Malachi 4:6
He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse."
WEB
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
KJV
What Malachi 4:6 means
The verse promises that God will send someone to reconcile parents and children, turning estranged hearts back toward one another so that the coming day of the Lord brings blessing instead of ruin.
This is the final verse of Malachi, and in the Christian arrangement of the Old Testament, the last line before four centuries of prophetic silence. It closes a book that has warned of a coming "day of the Lord," and it does so with a promise: God will first send Elijah, and that messenger's work will be to reconcile families before judgment arrives. The very last words of the Hebrew Scriptures, in this ordering, are about mending broken homes.
Malachi speaks to post-exilic Judah, a community back in the land but worn down. The temple stood again, yet the people cut corners on worship, priests grew careless, marriages fractured, and covenant loyalty frayed. Into that discouragement the prophet insists that renewal is possible and that it begins in the smallest and most stubborn place, the relationship between generations.
The phrase "turn the hearts" rests on the Hebrew verb *shuv*, the same root the prophets use for repentance, for turning back to God. Reconciliation between people and returning to God are the same motion. The closing word rendered "curse" is *ḥerem*, a total ban, complete destruction. Because Hebrew tradition would not let the book end on that word, it repeats the gentler promise about Elijah when the passage is read aloud.