Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Malachi 1:2

I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? [Was] not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,

2. I have loved you ] I have loved you with an everlasting (Jer 31:3) and unchangeable (Rom 11:29) love. This is the keynote of all that follows. On this rests Jehovah’s claim to the filial honour and reverential fear which had been withheld from Him (Mal 1:6); on this the patient forbearance of the present (Mal 3:6), and the bright promise of the future (Mal 4:2). This is the light that casts the dark shadow of the people’s ingratitude across the prophet’s page, and that shines through and beyond the darkness, unquenched and unquenchable.

Wherein ] These short pointed questions are a characteristic of Malachi’s style, and lend great force to it. See Introd. p. 11.

I loved Jacob ] The proof of this is contained in the implied contrast which follows, Comp. Gen 25:23; Rom 9:10-13.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Ch. Mal 1:2-5. Introductory Appeal

These verses form an exordium to the whole Book. The ungrateful disposition of the people and the unchanging love of God are in view in all that follows.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

I have loved you, saith the Lord – What a volume of Gods relations to us in two simple words, I-have-loved you . So would not God speak, unless He still loved. I have loved and do love you, is the force of the words. When? And since when? In all eternity God loved; in all our past, God loved. Tokens of His love, past or present, in good or seeming ill, are but an effluence of that everlasting love. He, the Unchangeable, ever loved, as the apostle of love says 1Jo 4:19, we love Him, because He first loved us. The deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, the making them His Rom 9:4, special people, the adoption, the covenant, the giving of the Law, the service of God and His promises, all the several mercies involved in these, the feeding with manna, the deliverance from their enemies whenever they returned to Him, their recent restoration, the gift of the prophets, were so many single pulses of Gods everlasting love, uniform in itself, manifold in its manifestations. But it is more than a declaration of His everlasting love. I have loved you; God would say; with a special love, a more than ordinary love, with greater tokens of love, than to others. So God brings to the penitent soul the thought of its ingratitude: I have loved you: I, you. And ye have said, Wherein hast Thou loved us? It is a characteristic of Malachi to exhibit in all its nakedness mans ingratitude. This is the one voice of all peoples complaints, ignoring all Gods past and present mercies, in view of the one thing which He withholds, though they dare not put it into words: Wherein hast Thou loved us Psa 78:11? Within a while they forgot His works, and the wonders that He had showed them Psa 106:13 : they made haste, they forgot His works.

Was not Esau Jacobs brother! saith the Lord: and I loved Jacob, and Esau have I hated. While they were yet in their mothers womb, before any good or evil deserts of either, God said to their mother Gen 25:23, The older shall serve the younger. The hatred was not a proper and formed hatred (for God could not hate Esau before he sinned) but only a lesser love, which, in comparison to the great love for Jacob, seemed as if it were not love. So he says Gen 29:31. The Lord saw that Leah was hated; where Jacobs neglect of Leah, and lesser love than for Rachel, is called hatred; yet Jacob did not literally hate Leah, whom he loved and cared for as his wife. This greater love was shown in preferring the Jews to the Edomites, giving to the Jews His law, Church, temple, prophets, and subjecting Edom to them; and especially in the recent deliverance He does not speak directly of predestination, but of pre-election, to temporal goods. God gave both nations alike over to the Chaldees for the punishment of their sins; but the Jews He brought back, Edom He left unrestored.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Mal 1:2-3

was not Esau Jacobs brother?

saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

Jacob

From the fate of the hunter Esau, we learn the peril of lifes low ideals; the power of lifes crucial moments; the continuity of lifes irrevocable retributions; the anguish of lifes fruitless tears. The fortunes of Jacob are indeed too eventful, his character too complex, to allow any attempt at exhaustive analysis. But we may learn something which will aid us in our daily difficult endeavour to choose the good and not the evil, and to give our hearts and lives to God.

1. I loved Jacob, and hated Esau. Does not our first instinct almost rebel against this appeal? Do we not incline to prefer the elder, for all his frank earthliness, to the younger, with his mean servilities and subterranean shifts? Yet there the sentence stands; and all Scripture, and the long centuries of human history, set the seal of confirmation to the sacred verdict. The Aryan has prevailed in war and civilisation, but in all other things the Semite conquered his conqueror. More than any other nation, the Hebrew realised the intense grandeur and infinite supremacy of the moral law, and saw that the greatest and most awful aim for human life is not culture, but conduct. Let us see why Jacob, who seems to concentrate all the worst faults which we associate with the lowest type of Jewish character, is yet preferred to his more gallant and manly brother.

