Peter Adam is Vicar Emeritus at St Jude’s Carlton, Melbourne, and was formerly the principal of Ridley College, Melbourne. He is the author of Speaking God’s Words: A Practical Theology of Preaching (Vancouver: Regent College, 2004) and Hearing God’s Words: Exploring Biblical Spirituality (NSBT 16; Downers Grove: IVP, 2004). In the book under review, he takes standard conservative views of the book of Malachi and its author, the prophet Malachi. He dates the book broadly against the general background of Ezra and Nehemiah, that is, somewhere between 460 and 400 BC. This is in contrast to Andrew Hill’s view of 500 BC and Eugene Merrill’s view of 480–470 BC, although Adam does not discuss alternative views.

As is true of the Bible Speaks Today series generally, this book focuses on application. In the introduction, Adam lists three ways that Malachi applies today (pp. 14–15). First, since the prophecy opens with the message of Yahweh’s love, Adam derives the principle that “at the heart of God’s people, the church, must lie a deep, radical, and overwhelming conviction that God loves them.” He later proposes that the first sin named in the book, doubting God’s love, leads to all the others (p. 35). Second is the teaching that “the greatest sin of God’s people is . . . sin against God” as opposed to being against ourselves or others (p. 14). Third, the prophecy addresses the situation of God’s people trying to straddle the fence by refusing both to reject God and also to serve God wholeheartedly, choosing rather to occupy “neutral territory” (p. 15).

Also in the introduction, he lists three priorities of his exposition (pp. 16–19). The first is to show the OT to be prophetic preparation for Christ. In his discussion of 1:2–5, for example, Adam derives the application that “the overwhelming and convincing proof of God’s love is that he has not dealt with us as our sins deserve, but has had mercy on us in Christ Jesus and his atoning death” (p. 46). A second priority is to call attention to the OT as “training in godliness and ministry” (p. 17). And the third priority is to remember that Malachi addressed the corporate people of God (pp. 18–19). Adam first sounded the alarm against individualism in an earlier book, where he stated that “the gospel itself has been distorted into a message for individuals. . . . God’s love for the individual is a consequence of the gospel, not the heart of the gospel” (Hearing God’s Words, 26–27). Here in his work on Malachi, he makes the point that our first question of application should not be “What is God saying to me?” but “What is God saying to us?” He follows this principle throughout the work as he strives for “corporate application” (e.g., p. 41).

As for controversial verses, Adam devotes four pages to Mal 1:11 (pp. 65–68), which he literally renders, “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering.” After citing several attempts to make sense of the verse (including universalism), he correctly takes it as having a future reference (see NIV, ESV, HCSB).

Another difficult passage is 2:10–16. Adam sees the theme of these verses as Judah’s faithlessness, especially to fellow Judahites, contrasting with Yahweh’s faithfulness to his people and their unity in him, their Father and Creator. Judah’s faithlessness has shown itself first in their profaning the Lord’s temple by marrying foreign idolaters (Adam clarifies that this is about holiness and not racism, pp. 84–85). The next act of faithlessness Malachi denounces is divorcing “the wife of your youth . . . your companion and your wife by covenant” (Mal 2:14–15). Adam’s next point is that God loves marriage and hates divorce: “It is because God knows the good power of marriage that he hates its destruction” (p. 88). The Lord’s message in the controversial v. 16 is rendered by Adam as “I hate divorce.” That is the reading of Adam’s default translation, the 1984 NIV, and he apparently sees no problem with it. However, the fact that there is a problem is indicated by the reading of three recent translations, including the 2011 NIV: “‘The man who hates and divorces his wife,’ says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘does violence to the one he should protect’” (see also ESV and HCSB). There is no question that God disapproves of divorce; the question is one of translation, namely, identifying the subject and object of the verb “hates.” Adam leaves this issue unaddressed. But in answer to his question, “What should we think about divorce?,” Adam states, “we should hate the kind of divorce found here in Malachi, in which wives were dismissed simply because husbands wanted to marry other women” (p. 89, emphasis added). He then refers (without taking a position) to “many Christians today” who consider that the NT allows divorce for various reasons. His bottom line is that “it remains a serious sin to divorce your wife in order to marry an unbeliever; in such situations, it is clear that God hates divorce, and we too should hate such divorces” (p. 90).

One place in Adam’s work where we might wish for “corporate application” is his study of 3:6–12, the famous passage on “robbing God.” He has several helpful things to say here, but in the end several questions are left unanswered. For example, if “it would be a disaster for a poor righteous person to think that their poverty represented the curse of God” (p. 107), was the divine call to “put me to the test” applicable only to the situation in Malachi?

In spite of some minor gaps, the work of Peter Adam packs a great deal of application into a small package and offers the student or teacher much insightful guidance in applying the lessons of this important, concluding book of the OT.

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