Book of Malachi
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40 free Book of Malachi trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Malachi is the last of the Old Testament prophets in Christian Bibles, and one of the shortest: four brief chapters built as a running argument. God makes a charge, the people answer back with a question, and the reply lands harder than the charge. Along the way the book takes aim at half-hearted worship, careless clergy, broken marriages and stingy giving, then ends by looking ahead to a day of reckoning and a promised return. This quiz works through the book chapter by chapter. The opening questions cover the lines most readers remember, and later rounds go deeper into the wording of individual verses, so it gets hard by the end. A handful of questions step outside the text to ask where the book sits in the Bible, when and by whom it was written, and how the Gospels, the letters and later music picked up its words. It suits Bible study groups, Sunday school classes and anyone reading through the Minor Prophets who wants to check what has stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation that points back to the verse, and the full set can be printed for a group.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which prophet does Malachi 4:5 say God will send before the great and awesome day of the LORD?
Elijah
Elijah never dies in the Bible's telling: a whirlwind carries him off alive in 2 Kings, which left room for the promise of a return.
Q 02Malachi 3:8 accuses the whole nation of robbing God by holding back offerings and what else?
Tithes
Tithes means tenths, the share of the harvest owed to God, and the charge is levelled at the whole nation, not only at its priests.
Q 03Malachi 2:16 is often translated with the LORD, the God of Israel, saying he hates which practice?
Divorce
Divorce is tied in the same verse to violence, which the man who sends his partner away is said to wear like a garment.
Q 04In most Christian Bibles Malachi closes the Old Testament, so which New Testament book comes next?
Matthew
Matthew comes next only in Christian Bibles; the Hebrew Bible orders its books differently and puts Malachi at the end of its Prophets section instead.
Q 05The Gospels identify the forerunner of Malachi 3:1, sent to prepare the way, as which preacher?
John the Baptist
John the Baptist is the one Jesus says the verse was written about, in a speech to the crowds that calls him more than a prophet.
Q 06In Malachi 1, God proves his love for Israel by saying he loved Jacob but hated which brother?
Esau
Esau was the elder twin, born first with Jacob following and holding his heel, yet the prophet says God's favour went to the younger.
Q 07The name Malachi, which may be a title, not a personal name, means what in Hebrew?
My messenger
My messenger is all the Hebrew word says, and because it appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible as a name, some scholars doubt it was the author's own.
Q 08Malachi 3:10 promises that God will open what and pour out blessing without measure?
The windows of heaven
The windows of heaven is the King James phrase for the downpour of Noah's flood too, here turned from a threat into a promise of plenty.
Q 09Malachi 2:3 warns priests that God will spread what from their festival sacrifices on their faces?
Dung
Dung here is the waste of the animals killed at the feasts, and the verse adds that the priests themselves will be carried off with it.
Q 10In Malachi 4:2, the sun of righteousness rises with what in its wings for those who fear God?
Healing
Healing comes on the same day that, one verse earlier, burns like a furnace for the arrogant, so the dawn is good news only for some.
Q 11Malachi's final verse says the promised prophet will turn the hearts of fathers toward whom?
Their children
Their children is half of a two-way mending, since the same verse turns the hearts of the young back toward their fathers as well.
Q 12At which Jewish festival meal is a cup of wine set out for the prophet Malachi says will return?
Passover
Passover seders set out a cup of wine for him, and in many homes the door is opened partway through the night to invite him in.
Q 13Which composer set Malachi 3's refiner's fire passage in an oratorio first performed in Dublin?
Handel
Handel used the passage in Messiah, giving the prophet an aria and a chorus, with words that Charles Jennens compiled mostly from the King James Bible.
Q 21Malachi 1:8 dares priests to try offering their sick and lame sacrifices to which official instead?
Their governor
Their governor is a clue to the date: the title points to the years after the exile, when Judah no longer had a king.
Q 22In Malachi 1:10, God wishes someone would do what to stop useless fires burning on his altar?
Shut the temple doors
Shut the temple doors is the wish, because God says he takes no pleasure in the priests and will accept no offering from their hands.
Q 23In Malachi 1:4, which nation vows to rebuild its ruins, only for God to say he will demolish them?
Edom
Edom is told its territory will be called the Land of Wickedness, and Israel is promised it will watch this happen with its own eyes.
Q 14In Malachi 3:6, what does the LORD say of himself to explain why Jacob's descendants survive?
I do not change
I do not change is given as the reason the nation has not been destroyed, and it leads straight into a plea for the people to return to him.
Q 15In the King James Bible, Malachi ends the Old Testament with a threat to smite the earth with what?
A curse
A curse is the last word in that translation, and when the passage is read in synagogue the verse before it is repeated so the reading does not end there.
Q 16Malachi 4:2 says those who fear God will go out and leap like which animals from the stall?
Calves
Calves let out of the stall are the picture of joy, and the next verse has the same people treading the wicked like ashes underfoot.
Q 17Where does Malachi 3:10 tell Israel to bring its full share, so there may be food in God's house?
The storehouse
The storehouse must be full so there is food in God's house, and the next verse promises in return that the vines and crops will not fail.
Q 18Malachi 3:2 says the coming Lord will be like a refiner's fire and like what else?
A launderer's soap
A launderer's soap is fullers' soap in older Bibles, and both pictures make one point: the day of his coming is a cleansing that few can endure.
Q 19In Malachi 3:10, God invites people to do what to him over the matter of their giving?
Test him
Test him is the challenge, and it comes with a result to check: blessing poured out until there is no room left for it.
Q 20Malachi 2:14 calls God a witness between a faithless man and whom, his companion by covenant?
The wife of his youth
The wife of his youth is the woman he married young and has now betrayed, and the passage says God no longer accepts his offerings because of it.
Q 24Malachi 2 says God made a covenant of life and peace with which ancestor of Israel's priests?
Levi
Levi is held up as the model the priests have abandoned: true instruction was in his mouth, and he turned many away from wrongdoing.
Q 25Malachi 2:13 pictures men covering the LORD's altar with what because their offerings are refused?
Tears
Tears flood the altar along with weeping and groaning, and the prophet says the cause is how the men have treated the women they married.
Q 26Malachi 3:16 says what was written before the LORD about those who feared him and honored his name?
A scroll of remembrance
A scroll of remembrance is drawn up after the God-fearing talk among themselves, and God, listening in, promises to treat them as his treasured possession.
Q 27Malachi 4:1 says all the arrogant and every evildoer will become what on the day that burns?
Stubble
Stubble, the dry stalks left after harvest, catches at once, and the verse says the blaze will leave them neither root nor branch.
Q 28Malachi 4:4 says God gave Moses the law for all Israel at which mountain, often equated with Sinai?
Horeb
Horeb is also where the prophet named in the very next verse once fled, walking forty days from Beersheba to reach it in 1 Kings.
Q 29Which apostle quotes Malachi on Jacob loved and his twin hated when writing about God's choice?
Paul
Paul cites the verse in Romans 9 to argue that God chose between the twins before they were born or had done anything good or bad.
Q 30Malachi dates from after the exile, in the period when Judah was ruled by which empire?
Persian
Persian rule is the setting nearly all scholars agree on, and the abuses the prophet attacks closely match those a returning official met in Jerusalem.