Mateus 11:14

And if ye are willing to receive it, this is Elijah, that is to come.

Basing their confident expectation of the return of Elijah before the advent of the Messiah upon Malachi 4:5,6, the Jews of Christ's day expected a literal return of the natural Elijah and had even tried to shake the faith of the apostles in Jesus' Messiahship because, in their view, Elijah had not yet come. Elijah did actually return and met with Christ on the mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:3); but in this passage, Christ revealed that the true intention of the prophecy was not a literal return of Elijah, but his spiritual return in the person of John the Baptist.

The Pharisees should have been able to see this for themselves, for these reasons: (1) The birth of John the Baptist was announced in the temple to Zacharias, one of the priests, in his regular course of duty, a fact which the Pharisees certainly knew. (2) This annunciation was made by an angel who quoted, almost verbatim, the remarkable words of Malachi's prophecy, applying them, even before he was born, to John the Baptist. (3) John's raiment of camel's hair and the leather thong was designed to identify him with Elijah (see 2 Kings 1:8 and under Matthew 3:4). (4) The annunciator also said, "He shall go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah" (Luke 1:17). Elijah actually came, therefore, in both ways: (1) literally on the mount of Transfiguration, and (2) spiritually in the person of John the Baptist. This did not prevent the Pharisees, however, from trying to subvert the Lord's apostles by the allegation of their own biased views on the subject (Matthew 17:10). The scribes had one thing going for them in this attempted subversion in that John himself had said that he was not "that Elijah" (John 1:21). John's statement, however, in answer to their question, was given in the literal sense in which they asked it. He was not, in truth, that Elijah who had been translated. That the scribes' objections on such grounds had some weight with the apostles is evident in the pains Jesus took to answer it and remove it.