2. Let me reject at once two solutions of it. Some would settle it on the broad grounds of predestinated election and arbitrary decree, and would confuse our understanding with reasonings high of freedom and foreknowledge, will and fate. Others think it sufficient to silence us with the triumphant assertion, that we are but clay in the hands of the potter, that God may treat us as He wills. Others, again, argue that we must not judge Jacobs sins as though they were sinful, because Scripture records them without distinct condemnation, and because he may have been acting under Divine directions. I do not only reject all such solutions, I declare the first to be blasphemous, and the second deplorable. God is no arbitrary tyrant, but a merciful, loving, righteous Father. And the moral law, in its inviolable majesty, infinitely transcends the wretched idols of the theatre which men have called theories of inspiration. If God chose Jacob, it was because the true nature of Jacob was intrinsically worthy of that choice.

3. According to the Hebrew idiom, the strong antithesis of the text connotes less than it asserts, being but a more intense way of saying that, in comparison with his brother, Esau neither deserved nor received the approval of God. A second abatement–though not removal–of the difficulty lies in the fact that Jacob seems worse to us because his faults were essentially those of an Oriental, and are therefore peculiarly offensive to the heart of a true Englishman. And long may falseness and meanness be utterly abhorrent to our Northern character! But our special national scorn of Jacobs deceitfulness does not make it one whit more contemptible than Esaus animalism.

4. Herein lies the first great moral of these two lives. That which is holy is not to be cast to the dogs. Esau lost the blessing because he reeked not of it. Jacob gained it, because his whole soul yearned for its loftiest hopes. Men, on the whole, do win what they will: they do achieve that at which they resolutely aim. This is perfectly true in worldly things. But there is one ambition which is worth the absorbing devotion of a human being. It is the ambition of holiness, the treasure of eternity, the object of seeing the face of God.

5. What a difference is made by different ideals. Each of these twin-brothers lost and gained much more beside their immediate wish. Esau the rough becomes by scornful memorial Edom the red; Jacob the supplanter becomes Israel the prince with God.

6. Another lesson is, that however lofty be our aims, we must not, in order to hasten them, deflect, were it but one hairs breadth, from the path of perfect rectitude. Jacob inherited the blessing because his faith yearned for its spiritual promises; but because he compassed its immediate achievement by a crime, therefore, with the blessing there fell on him a retribution so heavy, so unremitted, as made his look back over life a bitter pain.

7. In spite of all which stained his life, Jacob was still a patriarch and a saint. You must not judge of him as a whole by the instances, so faithfully recorded, of his guilty plottings. In two main respects Jacob was certainly greater, better, and worthier than Esau. The sins of Esaus life were, so to speak, the very narrative; the sins of Jacobs life were but the episode of his career.

8. There is this further difference. There is not the faintest sign that Esau ever repented of his sin. But in Jacobs life there was many a moment when he would have forfeited the very blessing to purchase back the innocence by which it had been gained. Learn lastly, that the continuity of godliness is the choicest gift of all, and innocence is better than repentance. And we see in the case of Esaus red pottage and ravenous hour, that one failure under sudden temptation may be alike the ruin and epitome of a mans career, because the impulse of the hour is nothing less than the momentum of the life. (Dean Farrar.)

The sovereignty of God in relation to mans secular condition of life

1. Some men on this earth seem to be more favoured by providence than others, yet they are often unconscious of it. This is true of individuals, and of nations.

2. This difference in the privileges of men is to be ascribed to the sovereignty of God. That sovereignty does not imply either partiality on His part, or irresponsibleness on mans part.

3. Those whom the sovereignty of God does not favour are left in a secularly unenviable condition. They will–

(1) Have their possessions destroyed.

(2) Their efforts frustrated.

(3) Their enemies prospering. (Homilist.)

Gods love to His Church

The first fault reproved in this people is their ingratitude, and not observing or esteeming of Gods love toward them, which therefore He demonstrates, from His choosing of Jacob their father, and preferring him to Esau the elder brother; not only in the matter of election to eternal life, but in that God had chosen Jacob to be the root out of whom the blessed seed should come, and the Church propagated in his posterity; and accordingly (as an eternal evidence of this rejection of Esau and his posterity) the Lord had given to him but a hilly, barren country, and had now cast them out of it, and laid it desolate, as a habitation for wild beasts; whereas the seed of Jacob had gotten a fruitful land, and were now restored to it again after their captivity. Doctrine–

1. The chief and principal study of the visible Church, and the godly in it, ought to be the love of God manifested toward them, as being that which God will not allow to be suspected, and which ought to oblige them to Him; that which will be the sad ground of a process when it is forgotten and undervalued; and that which, being looked on when God reproves, will encourage and strengthen to take with it, and make use of it. Therefore doth He begin this doctrine, and the sad challenges with this, I have loved you, saith the Lord, that is, all of you in general have tasted of respects suitable, and beseeming My Bride and the visible Church; and particularly the elect among you have tasted of My special love.

