Legacy and inheritance were of huge importance to the Jewish people. Many of the great people of faith in the Bible, like Abraham, lived lives deeply shaped by their desire and their struggle to have children. Others like Isaac, Samuel and John the Baptist were children born of faith, God’s answers to the desperate prayers of their parents. The inheritance God gave his chosen people, in fulfillment of his promise to Abraham, was a specific geography, the promised land. The priests, like all of the Jewish people, were very serious about lineage and genealogies, and in Nehemiah 7:62 when certain priests, after the exile, could not prove they were descended from Levi by producing family records, they were excluded from the priesthood. It is against this backdrop, of a nation who measured their legacy in children and land rights, one that was very serious about genealogies, that John the Baptist was a born. He was born to an elderly Father and Mother, in miraculous answer from God to his Father Zechariah’s desperate prayers at the temple, fueled by his heart cry to have an heir to continue his family line. You see, his wife Elizabeth was barren.
John’s mission, as explained by the angel Gabriel to Zechariah, was much bigger than Zechariah’s desire for legacy. John the Baptist came to prepare the way for Jesus. Gabriel prophesied to Zechariah about John before his birth:
- Luke 1:11-17 NIV “Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Before I discuss how John’s life fulfilled these words, I want to take a moment and drill down into the mission given to John.
What does it mean “to turn the hearts of the parents to their children”? (Luke 1: 17b)
Had hearts become so cold, that joe average Hebrew father, in the first century before Jesus came, didn’t care compassionately about his sons? If this is to be interpreted literally, that is what the phrase would surely suggest. There is something deeply disturbing and unnatural about God needing to send a prophet to turn fathers back to having compassion for their own children. Even in the scriptures, this compassion is a given:
- Psalm 103:13-14 “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”
How far had the people fallen, that they needed to be called back into right relationship with their own children and grandchildren?
If John’s mission is to turn parent’s hearts towards their children, those hearts must start turned away, estranged from them. That doesn’t square well with what I had understood about the Jewish passion for legacy. Think about how passionate Zechariah was to have a son! Nor does it square with their obsession with genealogies. In fact, Paul warns both Titus (Titus 3:9) and Timothy (1 Timothy 1:4) about the Jews’ devotion to “endless genealogies”. I see lots of criticism levelled against the Hebrews for not caring about the gentiles. Paul writes long sections of the Book for Romans trying to prove from the Old Testament Scriptures that this was always God’s plan (see Romans 9-11). But their sons? If anything, I would have concluded that their children were idols that the Jews valued above God, not undervalued.
After reading many commentaries here is a list of possible interpretations that I found:
- The Fathers need their compassion restored to their own biological children.
- The Fathers are the current generation of men, like Zechariah and the “children” are subsequent generations of progeny.
- The Fathers are the Jews, the children are the gentiles.[1]
- The Fathers are the biblical patriarchs, and the children are the current Jewish descendants.
Each of these ideas has some merit, for example #3 is appealing because of the reasons I stated in the last paragraph. But none of these interpretations felt entirely satisfying to me, so I dug deeper.
Let’s go on a journey of discovery about the origin and meaning of this prophesy to perhaps shed some further light on these ideas. Later I will propose a few more possibilities of my own, as well.
Here is my translation of this verse in context from the Greek:
- Luke 1: 16-17 DCB ”And many of the sons of Israel he will restore to the Lord their God, and he will, himself, go forth before Him, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to restore father’s hearts toward children and disobedient ones to the moral insight of righteous ones, to make ready for the Lord a skillfully crafted fitting people, with ramifications to all future times[2].”
Doing a little research, I found the primary Old Testament reference for this quote in the final chapter of the book of Malachi:
- Malachi 4:1-6 NIV “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the Lord Almighty.
- “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty.
