John the Baptist was the Kyrios mentioned in Galatians 1:19

[Ben C. Smith]

Good question, but I think there are actually three source texts in play, not two:

I never caught the connection to Exodus! As far as I'm concerned, combining Exodus and Malachi in Greek offers a satisfactory answer to the question without even requiring Mark to have looked at the Hebrew. The funny Hebrew wording of Malachi was just a red herring.

It actually looks like the Malachi verse is itself referring to Exodus. The "turn/face" parallel does seem kind of strained, but Exodus 23:20-21 has a more natural "to your face, to keep/keep from his face" parallel (which I notice is lost in the Greek) that it looks like Malachi struggled to preserve, even as a kind of vestige.

Thanks. And yes, I agree. The verse in Malachi seems to be interpreting Elijah as the "angel going before you" from Exodus. Another ancient guess was Joshua. Interestingly, the very next verse (Exodus 23.21) has God saying, "My name is in him," and both names: Joshua and Elijah, are theophoric of Yahweh. Joshua = Hoshea + Yahweh, essentially, and Elijah = El + Yahweh.

Elijah seems to be painted in Mosaic colors elsewhere, too, in the Hebrew scriptures. His fight against the prophets of Ba'al is reminiscent of Moses' fight against the worship of the Golden Calf; his building of an altar from 12 stones resembles Moses' building of an altar with 12 pillars; fire comes from heaven to devour a sacrifice for both figures; their experiences on Mount Horeb are similar; and there are rather many other, smaller correspondences discussed in the Jewish literature.