WE know nothing whatever of the writer of this book. His name, Malachi, meaning “My messenger,” occurs in verse 1; but we read of him nowhere else in Scripture, and we get no particulars concerning him here. He was the last of the prophetic band, and his book appropriately closes the Old Testament canon. Till the advent of John the Baptist, of whose coming he prophesied, no other messenger was directly sent to Judah from God.

The conditions he describes fit in well with what is recorded of the state of the returned remnant in the latter period of Nehemiah’s governorship. So it is quite likely that he lived and ministered the word of Jehovah either during that time, or a little later.