A silence of Jesus
The Four Hundred Silent Years
The long wait before Christ · between Malachi and Matthew
Between Malachi, the last Old Testament prophet, and the coming of Christ, lie roughly four hundred years often called the silent years, with no prophet and no new revealed word. God's people waited in silence, and then, 'when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son' (Galatians 4:4).
The moment
What the silence means
The Old Testament ends, and then nothing. For about four centuries, from the last prophet Malachi to the angel appearing to Zechariah, there is no recorded prophet, no new word from God to his people. Empires rose and fell, generations lived and died waiting for the promised Messiah, and heaven, which had spoken through prophet after prophet for centuries, fell silent. Four hundred years is long enough for hope to wear thin, long enough to wonder if God had forgotten, or was gone.
But the silence was not absence, and it was not idleness. Across those quiet centuries God was arranging the stage: a common language spreading across the world, roads being built that his gospel would one day travel, a longing for deliverance rising to a pitch. And then, precisely 'when the fulness of the time was come,' not a moment early, not a moment late, the silence broke, not with thunder, but with an angel to a frightened girl, and the cry of a newborn in Bethlehem. The longest silence in Scripture ended in the loudest word God ever spoke: his own Son.
Four hundred years of silence were not God forgetting. They were God preparing. The quiet ended in a manger.
The silence was never the whole story
Every silence of Jesus ended in a word, a work, or a resurrection. If God feels silent to you right now, you are not necessarily far from him; you may be in a Saturday before a Sunday. The Living Bread is a quiet place to keep bringing your questions to him, read the Gospels, and pray, even into the quiet.
Jesus Christ is Lord.
Frequently asked questions
- What were the 400 silent years?
- The roughly four centuries between the last Old Testament prophet, Malachi, and the coming of Christ, when there was no recorded prophet or new revealed word from God. God's people waited, and then the silence broke with the birth of Jesus, 'when the fulness of the time was come' (Galatians 4:4).
- Why was God silent for 400 years before Jesus?
- Scripture presents the silence not as absence but as preparation. Across those years God arranged the conditions, language, roads, and longing, for the gospel to spread, and then sent his Son at exactly the right time. God's silences in the Bible are consistently the pause before he acts.