- “Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel. See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”
This chapter is the very last prophetic word given in the Old Testament. It was followed by 400+ years of prophetic silence from God. This silence ends when Gabriel announces the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah. The first three verses promise a day of fiery judgement for evildoers leaving no remnant nor legacy to them (“not a root or a branch”). In contrast, for God fearing people, it will be a day of healing, of plenty, and complete victory. Notice that the prophet Elijah is the sent by God before the “dreadful day of the Lord” to accomplish these things.
It is very strange indeed for God to promise to bring back a prophet of old to the earth at some point in the distant future!
Why Elijah? Elijah never died; instead he was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire (2 Kings 2:11). One other time chariots of fire were seen in Israel like this… when God opened the eyes of Elisha and his servant in 2 Kings 6:17, so that they could see the angels in chariots surrounding the armies of the Arameans. So angels brought Elijah directly to heaven. Since Elijah never died, the Jews believe that he stands poised to return from heaven whenever God deems it time. The Jews were waiting with anticipation for Elijah to return to earth and even symbolically left an empty chair at their yearly Seder feasts for four hundred years to remind every generation of this promise.
It is very clear that Gabriel is quoting this final verse of Malachi: besides using the nearly identical phrase “turning the hearts of the fathers to their children”, the context of sending the prophet Elijah is unmistakable. It is curious, however, that there is a reciprocal nature to the words in the original prophesy in Hebrew given to Malachi, “turning the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents…” which is missing from Gabriel’s pronouncement. Gabriel has only quoted the first half of the prophesy saying that John will fulfill it in the spirit and power of Elijah. This leaves the intriguing possibility that Gabriel is saying that John the Baptist will only fulfill the first half of this prophesy and there still remains a second half to be fulfilled by Elijah himself.[3]
What do we learn from the Hebrew scripture about what “turning the hearts of the fathers to their children” means?
Here is my translation of the Hebrew (word for word interlinear and my translation):
- Malachi 4:6a Hebrew Interlinear (DCB) (read from right to left):
וְהֵשִׁ֤יב לֵב־אָבֹות֙ עַל־בָּנִ֔ים וְלֵ֥ב בָּנִ֖ים עַל־אֲבֹותָ֑ם
their-fathers upon sons of heart and sons upon fathers of heart He-will-cause-to-turn and
- Malachi 4:6a DCB “He will cause a heart of fathers to turn upon sons, and a heart of sons upon their fathers…”
First it is worth noting that it is singular “heart” not “hearts”, meaning that all fathers and all sons have the same heart that requires changing.
I have chosen to translate the Hebrew preposition עַל as “upon”, but it can potentially mean “upon”, “above”, “over”, “on”, or even “against”. This makes the translation a little tricky and it gives us other potential possibilities for the meaning of this verse:
- The (biological) Fathers heart is turned against their children.
- The Fathers (Jews) heart is turned against the children (Christians).
In fact, in two gospel accounts Jesus warned his followers that this sort of enmity within the family would be the effect of following Him:
- Matthew 10:21-22 (also Mark 13:12-13) “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.”
Trying to get some further insight about how the Rabbis understood this preposition, I looked up this verse in the Greek translation of the OT, the Septuagint (LXX):
- Malachi 4:6a LXX ὃς ἀποκαταστήσει καρδίαν πατρὸς πρὸς υἱὸν
- Malachi 4:6a LXX DCB “Who will restore a heart of a father toward a son”
So the rabbis who made the Septuagint translation understood the preposition עַל as “toward”, not “against”, because they translated it into Greek as πρὸς (pros) meaning “toward”. There are several other interesting differences as well. Notice that it is a singular “father” and a singular “son”, not the plural “fathers and sons” found in our Hebrew text. Like the Hebrew, there are no articles used at all in the Greek, so it is not “the fathers” but “a father”.
So the heart of a father had turned away from his son. When a human has their heart turned away from God and then they turn their heart back to God, this is what we call repentance. In the case of this verse, though, it is a father who has turned away from a son, and must turn back his heart toward his son with compassion. The final word from God the Father in the Old Testament, was that He would send Elijah to turn a father with compassion toward a son, restoring relationship because of the father’s renewed compassion.
