Passage
“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh.
“Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh.
Malachi 4:3 And you will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says Yahweh of hosts.
Malachi 4:4 “Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and judgments which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel.
Malachi 4:5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh.
Malachi 4:6 And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land, devoting it to destruction.”
The verse centers on "behold", "going", "send", "elijah", "prophet", "before", "coming", and "great". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "behold" and "going", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.
The nearby context moves from verse 4's "Remember the law of Moses My servant..." into verse 6's "And he will turn the hearts of...", so "behold" and "going" belong inside that flow. In Malachi context, the local focus is covenant faithfulness, priestly corruption, divine justice, and the coming day of the LORD.
A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "behold" and "going" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.