Malachi 4:4

"Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, even statutes and ordinances."

The last three verses of Malachi are generally rejected and downgraded as an interpolation, gloss, or editorial addition to the prophecy of Malachi. As Gailey put it:

"The final verses of the Book of Malachi are probably a postscript by a pious scribe, seeking to provide a suitable conclusion for the Book of Twelve (Minor) Prophets as well as for the Book of Malachi."[12]

Such views are erroneous. There could be no truth at all in the allegation that this passage has any other source than the prophet who wrote the rest of the book; and even Malachi was a source secondary, God Himself being the author of the prophecy "through Malachi." The destructive critics speak of "the editor." What editor? There is no evidence in this prophecy or anywhere else on earth of there ever having been an "editor." If there was one, he could not have been a Jew, for nor Jew in a thousand years would ever have closed the book with the threat of a curse upon the whole earth! So the alleged "editor" must have been a pagan, but when did the Jews allow the pagans to edit their Holy Scriptures? Furthermore, our Lord Jesus Christ himself affirmed the last two verses of this book as a genuine word from God, a true prophecy of the coming of John the Baptist to be the Herald and forerunner of the Christ. How could some interpolator, "pious scribe" (he must really have been "pious"), or editor have appended a holy, genuine, and marvelously fulfilled prophecy from God, doing so in the fraudulent act of palming off his "postscript" as an authentic portion of another man's prophecy? One simply has to be both naive and gullible to accept the nonsense shamelessly advocated by critical enemies of the Bible.

One rather timid commentator suggested that after all, "perhaps Malachi could have written these verses." As a matter of fact, no one ever known except Malachi could have written them.

"The law of Moses ..." The mention of Mount Horeb, the name given in Deuteronomy for Mount Sinai, in the same clause here indicates that Deuteronomy was in the mind of the prophet. One thing that has been revealed vividly throughout the Twelve Prophets is the prior existence of the Pentateuch. All of the Minor Prophets addressed Israel in respect of the prior sacred covenant that existed between them and God; and the countless examples of appeal to specific instances of the sacred law demonstrated that at the time of these prophets, the Law of Moses was a unified whole, understood and accepted by all the people (at least in theory), and that the Pentateuch is prior to and earlier than any of the Minor Prophets.

"Even the statutes and ordinances ..." This reference to specific parts of the Mosaic law indicates that there was a certain complexity in it, and that all of it, even the details of it, were to be respected and obeyed. Scholars differ as to just which provisions were called "ordinances," and which were called "statutes."