2. Gods love to His Church is often met with great ingratitude, in not being seen and acknowledged as becomes, especially under cross dispensations, in undervaluing the effects of it, when they fit not our mould, and in deeds denying it, while thoughts of it do not beget love to Him again; for yet ye say, wherein hast Thou loved us?

3. Election unto eternal life is a sufficient testimony of Gods love, to be acknowledged and commended, although all things else went cross, and seemed to speak disrespect: for in this–The Lord loved Jacob, and hated Esau, as is exponed (Rom 9:13); and this is sufficient to answer their quarrelling.

4. To be chosen and selected to be the Lords Church and people, speaks so much respect from God unto a nation, as may counterbalance many other hard lots.

5. The Lords love will not be so clearly seen and acknowledged, when we compare some dispensations with the privileges bestowed upon us, but when we consider our own original, and wherein we are dealt favourably with beyond others, as good as ourselves, if not better: for however Israel, looking on their many privileges, could not see Gods love in their low condition, yet it would better appear when they looked back that Esau was Jacobs brother (and the elder too), yet I loved Jacob and hated Esau.

6. The grace of God is not dispensed differently in the world, upon any difference in the point of worth among men: but grace itself makes the difference in choosing out one, and leaving another, as good in himself, to his own ways, according to His pleasure, who hath mercy on whom He will have mercy, for Jacob and Esau are equal, till love makes the difference.

7. However, no man can know love or hatred by outward dispensations, simply considered in themselves, yet afflictions are to wicked men real testimonies of Gods displeasure, and Gods people, being at peace with Him, may look on external mercies as speaking special love; for Esaus hilly land, and the desolation thereof, speaks hating of Esau, not only as rejection from Canaan was a type of the rejection from the Church and heaven, but as it was a judgment inflicted on a nation unreconciled, whereas (at least) the godly in Israel might look otherwise on their land and restitution. (George Hutcheson.)

The love of God undiscerned

God is love. This is true even when He afflicts, for whom He loveth He chasteneth. We must not therefore infer that He does not love because He afflicts. The gardener prunes the grape which he values, not the thistle which he hates. The fruit-tree that is highly prized is trimmed that it may bear more fruit: the forest tree that is designed for the flames is left to grow in unpruned luxuriance. God still addresses us with the same touching appeal, I have loved you, and He still meets the same hard, ungrateful response, Wherein hast Thou loved us? Men suffer many forms of outward evil and inward grief because of their sins; but instead of referring them to the proper cause–their own wickedness–they impiously accuse God in their hearts of being indifferent to their welfare. They refuse to look at the tokens of love strewed all along their history, and dwell in obstinate ingratitude on the evils that their own sin has entailed upon them. And yet that history is crowded with such tokens. (T.V. Moore, D. D.)

A remonstrance

I. The prophets reproof. He is, in the name of God, taxing the people with ingratitude. There is no sin more hateful to God than the sin of ingratitude. Another charge is that of neglect. They offer a polluted sacrifice. All they want is a cheap religion. They are willing to make some offering, but not the best offering. They would be glad to do something for God, but it must cost them nothing.

II. The threat. There should, in consequence, be the rejection of their prayers, the rejection of their persons, and the rejection of their services, and a transfer of their privileges to others.

III. Practical lessons.

1. Gods service is a real service, not a nominal service. Formality is not enough.

2. It is a sure sign of want of grace in your hearts, when Gods service is a weariness.

3. Confidence in God is a necessary part of acceptable prayer and acceptable service. (Montagu Villiers, M. A.)

Gods declared hatred of Edom

The two nations, Israel and Edom, were utterly opposed in genius and character. Edom was a people of as unspiritual and self-sufficient a temper as ever cursed any of Gods human creatures. Like their ancestor they were profane, without repentance, humility, or ideals, and almost without religion. Apart, therefore, from the long history of war between the two peoples, it was a true instinct which led Israel to regard their brother as representative of that heathendom against which they had to realise their destiny in the world as Gods own nation. In choosing the contrast of Edoms fate to illustrate Gods love for Israel, Malachi was not only choosing what would appeal to the passions of his contemporaries, but what is the most striking and constant antithesis in the whole history of Israel: the absolutely diverse genius and destiny of these two Semitic nations who were nearest neighbours, and, according to their traditions, twin brethren after the flesh. If we keep this in mind we shall understand Pauls use of the antithesis in the passage in which he clenches it by a quotation from Malachi: as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. In these words the doctrine of the Divine election of individuals appears to be expressed as absolutely as possible. But it would be unfair to read the passage except in the light of Israel s history. In the Old Testament it is a matter of fact that the doctrine of the Divine preference of Israel to Esau appeared only after the respective characters of the nations were manifested in history, and that it grew more defined and absolute only as history discovered more of the fundamental contrast between the two in genius and destiny. In the Old Testament, therefore, the doctrine is the result, not of an arbitrary belief in Gods bare flat, but of historical experience; although, of course, the distinction which experience proves is traced back, with everything else of good or evil that happens, to the sovereign will and purpose of God. Nor let us forget that the Old Testament doctrine of election is of election to service only. That is to say, the Divine intention in electing covers not the elect individual or nation only, but the whole world, and its need of God and His truth. The event to which Malachi appeals as evidence for Gods rejection of Edom is the deso lation of the latters ancient heritage, and the abandonment to the jackals of the desert. (Geo. Adam Smith, D. D.)

