The Superscription (1:1):

1:1 The superscription, or extended title, of the book of Malachi has two parts. First, it is called an oracle (massaʾ). This term also heads the books of Nahum (1:1) and Habakkuk (1:1), but elsewhere it appears in the headings of shorter units of speech, such as the oracles against the nations in Isaiah 13–23 and Zechariah 9–11 and 12–14. The word does not denote any particular type of content or literary genre. The same word also means “burden,” communicating the sense of the prophet’s responsibility to deliver the Lord’s words.

The book is also titled The word of the LORD to Israel, the audience, through Malachi, the prophetic messenger. Although Malachi’s audience was a community of Jews living in and around Jerusalem in the province of the Persian Empire called…