We changed the meaning of Mal 4:2

[Sneekee]

We have always looked upon Malachi 4:2 as a great Messianic Scripture, either pointing to the coming of Jesus, or as implied by a literalist view of verse 1, a day when all nonbelievers will be vaporized and we who remain shall inherit the Earth with Christ. This is made obvious by how personal the passage is:

Malachi 4 KJV
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

Nearly every other literary translation that I have examined says essentially the same thing.

Why wouldn't this be a person? It's obvious! The Scripture plainly says his wings, which in English automatically makes the "Sun of Righteousness" a person. Perfectly simple.

But there's just one problem: The Hebrew text doesn't say that. The text literally says something more like this:

"But to you who fear My Name, the Sun of Righteousness, SHE shall shine upon you with healing in HER wings and you shall come forth as calves from the stall."

Now, we know for a fact that Messiah isn't woman. But as we also know, the Hebrew language has no such word as "it." Every noun has a gender, and possessiveness and conjugations of verbs are all expressed in terms of gender--he, she, his, hers. Thus one might say that this passage could rightly be translated into English "with healing in its wings." But there's still a problem--in Hebrew, "Sun" is masculine! If these verbs and possessive suffixes were in reference to the sun, they would be masculine. Righteousness is feminine. The action pertains to righteousness, not the sun.

We who believe in Jesus have injected a meaning into this translation that simply is not there, because of our opinion on its interpretation. Does a Messianic interpretation apply? Certainly! The whole book screams of Jesus and His return! Investigate the rest of the prophecy, and place this where it needs to go. But the healing pertains to the righteousness that Messiah places within us (or specifically, those who arose from the ashes of the Old Covenant, escaping the judgement of those who rejected Christ and embraced destruction)—it does not in any way pertain to a magical, fleshly rejuvenation where shining Jesus reanimates the corpses of His followers with electromagnetic radiation, just because He’s that cool. There’s nothing like that in there.