among them would even shut the doors for nothing? They do not kindle the fire on His altar for nothing. The Lord takes no pleasure in them and will not accept their offering. From the rising of the sun to its going down His name will be great among the nations; incense and a pure offering will be offered to it in every place. But the priests profane it, saying the Lord’s table is polluted and its food contemptible. They say, “What a weariness!” and sniff at it, and they bring what was torn, the lame, and the sick, and call it an offering. Shall He accept it? Cursed is the cheat who has a male in his flock, makes a vow, and then sacrifices a spoiled animal to the Lord. He is a great King, and His name is dreadful among the nations.

10 Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought? neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith the LORD of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand.

Language #

For nought: unpaid, or in vain?

“For nought” can be taken two ways, and they give the verse different meanings.

“For nought” can be taken two ways, and they give the verse different meanings. As the King James words it, the charge is that the priests do nothing unpaid: no one would so much as shut a door for nothing, and “not one of them would kindle a fire on the hearth of the altar unless he were paid for it.” The Hebrew word, chinnam, does mean “gratis, gratuitously, for nothing,” as when Laban asks whether Jacob should “serve me for nought” (Gen. 29:15).

The same word also means “for no purpose, in vain,” and this verse is listed under that sense. Read that way, and with the opening question taken as a wish, the line is the Updated NRSV’s “Oh, that someone among you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not kindle fire on my altar in vain!” The Lord would then rather have no fire on His altar than one kindled to no purpose. The Septuagint makes it a statement: “even among you the doors shall be shut.” On any of these readings the verse ends in the same place: “I have no pleasure in you.”

Sources: Chapter 34: “Behold, I Will Send You Elijah the Prophet” (Malachi), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (1982), 351–56. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

11 For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts.

Language #

Present or future?

Whether verse 11 describes Malachi’s day or a day to come depends on a verb the Hebrew does not have.

Whether verse 11 describes Malachi’s day or a day to come depends on a verb the Hebrew does not have. The clause reads, in effect, great my name among the nations, and the verbs after it are participles (incense being offered). The King James chose “shall be,” and the Church’s chapter heading reads the same way: “The Lord’s name will be great among the Gentiles.” The Updated NRSV has “is,” and the Septuagint “has been glorified.”

Both are possible on the grammar. The case for the future is that in Malachi’s time the Lord’s name was not great from east to west, and incense was not burned to Him in every place. The verse then looks ahead to the spread of true worship among all nations, “in every place” standing against the one place, the temple in Jerusalem, to which worship was limited under the old covenant. The offering is “pure” in the sense of “according to the requirements of the law, in contrast to sacrifices polluted by faulty animals.”

The King James renders one Hebrew word, goyim, as both “Gentiles” and “heathen” in this verse, and as “heathen” again in verse 14.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.

12 But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the LORD is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.

13 Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith the LORD of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the LORD.

Language #

Torn, taken, or maimed?

“That which was torn” translates a Hebrew participle, gazul, from a verb for tearing away or seizing, and translators differ on what kind of animal is meant: “taken by violence”…

“That which was torn” translates a Hebrew participle, gazul, from a verb for tearing away or seizing, and translators differ on what kind of animal is meant: “taken by violence” (Updated NRSV), “torn” (the Septuagint). Standing as it does beside “the lame” and “the sick,” the sense is “probably that rescued after seizure by wild beasts, therefore mutilated.” If that is right, all three terms name animals that were maimed or ill.

Sources: Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.

14 But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.

Context #

The cheat with a male in his flock

The man cursed in this verse has a sound animal and offers a spoiled one.

The man cursed in this verse has a sound animal and offers a spoiled one. The law required a vow paid as a burnt offering to be “a male without blemish” (Lev. 22:18–19), and it held a vow to a stricter standard than a freewill gift: an animal with something “superfluous or lacking in his parts” might do “for a freewill offering; but for a vow it shall not be accepted” (Lev. 22:23). The man in Malachi “hath in his flock a male,” the animal the law names, and makes a vow, and then sacrifices “a corrupt thing.” The Hebrew word for “deceiver,” nokhel, means someone crafty or deceitful, and the Updated NRSV has “cheat.” The curse falls on a man who could pay what he promised and chose not to.

The verse gives the reason for the curse in the Lord’s rank: “for I am a great King.” The “dreadful” name of its last clause is the feared, or reverenced, name of the note on verse 6.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.

Seeing Christ in Malachi 1

The LORD of hosts who speaks in this chapter is Jehovah, the premortal Jesus Christ (see the note on verse 4). Why His altar could take no blind or lame animal is said plainly: “Animal sacrifice symbolized the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Because of this, the Lord commanded that all animals offered must ‘be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein.’” The angel tells Adam that the sacrifice is “a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father” (Moses 5:7), and Peter names the reality, “the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:19). The Church’s footnote at verse 10 leads to what the same Lord said to the Nephites: “ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood,” and in its place “a broken heart and a contrite spirit” (3 Ne. 9:19–20).

The Church’s footnotes on “name” in verse 11 lead to “a name which is above every name” (Philip. 2:9) and to “Jesus Christ is the name which is given of the Father” (D&C 18:23). They link the verses; they do not say that Malachi had the name of Jesus Christ in view.

Worth exploring next

The law behind the charge. Lev. 21:6–8 calls the offerings the bread of God, and Lev. 22:17–25 says what may be offered.
Jacob and Esau. Gen. 25:19–26; Gen. 29:30–31; Deut. 21:15–17; Edom’s judgment in Jer. 49:7–10 and Ezek. 25:12–14.
The nations at the altar. Isa. 56:3–8.
The sacrifice the Lord asks for. 3 Ne. 9:15–22; D&C 59:8.
The next exchange. Mal. 2:1–9 continues the charge against the priests.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Malachi”, Bible Dictionary.
“Malachi”, Guide to the Scriptures.
“Chronology of the Old Testament”, Bible Dictionary, “Bible Chronology”.
Malachi, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
Chapter 34: “Behold, I Will Send You Elijah the Prophet” (Malachi), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (1982), 351–56.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Malachi, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition, National Council of Churches, 2021; on BibleGateway.
The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.
“Jehovah”, Bible Dictionary.
Scripture Central, “Why Did Samuel Say the Lord “Hated” the Lamanites?”, KnoWhy #186, Aug. 27, 2020.

I’ve studied Malachi 1