The prophet of the last book of the Christian Old Testament — and possibly not a person at all. The Hebrew Mal'akhi means simply 'my messenger,' and the name occurs nowhere else in the Bible. The Greek Septuagint does not read it as a name, rendering the superscription 'by the hand of HIS messenger,' which would make the book anonymous and its title borrowed from 3:1 ('behold, I send my messenger'). The Aramaic Targum identifies him with EZRA the scribe, an old guess with no support in the text; the Talmud (Megillah 15a) records the debate. Whoever he was, he prophesied in Persian-period Judah — a province with a governor and no king, a rebuilt but shabby temple, and a priesthood going through the motions — and he is the last prophetic voice in the Christian arrangement of the Old Testament before the Gospels. His 3:1 was the verse Mark chose to open his Gospel with. Matthew quotes the identical verse again, later, on JESUS' OWN LIPS rather than the narrator's (11:10) — and his book's very last two verses (3:23-24, Hebrew numbering; English 4:5-6) promise that Elijah will return before the great day, a promise Jesus applies to John directly (11:14).