Election

Why should God say, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated? Why should He choose one nation of the earth to favour beyond all others? Is not that an arbitrary and unfair exercise of His will? Now, no doubt that is the case if we only put on election the interpretation common among the later Jews, and the one most familiar to ourselves. We need to correct it by the larger ideas which St. Paul suggests to us, and which are, at least, latent in the Old Testament. For one thing, let us remember that Gods purposes are wider than anything we can conceive of, and that we have to make allowances for that, whenever we seek to understand or criticise His providential dealings. As St. Paul tried to teach the Christians in Rome, God chose Israel not for the sake of Israel alone, but for the sake of the world. To him this explains at once the apparent arbitrariness of the choice, and the narrowness of the groove within which Israel had moved. God elected and trained the people for a certain special end. It was not that by nature they were specially fitted for that end, but rather that they were made to fit it by His grace. Here is one Semitic people out of many showing a peculiar temperament and genius for religion, and subjected to influences all of which tended to emphasise its peculiarities and fit it for its destiny among mankind. And its history can only be read aright in the light of some larger and even world-wide scheme, which it was being prepared to fulfil. But, of course, it is not only in Israel, or, indeed, in any of the nations of the world, that this apparent arbitrariness of Providence is to be seen. It runs through human life. Take the story of Jacob and Esau, as only referring to the men themselves, and we find that it is one that is constantly repeated in our experience. The inequality of human destinies is one of the stock themes of the pessimist; one man is chosen and another rejected, and it is certainly not of works but of Him that calleth. One of the most disconcerting things in all our experience is the apparent failure of goodness to secure its reward. Sometimes it is the most unworthy who is selected for the crown, while the saint is passed by or made to stoop under the cross. Then men enter for the race of life strangely and even unfairly handicapped. One man inherits a physique and a nervous system which means a happy temperament and unusual strength of character; another is the victim of congenital weakness, which dooms him to much misery and possibly to sin. One man is elected to conditions altogether favourable to the development of his higher self, while anothers circumstances tend constantly to drag him down. We have all experienced at times the baffling and tragic sense of wrong to which such thoughts as these give rise. But do we remember that most of our perplexity is due to the fact that we confine our views to the earthly and material side of life? We have to take much else into account before we can hope to face the prospect which Gods providence presents with anything like equanimity. His purposes are surely not confined in their scope either to the lives of individuals or to this world in which we now live in the flesh. Nor is the supreme object of His dealing with us the happiness of many or of most. If we are to trust all the indications of natural and revealed religion, Gods purpose is supremely ethical In His eyes goodness is as far above happiness as heaven is above the earth; and that even happiness should be sacrificed that high moral ends may be secured is something which should cause us no concern. Then, again, if we have read our Bibles to any purpose, or even studied intelligently the average experiences of men, we shall know that no view of life which leaves out of account its spiritual aspect can be either just or sane. We cannot, gaze as we will, see the end from the beginning. Events that seem most contrary and cruel in our experience have in them a soul of goodness for those that have eyes to see. The wicked may flourish like a green bay-tree, but he perishes like the green hay-tree too when his time comes; and the righteous may obtain no reward but that of a good conscience, yet in the end he is received into everlasting habitations. There is more being done all round us to redress the balance than we have any conception of, hut it is not until we come to look at life from a higher standpoint than that of mere earthly interests that we can see it. The work of Providence in a mans life is not finished when the man himself has passed away; sometimes it is only just begun. But we need to bear in mind that Gods election of a man or of a race is not always, as we think, an election to favour or privilege alone. Under Providence special privilege means special responsibilities, and election is election to service. Men and nations alike are instruments in Gods hands, and He makes them serve His ends. Where there is a special endowment or fitness, there is a special function to be fulfilled, and this function is one in which many have an interest outside the individual. We must learn to judge therefore in the light, not only of the special endowment given, but of the special ends to be served by it. The history of Israel, for example, were almost inexplicable apart from its results on the religion of mankind. The key to it is to be found not in Moses or the prophets or the rabbis, but in Christ. The people had been fitted for a particular work, and it was their fitness which constituted their election. This helps to explain the strange one-sidedness there is in national life. It is a question of selection as well as election, the power or faculty most regularly employed growing at the expense of the rest. And to the religious mind each nation alike is an instrument of Providence, and in them all is to be seen something of the grand purpose of God working itself out slowly but surely, through difficulty and apparent defeat, towards that best which is yet to be. But we need to come a little closer to the subject yet. All that has been said may be quite true, but it does not dispose of the difficulty in our text. There may be a great deal to be said for the doctrine of election in the abstract; but when it is couched ill such language as this, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated, it is difficult to avoid a sense of undue favouritism, and the thought that God is, after all, a respecter of persons, in the sense of having personal preferences. And yet we have only to look behind the words to see that the conclusion is unwarranted. As it is, we see behind the words a law or principle which we must not ignore. If we may argue from human analogies, it is but natural and just to say that God loves those who love Him. One of the things we learn most surely flora Bible history is that God does not look for moral perfection in those to whom He grants His favours, and whom He chooses to do His work. Jacob was far from being a perfect character; but with all his faults he had the supreme virtue of religion, he had learned to take God into account in his actions, and to work and think with reference to His will. Esau, on the other hand, is the type of those who are without God in the world–profane persons, who are blind to their highest interests, and live wilfully on the lower side of life. What wonder that from such Gods face should be turned away! God loves those who love Him, and the shadow cast by His love is His hatred of all that would lead men away from Him and keep them in the dark of selfishness and sin. As has been said already, we have to reckon with mans will as well as Gods. He compels no man to be either righteous or sinful, and the fact that we are free adds a brighter halo to our goodness, and deepens immeasurably the stain of our guilt. We are always working either with God or against Him, and this fact, while it adds a new hope and assurance to our efforts after righteousness, makes the evil that is in us point only to despair. Judged by the only standards we can use, we have to lay the blame on man and not on God for whatever is dark and terrible in the words, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. A subject like this brings vividly home to us the supreme needs of the religious man–faith in God and co-operation with Him. It is often cruelly enough revealed to us that in this life–in spite of the light of reason–we are as those that grope in the dark. After all, the world is only in the making as yet, and we have to learn to judge not by the intricate mass of scaffolding, rubbish heaps, and half-built walls that we see, but by the Architects plans. In spite of all the perplexities and inconsistencies which puzzle us here, we have to learn to look at the design which runs through them all, and the purpose which by them is being slowly evolved. Sometimes all we can do is to trust and wait, to be sure that there is a secret to this mystery and a solution to that riddle, but that we have not yet eyes to see them; and we must remember, too, that faith will never sit with folded hands doing nothing, but that true faith always works. The greater the trouble and the difficulty the more need there is for work, and the effort to do Gods will as far as it is known is the only means by which that will can be more clearly understood. (W. B. Selbie, M. A.)

