Malachi 4:1

Malachi 4:1. For behold the day cometh Though it may appear to be at a distance from you, yet it is coming, and will soon overtake and overwhelm you: even that great and terrible day of the Lord, as it is called Joel 2:31. That shall burn as an oven God is described as a consuming fire, when he comes to execute his judgments, Deuteronomy 4:24, and the prediction here was remarkably verified when, upon the taking of the city and temple of Jerusalem, by the Roman army under Titus, they were both destroyed by such flames as no human power could quench. The refiner’s fire, mentioned Malachi 3:2, now became unspeakably more dreadful, raging everywhere through the city and temple, and most fiercely where the arched roofs made it double itself and infold flames within flames: by which terrible destruction, and the judgments accompanying it, an end was put to the whole state of the Jews: an awful image this of the conflagration of the heavens and the earth, and the final judgment of the last day on the whole human race. And all the proud Such especially as those spoken of Malachi 3:15. And all that do wickedly All impenitent sinners, of whatever kind, whether heathen, Jews, or Christians, so called, even all that do not obey the truth, whether manifested by God’s works or his word, but obey unrighteousness, shall be as stubble Shall perish by these awful judgments. And the day that cometh shall burn them up Shall totally and speedily consume them. It shall leave them neither root nor branch A proverbial expression for utter destruction, and signifying, as applied to the unbelieving Jews, that both they and their families should be utterly destroyed.