Between the Testaments

When the Prophets Stopped

The Old Testament closes with a promise and a warning. God said He would send Elijah the prophet, and Malachi's last words are lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (Malachi 4:5–6). Then no prophet spoke. About four hundred years went by. One day in the temple an angel stood beside an old priest and picked up Malachi's sentence where it had stopped: to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children (Luke 1:17).

Those years are a gap in most people's knowledge of the Bible. When Malachi stops writing, Judah is a small province of Persia. When Matthew starts, Rome rules, Herod sits on the throne, and there are Pharisees, Sadducees, and synagogues that no one stops to explain. This study tells how the world got that way.

It is also a story about God. We call these the silent years, and the name is fair. God gave no new Scripture, and no prophet stood up with a fresh word from the LORD. But silent is not the same as absent. In those years God moved empires exactly as He had told Daniel He would. He kept His people through the worst persecution they had yet known. He kept His Word. And He set the stage for the day Paul calls the fulness of the time (Galatians 4:4).

Why No Prophet?

Scripture does not give one stated reason. Through Malachi, God had rebuked a weary people who answered Him back at every turn, and Amos had warned long before of a famine of hearing the words of the LORD (Amos 8:11). But we know what God left them. His closing command was Remember ye the law of Moses my servant (Malachi 4:4). He had spoken, and what He had said was enough to live by until He spoke again.