The dragons of the wilderness.

The dragons

Ancient history is full of legends concerning the deadly power of dragons. The Bible has many references to these imaginary monsters. In Church history they are represented as winged crocodiles, and regarded as emblems of sin and the devil. There are spiritual dragons now. Consider–

I. These dragons. They are besetting sins, turbulent passions, sinful customs, fascinating vices, evil spirits, etc.

II. Where they dwell. The wilderness. The world, though beautiful, is yet cursed by sin. To the saintly heart it is often a wilderness–

1. For its loneliness.

2. For its barrenness.

3. For its dangers.

Dragons lurk there. They may pour forth their fire and fury upon us there at any time. Application. Be watchful. Seek the help of the great dragon-slayer–Christ. In all legends of the slaying of dragons it was one hero that did it–Hercules, Perseus, Siegfried, St. Michael, St. George–these slew the dragons, and delivered the people. (W. Osborne Lilley.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 2. Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?] Have I not shown a greater partiality to the Israelites than I have to the Edomites?

I loved Jacob] My love to Jacob has been proved by giving him greater privileges and a better inheritance than what I have given to Esau.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

I have loved you: God asserts his ancient love, that which he had in many generations past showed: I have, time out of mind, yea, from before the birth of your father Jacob, and in truth before Abraham was, designed more kindness to you than to others, and from the time of Jacob I have undeniably showed it. And this deserved, what I have not found from you, a love corresponding somewhat to mine; but instead of such love, some are ready to say they saw no such thing, or to dispute perversely in what it appeared.

You; both personally considered and relatively, as you were in your fathers and progenitors.