The Septuagint, by translating a singular “father” and “son,” suggests to me a 7th intriguing possible interpretation:
- “Father” is God, our heavenly Father, and “son” is the human race.
It is a curious thing to say that God needs to have his heart turned with compassion toward us. But upon reflection, this is exactly the mission Jesus was given:
- John 3:16-17 NIV “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
Instead of judgement and condemnation, the world needs to be saved by Jesus, because it already stands condemned. The sin of mankind has separated every human from a relationship with the Father. The restoration of relationship with God is found only in the redemption and forgiveness that Jesus Christ bestows, as the Father looks down from heaven with renewed compassion upon the fallen human race because of the sacrifice of Jesus in their place. We all deserve death. Jesus, as a free gift, gives us his eternal life in exchange for our death penalty on the cross.
The next phrase of this verse in the Septuagint, not quoted by Gabriel, is also astounding:
Malachi 4:6 LXX ὃς ἀποκαταστήσει καρδίαν πατρὸς πρὸς υἱὸν καὶ καρδίαν ἀνθρώπου πρὸς τὸν πλησίον αὐτοῦ…
Malachi 4:6 LXX DCB “Who will restore a heart of a father toward a son and a heart of a man toward his neighbor…”
Rather than saying to restore “heart of sons upon their fathers” it says: to restore “the heart of a man toward his neighbor”! This sounds like a good paraphrase of Jesus’s second commandment:
- Matthew 22:39 “The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Paul explains in detail how love for your neighbor is the key to fulfilling the law:
- Romans 13:8-10 “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Pretty cool that the gospel message of reconciliation with the Father, and the key insight that Jesus gave in interpreting and fulfilling the law is hidden in the Septuagint translation of the last sentence of the Old Testament scriptures in Malachi 4:6.
At another level, however, the intergenerational aspect of turning the heart of “fathers and sons” toward one another found in the Hebrew translation expresses the heart of God that we would all have true love and concern for reaching every generation, not just our own, with the message of Christ.
- In fulfillment of these prophesies Luke records that John “went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”. (Luke 3:3)
- And John preached: “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” (Luke 3:8)
- When questioned: “John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor[4] and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.” (Luke 3:16-18)
John, a descendent of the priestly line of Levi, was fulfilling the role of a priest described in Malachi chapter 2:
- Malachi 2:4-7 And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the Lord Almighty. “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin. For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth.”
A true priest walks with God in righteousness and turns other people from their sin.
This is what the rest of Gabriel’s prophesy about John had proclaimed:
- “He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God…” and “…the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” (Luke 11:17)
This last phrase is again drawn from Malachi, this time in chapter 3:
- Malachi 3:1 “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.
- Malachi 3:17-18 “On the day when I act,” says the Lord Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. 18 And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
There is a fascinating irony here, because God did not spare his Son Jesus who served him. Based on this scripture we would expect that God would have compassion and spare his son! BUT HE DID NOT. Jesus was sacrificed!!!! It is in this act that the compassion of the Father was restored to his “son”, the human race. The Father’s justice was fully satisfied, so that he could have compassion upon us and spare us!
When Gabriel said that John would turn the “the disobedient (απειθείς) to the wisdom of the righteous”, that is another important word in the Old Testament. απειθείς (apaythays) is the Greek word translated disobedient or rebel. In the Septuagint it is found in the context of rebellious sons and fathers in Deuteronomy 21:
- Deuteronomy 21:18-21 If someone has a stubborn (απειθής ) and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn (απειθεί) and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
Can you imagine parents so zealous for righteousness that they willingly stone their own rebellious child?
Does it bother you that this is God’s law?
απειθείς is also used to describe the Israelites who rebelled against Moses:
- Numbers 20:10 “He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels (απειθείς), must we bring you water out of this rock?”
