Where we are
This short chapter — Malachi 4, the last words of the Old Testament — paints the great division of the last day in two unforgettable images: the burning of the wicked as stubble, and the healing dawn that rises for those who fear God. And it ends with the final promise of the Hebrew scriptures, the prophecy of Elijah, sent to turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. It is a fitting end to the Old Testament — judgment and mercy held in stark contrast, and a final word of reconciliation, the binding of the generations together. Christ gives these words to the Nephites because they too needed the witness of the last day and the promise of Elijah; and they are preserved for us, who stand nearer that day than any generation before.
The chapter opens with the burning. The day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up... that it shall leave them neither root nor branch (v. 1). The wicked are stubble — dry, worthless field-waste — and the day of the Lord is a furnace that burns the stubble up entirely, neither root nor branch remaining. This is the consuming fire of judgment, the counterpart to the refining fire of the previous chapter. Recall the crucial distinction: the refiner's fire purifies the precious metal; the consuming fire destroys the worthless stubble. To the faithful, the fire of God's coming is refining; to the proud and wicked, it is consuming. The same day, the same divine holiness, opposite effects — depending entirely on whether there is precious metal to be purified or only dry stubble to be burned.
And for the faithful, the same day that burns the wicked brings a dawn. But unto you that fear my name, shall the Son of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves in the stall (v. 2). This is one of the most beautiful Messianic images in scripture. To those who fear God, the day of the Lord rises not as a consuming furnace but as a Sun — the Sun of Righteousness (the Hebrew of Malachi reads Sun; the Book of Mormon, like some readings, gives Son, and the wordplay is rich, for Christ is both the Sun that dawns and the Son of God) — rising with healing in his wings. The word study below opens up this dawn; but feel the contrast. The wicked meet the day as fire; the faithful meet it as sunrise — the warm, healing light of dawn after a long night, the Sun whose wings (rays) carry healing. And the faithful, warmed and healed by that dawn, go forth and grow up as calves in the stall — the image of young animals released from the pen into the spring pasture, leaping with the joy and vigor of new life. The day that is a furnace to the proud is a healing sunrise to the faithful, and they frolic in its light like calves let out to graze.
And then the closing promise of the Old Testament — the prophecy of Elijah. The faithful are first charged to remember the law of Moses... which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel (v. 4) — to hold fast the covenant law. And then: Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (vv. 5–6). The very last words of the Hebrew Bible are a promise of reconciliation — that before the great and dreadful day, Elijah will come to turn hearts: the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. The generations, so often estranged, will be turned toward one another, bound together, reconciled — lest the earth be smitten with a curse. There is profound meaning in this being the last word of the Old Testament: that the final promise before the great day is not more judgment but the binding of the generations, the turning of fathers and children toward each other in love and covenant. The whole sweep of the Hebrew scriptures ends on the note of reconciliation — Elijah coming to knit the generations together, so that the earth is not cursed but blessed.
The chapter has three movements.
- The burning day (v. 1). The day comes that burns as an oven; the proud and the wicked are stubble, burned up, neither root nor branch remaining.
- The healing dawn (vv. 2–3). Unto those who fear God's name, the Son of Righteousness arises with healing in his wings; they grow up as calves in the stall and tread down the wicked.
- The law and the promise of Elijah (vv. 4–6). Remember the law of Moses; Elijah will be sent before the great and dreadful day to turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers, lest the earth be cursed.
The verses to carry are these. Verse 1 names the judgment — the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud... shall be stubble. Verse 2 names the dawn — unto you that fear my name, shall the Son of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings. And verse 6 names the reconciliation — he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers. The chapter exists to paint the great division of the last day — the burning of the proud as stubble, the healing dawn for those who fear God — and to give the closing promise of Elijah, sent to bind the generations together before the great and dreadful day.
The burning day and the healing dawn (verses 1–3)
But unto you that fear my name, shall the Son of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves in the stall. — 3 Nephi 25:2
The chapter opens with the great division of the last day, painted in two opposite images that fall on two opposite peoples. For the wicked, the day is fire: the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up... that it shall leave them neither root nor branch (v. 1). The wicked are stubble — the dry stalks left in a field after harvest, worthless, fit only for burning — and the day of the Lord is an oven that consumes the stubble utterly, neither root nor branch surviving. This is the consuming fire of judgment, and it is total: nothing of the proud and wicked remains. But it is crucial to read this alongside the refiner's fire of the previous chapter. The same divine holiness that comes as a refining fire to purify the precious metal comes as a consuming fire to burn the worthless stubble. The fire is the same; the difference is in the material. Where there is precious silver, the fire refines; where there is only dry stubble, the fire consumes. The proud and wicked are stubble — there is no precious metal in them to be purified — and so for them the day is pure burning.