Saith the Lord: their ingratitude extorts this solemn protestation, they should readily have owned, and not put God to avow the love he had shown them.

Yet ye say; or, and you do querulously and with ignorance enough object to me, and put me on it to vindicate my love, and expose your ingratitude.

Wherein? or, for what? is there not some cause? did not Abrahams love deserve a love for us his posterity? Most perverse pride!

Wherein hast thou loved us? who have been captives and groaned under the miseries of it all our days till of late; is this love to us? Since they are supposed thus to object, by cutting questions, God will give them answer:

Was not Esau Jacobs brother? had they not one and the same grandfather? was not Abraham as near to one as to the other? did not one father beget them, and one mother bear them? did they not lie together in the same womb? was there not as much of Abraham and Isaac in Esau as in Jacob? Or what of nature, consanguinity, and outward privilege was there in one more than in the other, whatever that was, Esau might claim, for he was the eldest. In Esaus person his progeny is included, as appears next verse.

Yet I loved Jacob; the younger brother, and your father, O unthankful Jews! I preferred him to the birthright, and this of free love, before any merit could be dreamed of; I did love his person, and have loved his posterity, with an unparalleled love, and showed it to all.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

2. I have loved youaboveother men; nay, even above the other descendants of Abraham andIsaac. Such gratuitous love on My part called for love on yours. Butthe return ye make is sin and dishonor to Me. This which is to besupplied is left unexpressed, sorrow as it were breaking off thesentence [MENOCHIUS],(Deu 7:8; Hos 11:1).

Wherein hast thou lovedus?In painful contrast to the tearful tenderness of God’s lovestands their insolent challenge. The root of their sin wasinsensibility to God’s love, and to their own wickedness.Having had prosperity taken from them, they imply they have no tokensof God’s love; they look at what God had taken, not at what God hadleft. God’s love is often least acknowledged where it is mostmanifested. We must not infer God does not love us because Heafflicts us. Men, instead of referring their sufferings to theirproper cause, their own sin, impiously accuse God of indifference totheir welfare [MOORE].Thus Mal 1:1-4 form a fitintroduction to the whole prophecy.

Was not Esau Jacob’sbrother?and so, as far as dignity went, as much entitled toGod’s favor as Jacob. My adoption of Jacob, therefore, was altogetherby gratuitous favor (Ro 9:13).So God has passed by our elder brethren, the angels who kept nottheir first estate, and yet He has provided salvation for man. Theperpetual rejection of the fallen angels, like the perpetualdesolations of Edom, attests God’s severity to the lost, and goodnessto those gratuitously saved. The sovereign eternal purpose of God isthe only ground on which He bestows on one favors withheld fromanother. There are difficulties in referring salvation to theelection of God, there are greater in referring it to the election ofman [MOORE]. Jehovahillustrates His condescension and patience in arguing the case withthem.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

I have loved you, saith the Lord,…. Which appeared of old, by choosing them, above all people upon the face of the earth, to be his special and peculiar people; by bestowing peculiar favours and blessings upon them, both temporal and spiritual; by continuing them a people, through a variety of changes and revolutions; and by lately bringing them out of the Babylonish captivity, restoring their land unto them, and the pure worship of God among them:

Yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? the Targum renders it, “and if ye should say”; and so Kimchi and Ben Melech; which intimates, that though they might not have expressed themselves in so many words, yet they seemed disposed to say so; they thought it, if they said it not; and therefore, to prevent such an objection, as well as to show their ingratitude, it is put in this form; and an instance of his love is demanded, which is very surprising, when they had so many; and shows great stupidity and unthankfulness. Abarbinel renders the words, “wherefore hast thou loved us?” that is, is there not a reason to be given for loving us? which he supposes was the love of Abraham to God; and therefore his love to them was not free, but by way of reward to Abraham’s love; and consequently they were not so much obliged to him for it: to which is replied,

[was] not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord; Jacob and Esau were brethren; they had one and the same father and mother, Isaac and Rebekah, and equally descended from Abraham; so that if one was loved for the sake of Abraham, as suggested, according to Abarbinel’s sense, the other had an equal claim to it; they lay in the same womb together; they were twins; and if any could be thought to have the advantage by birth, Esau had it, being born first: but before they were born, and before they had done good or evil, what is afterwards said of them was in the heart of God towards them; which shows that the love of God to his people is free, sovereign, and distinguishing, Ge 25:23:

yet I loved Jacob; personally considered; not only by giving him the temporal birthright and blessing, and the advantages arising from thence; but by choosing him to everlasting life, bestowing his grace upon him, revealing Christ unto him, and making him a partaker of eternal happiness; and also his posterity, as appears by the above instances mentioned; and likewise mystically considered, for all the elect, redeemed, and called, go by the name of Jacob and Israel in Scripture frequently; for what is here said of Jacob is true of all the individuals of God’s people; for which purpose the apostle refers to this passage in Ro 9:13, to prove the sovereignty and distinction of the love of God in their election and salvation: and this is indeed a clear proof that the love of God to his people is entirely free from all motives and conditions in them, being before they had done either good or evil; and therefore did not arise from any goodness in them, nor from their love to him nor from any good works done by them: the choice of persons to everlasting life, the fruit of this love, is denied to be of works, and is ascribed to grace; it passed before any were wrought; and what are done by the best of men are the effects of it; and the persons chosen or passed by were in an equal state when both were done; which appears by this instance: and by which also it is manifest that the love of God to men is distinguishing; it is not alike to all men; there is a peculiar favour he bears to own people; which is evident by the choice of some, and not others; by the redemption of them out of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation; by the effectual calling of them out of the world; by the application of the blessings of grace unto them; and by bestowing eternal life on them: and it may be further observed, that the objects of God’s love have not always the knowledge of it; indeed they have no knowledge of it before conversion, which is the open time of love; and after conversion they have not always distinct and appropriating views of it; only when God is pleased to come and manifest it unto them.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

I am constrained by the context to read all these verses; for the sense cannot be otherwise completed. God expostulates here with a perverse and an ungrateful people, because they doubly deprived him of his right; for he was neither loved nor feared, though he had a just claim to the name and honor of a master as well as that of a father. As then the Jews paid him no reverence, he complains that he was defrauded of his right as a father; and as they entertained no fear for him, he condemns them for not acknowledging, him as their Lord and Master, by submitting to his authority. But before he comes to this, he shows that he was both their Lord and Father; and he declares that he was especially their Father, because he loved them.

We now then understand the Prophet’s intention; for God designed to show here how debased the Jews were, as they acknowledged him neither as their Father nor as their Lord; they neither reverenced him as their Lord, nor regarded him as their Father. But he brings forward, as I have already said, his benefits, by which he proves that he deserved the honor due to a father and to a master.

Hence he says, I loved you. God might indeed have made an appeal to the Jews on another ground; for had he not manifested his love to them, they were yet bound to submit to his authority. He does not indeed speak here of God’s love generally, such as he shows to the whole human race; but he condemns the Jews, inasmuch as having been freely adopted by God as his holy and peculiar people, they yet forgot this honor, and despised the Giver, and regarded what he taught them as nothing. When therefore God says that he loved the Jews, we see that his object was to convict them of ingratitude for having despised the singular favor bestowed on them alone, rather than to press that authority which he possesses over all mankind in common. God then might have thus addressed them, “I have created you, and have been to you a kind Father; by my favor does the sun shine on you daily, and the earth produces its fruit; in a word, I hold you bound to me by innumerable benefits.” God might have thus spoken to them; but as I have said, his object was to bring forward the gratuitous adoption with which he had favored the seed of Abraham; for it was a less endurable impiety, that they had despised so incomparable a favor; inasmuch as God had preferred them to all other nations, not on the ground of merit or of any worthiness, but because it had so pleased him. This then is the reason why the Prophet begins by saying, that the Jews had been loved by God: for they had made the worst return for this gratuitous favor, when they despised his doctrine. This is the first thing.

There is further no doubt but that he indirectly condemns their ingratitude when he says, In what hast thou loved us? The words indeed may be thus explained — “If ye say, or if ye ask, In what have I loved you? Even in this — I preferred your father Jacob to Esau, when yet they were twin brothers.” But we shall see in other places that the Jews by evasions malignantly obscured God’s favor, and that this wickedness is in similar words condemned. Hence the Prophet, seeing that he had to do with debased men, who would not easily yield to God nor acknowledge his kindness by a free and ingenuous confession, introduces them here as speaking thus clamorously, “He! when hast thou loved us! in what! the tokens of thy love do not appear.” He answers in God’s name, Esau was Jacob’s brother; and yet I loved Jacob, and Esau I hated. ”

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

GOD LOVES ISRAEL . . . Mal. 1:2-5

RV . . . I have loved you, saith Jehovah. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacobs brother? saith Jehovah: yet I loved Jacob; but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are beaten down but we will return and build the waste places; thus saith Jehovah of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and men shall call them The border of wickedness, and The people against whom Jehovah hath indignation for ever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, Jehovah be magnified beyond the border of Israel.
LXX . . . I have loved you, saith the Lord. And ye said, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacobs brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob, and hated Esau, and laid waste his borders, and made his heritage as dwellings of the wilderness? Because one will say, Idumea has been Overthrown, but let us return and rebuild the desolate places; thus saith the Lord Almighty, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall be called The borders of wickedness, and, The people against whom the Lord has set himself for ever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The Lord has been magnified upon the borders of Israel.

