“But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall.”

:: Malachi 4.2

Imagine you’re a Jew living 400 years BC when this was written. It’s been nearly 200 years since your people had anything like freedom or their own country. You live under the oppressive rule of the Persian empire. They’ve allowed you to rebuild your temple, but it’s a shameful effort, and it’s obvious that God is nowhere to be seen. Not even your people take him seriously any more. He promised peace and prosperity, but it looks like he’s abandoned those promises and abandoned you.

And then Malachi says something like this. Even after all that: stick with God and he will stick with you. Morning will come and everything sad will come untrue and then you will dance.

Like a young calf that’s been cooped up all night in the stalls, you’ll frollick in the field; you’ll strech your legs and jump about and eat the dew-drenched grass and squint in the sunshine as you feel it thaw your legs and warm your back.

I wonder if the pun was intended. It only works in English, of course, but you can imagine the Spirit chuckling to himself as he thought about how it would sound when, eighteen centuries later, it would be translated. “The son of righteousness will rise.” More true than Malachi could have imagined.

Not to mention the sublimely mixed metaphors. So the sun, which make things right, is also a bird, whose wings will heal stuff. Which of course, given the pun, is also a guy in a tomb in 400 years’ time, who will do exactly that.

Mixed metaphors were more acceptable back then, and it’s not that strange, really, that the sun should be a bird. They both rise and soar over the landscape, stretching out their arms to envelop it. Healing wings are like rays of sunshine, washing over the countryside as dawn breaks. Everything the rays touch is renewed, filled with the hope of a new day.

The future looked pretty hopeless in Malachi’s day. Three verses later he says that the prophet Elijah will come, and after that God will act. Yeah, right, Malachi. But Elijah did come, wearing his trademark camel hair, and God did act. The son has risen and the sun has risen. A new day has dawned when God will bring righteousness and healing to the world. The long cold night is over and he’s released us from that stall. It’s time to stretch our legs and skip about.