Holy Prophet Malachi

Malachi is the last of the twelve Minor Prophets and, in the order of the Old Testament, its last book. He spoke after the return from the Babylonian exile, when the Temple in Jerusalem had been rebuilt, probably in the 5th century BC, around the time of Nehemiah. His name means "my messenger"; tradition, as the Life of Dimitry of Rostov retells it, says people gave it to him because his life was as pure as an angel's.

He rebuked priests who offered blind and lame animals on the altar, men who divorced their wives to marry foreign women, and those who withheld tithes or cheated hired workers. He also foretold a messenger who would prepare the way of the Lord. Tradition holds that he died young and was buried in his native village of Sufa.