But for those who fear God, the very same day is not a furnace but a dawn. Unto you that fear my name, shall the Son of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth and grow up as calves in the stall (v. 2). This is one of the most beautiful images in all of scripture. The word study below opens it up; but feel the tenderness of the contrast. The wicked meet the day as a consuming oven; the faithful meet it as a sunrise — the Sun of Righteousness rising over the world, carrying healing in his wings. After the long, dark night of the world's suffering and sin, the Sun rises — and his rays (wings) bring not scorching but healing, warming the cold, mending the broken, raising the fallen. And the faithful, warmed and healed by that dawn, grow up as calves in the stall — the image of young cattle, penned up through the winter, released at last into the spring pasture, leaping and frolicking with the sheer joy and vigor of new life and freedom. The day that is destruction to the proud is liberation and healing and joy to the faithful. They tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet (v. 3) — the proud who were stubble are now ashes, and the faithful, healed and grown strong, walk over them into the new day. The great division of the last day could not be starker: the same dawn that is ashes underfoot for the wicked is healing in the wings for the faithful.
The law and the promise of Elijah (verses 4–6)
Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. — 3 Nephi 25:5–6
The chapter — and the Old Testament — closes with two final charges. First, Remember ye the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments (v. 4). Before the great day, the faithful are to remember the law — to hold fast the covenant given at Sinai (Horeb), the statutes and judgments that mark God's people. Even at the end of the Old Testament, with the new covenant of Christ coming, the law is to be remembered, for it points to him and frames the covenant life. And then the final, climactic promise — the very last words of the Hebrew Bible: Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (vv. 5–6).
Sit with the fact that this is how the Old Testament ends. After all the law and the prophets, all the judgment and the promise, the final word is a promise of reconciliation — the sending of Elijah to turn hearts. And the hearts to be turned are those most fundamental and most often estranged: the hearts of fathers and children. Elijah will turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers — the generations, so frequently divided by neglect and rebellion and the passing of time, will be turned toward one another, their hearts knit together. There is profound theology in this. The deepest divisions in human life run between the generations — fathers who fail their children, children who reject their fathers, the covenant and the memory and the love that should pass from one to the next breaking down. And the final promise of the Old Testament is that this division — the estrangement of fathers and children — will be healed before the great day, lest the earth be smitten with a curse. The reconciliation of the generations is so important that without it, the earth would be cursed; and so Elijah is sent to accomplish it. The binding of fathers and children — the turning of their hearts to one another, the restoration of the covenant chain across the generations — is the note on which the whole Hebrew scripture ends. Not judgment, not law, but reconciliation: the hearts of the fathers and the children turned, at last, toward one another, so that the earth is blessed and not cursed. And it is fitting that Christ gives this prophecy to the Nephites, for they too are a people of fathers and children, of the covenant chain, of the zikkaron handed down from generation to generation — and the promise of Elijah, that the hearts of the generations will be turned to one another before the great and dreadful day, is a promise for them, and for us, and for every people whose deepest hope is that the covenant love might pass unbroken from the fathers to the children and back again.
How the chapter is built
3 Nephi 25 is built as a study in the two ends of the last day, and Mormon (presenting Christ's quotation of Malachi 4) structures it so that the burning and the dawn, falling on the same day, reveal the great division of humanity. The chapter opens with the burning of the wicked as stubble (v. 1), turns to the healing dawn for the faithful (vv. 2–3), and closes with the law and the promise of Elijah (vv. 4–6). The architecture sets the consuming fire and the healing sunrise in deliberate parallel — the same day of the Lord that is an oven to the proud is a sunrise to those who fear God, the same fire that leaves the wicked neither root nor branch leaves the faithful growing as calves in the stall. This is the structural completion of the refiner's-fire image from the previous chapter: there the fire purifies the precious metal; here it consumes the stubble — and the two chapters together teach that the difference between salvation and judgment is not a different God or a different day but a different response to the same divine holiness. The structure preaches the great division: one day, two destinies, depending on whether the soul is precious metal to be refined and warmed or dry stubble to be burned.
And the chapter is built to end on reconciliation — and the placement of the Elijah prophecy as the last word is profoundly significant. These are the final verses of the Old Testament, the closing words of the entire Hebrew canon, and they end not on judgment but on the turning of hearts. Mormon (and Christ, in choosing to give these words) lets the structure carry the weight of that ending: after all the law and the prophets, after the burning day and the healing dawn, the final note is Elijah, sent to turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers. The whole sweep of the Old Testament ends on the binding of the generations, the healing of the deepest human estrangement, the restoration of the covenant chain. And this is no accident of the canon but a revelation of God's heart: that his final concern before the great and dreadful day is the reconciliation of fathers and children, lest the earth be cursed. Mormon places this prophecy here, in the Nephite record, for a people who lived and died by the covenant handed from generation to generation — and for the latter-day reader, who stands nearer the great and dreadful day than any before, the promise of Elijah is the assurance that before the burning, there will be a turning — the hearts of the fathers and the children turned toward one another at last, the generations bound together in covenant love, so that when the Sun of Righteousness rises, it rises on a people reconciled, fathers and children together, healed in his wings.