Moses in his anger then struck the rock with his staff, rather than speaking to it as God had instructed him. God graciously allowed the water to spring forth for the thirsty rebellious Israelites. But ironically, this rash act of disobedience by Moses, had a dire consequence for him. God did not allow Moses to enter the promised land. The sin of disobedience/rebellion (απειθείς) requires the death penalty in the law, and for Moses results in denial of entry to the promised land, a symbolic picture of rejection from eternal life in heaven. The scripture as a whole is very consistent about this:
- Joshua 1:18 Whoever rebels (ἀπειθήσῃ) against your word and does not obey it, whatever you may command them, will be put to death. Only be strong and courageous!”
Isaiah further establishes the clear connection between rebellion (disobedience to God’s message) as the sin that causes sudden destruction:
- Isaiah 30: 8-13 Go now, write it on a tablet for them, inscribe it on a scroll, that for the days to come it may be an everlasting witness. For these are rebellious (απειθής) people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction. They say to the seers, “See no more visions!” and to the prophets, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!” Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says: “Because you have rejected (ηπειθήσατε) this message, relied on oppression and depended on deceit, this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly, in an instant.“
The death penalty required by the law, and the promise that John/Elijah would turn the disobedient to repentance and moral wisdom leaves quite a conundrum. How can you simultaneously kill the disobedient one as the law requires, and yet turn them to the wisdom of the morally righteous? This paradox finds resolution in Jesus alone. The righteous requirement of the death penalty that the law required was completely fulfilled in Jesus’ death, so that we could be shown mercy and turned toward moral righteousness. By faith in His shed blood we are cleansed and restored to relationship with the Father in moral purity.
What is the right way to think about this verse?
In our western way of thinking, we want a simple “right” interpretation for a verse. But God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, his ways higher than our ways. As I sought deeper understanding I was led on a journey that led me to the heart of God, and his plan of salvation.
- Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
[1] Henry’s complete commentary of the Bible: “Dr. Lightfoot observes, It is the constant usage of the prophets to speak of the church of the Gentiles as children to the Jewish church, Isaiah 54:5; Isaiah 54:6; Isaiah 54:13; Isaiah 60:4; Isaiah 60:9; Isaiah 62:5; Isaiah 66:12. When the Jews that embraced the faith of Christ were brought to join in communion with the Gentiles that did so too, then the heart of the fathers was turned to the children.”
[2] DCB are my initials. “with ramifications to all future times” is my attempt to translate the meaning of the Greek perfect tense verb form. It is a past event, that changes everything from that point on.
[3] Smith’s Bible Commentary: “Now there is a lot of confusion as regards to John the Baptist, and the prophesy of the coming of Elijah. In John’s gospel we are told that as John was baptizing at the Jordan River, the Pharisees came out and they demanded of him his authority, and who gave him the authority to do these things. They said, “Are you the Messiah?” He said, “No.” They said, “Are you Elijah?” He said, “No.” “Then who are you?” He said, “I am just the voice of one crying in the wilderness; prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight His path” ( John 1:20-23 ).
And yet, here the angel of the Lord tells his father that he will be going forth in the Spirit and in the power of Elijah.
Now the confusion exists in the fact that there were two comings of the Messiah. The first coming that we find recorded here in the gospel. The second coming for which we presently wait. And even as Elijah will appear before Jesus comes again. So John the Baptist came in the Spirit and in the power of Elijah. And if a person is able to accept it, he was the fulfillment of that promise of Elijah coming before the Lord, to cause the hearts of the children to turn to their fathers, and their fathers to their children.
So the confusion lies in the fact that there are two comings of the Messiah, as well as the two comings of Elijah, both of them to prepare the people for the coming of the Lord.”
[4] King David purchased the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite, as an altar to God and later the temple was built upon this spot. While this is an obscure reference to us, the Jews, especially the Pharisees, knew 2 Samuel 24 and likely recognized immediately that John’s statements about “clearing the threshing floor” and “burning with unquenchable fire” were aimed squarely at the religious leaders in Jerusalem! John was not worried about his father’s desire for him to pass on the family legacy, he was willing to give up his life to spread the message of repentance in preparation for Jesus.
Atheist to Elder 