COMMENTS

In these verses Israel is charged with being insensible to Gods love. To overcome this insensitivity, He says emphatically, I have loved you. It is not the first time He has declared His love. (cp. Jer. 31:3-4) All of His dealings, from the initial establishment of the covenant, have been the result of this love.

In answer to the anticipated question Wherein hast thou loved us? Jehovah answers specifically in terms of His preference for Jacob over Esau.
The Jews were prone to think of themselves as superior to other races. Here God reminds them He has shown His love to them, not just in preference to other races, but in preference over those of their own race. Jacob and Esau were twin brothers, yet God established His covenant with Jacob, father of all Israelites, rather than with Esau, father of the Edomites. I loved Jacob . . . I hated Esau.

God does not, of course, unequivocally, hate any man or race of men. (cf. Act. 10:34-35) This statement must be kept in context. It is in contrast to His great love for His covenant people that His love for others seems hatred by comparison. Much in the same vein, Jesus demands that we hate father, mother, brother, sister, wife and even self. (Luk. 14:26) We know He does not want us to literally hate anyone. (cp. Mat. 5:43-48) Neither does He hate anyone, excepting in comparison to His love for His chosen people.

The evidence of His preferential love for Israel over Edom is pictured in contrast of Edoms homeland to the land flowing with milk and honey into which He led His people. Edom lies southeast of the Dead Sea in the Arabian desert. Its capital, Petra, was cut out of solid red limestone cliffs. The surrounding area is desolate and barren.

Paul set upon the contrast between Jacob and Esau in establishing Gods love for His covenant people. (Rom. 9:13) The apostle points out the contrast is not between two nations per se, for they are not all Israel that are of Israel. (Rom. 9:6) The real contrast is between the covenant people and the non-covenant people for this is a word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. (Rom. 9:9-13)

Since it was His promise to redeem all mankind that was the heart of His covenant, His preferential treatment of Israel is ultimately evidence of His love even for Edom!
Nevertheless, in the years before Christ, He could point with justification to His treatment of His people in comparison to others as evidence of His love.

Chapter XLIVQuestions

Denunciation of Unfaithfulness

1.

The prophet ______________ is considered by Jewish tradition as the seal of prophecy.

2.

The traditional Christian view is that Malachi is the bridge between the

_____________ and the _______________.

3.

Malachi probably wrote about _______________.B.C.

4.

Malachi means _______________.

5.

Malachis prophecy coincides with the _______________ period of Daniels seventy weeks.

6.

Malachis central concern is _______________.

7.

Discuss the corruption of the priesthood as addressed by Malachi and show its effect upon the people.

8.

Why does Malachi immediately precede the New Testament in our English versions of the Bible?

9.

Outline the book of Malachi.

10.

The next word from Jehovah to His people after Malachi would be spoken by _______________.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(2) I have lovedi.e., shown abundant proof of my love. The prophet goes on to show how God has shown so great proofs of His love.

Was not Esau Jacobs brother?And would not one suppose from that fact they would have similar privileges? But not so.

I loved Jacob, (3) and I hated Esau . . .The ethical reason for Gods love of Jacob and hatred of Esau is not touched upon here, nor is it necessary to the argument. It is Gods love for Israel that the prophet wishes to dwell on, and he mentions the hatred towards Esau merely for the sake of a strong contrast. The nations, Israel and Edom, are here referred to, not the individuals, Jacob and Esau. This passage receives a graphic illustration from the words of Psa. 137:7, composed after the return from the captivity: Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof. (On St. Pauls application of the words of Malachi, see Notes on Rom. 9:13.)

Laid his mountains . . . waste . . .It is a somewhat disputed point to what historical fact this refers. But, on the whole, we may reasonably infer from Jer. 49:7; Jer. 49:17-21, compared with Jer. 25:9; Jer. 25:21, that the subjugation of the Edomites by Nebuchadnezzar is here referred to.

Dragons.Better, jackals. The LXX. and Gesenius render the word habitations, by comparison with a similarly sounding Arabic word.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

JEHOVAH’S LOVE OF ISRAEL, Mal 1:2-5.

The contents of these verses form the basis of all subsequent appeals, for they emphasize the fatherly love of Jehovah toward the Hebrews, which entitles him to their gratitude and devotion. The prophet points out that they do not have to go far to find proofs of the divine love. Jacob and Esau were brothers, hence one would naturally expect their descendants to be treated alike by God; but what contrast between the fortunes of the two! Israel, after many ups and downs, restored to its old home, there to remain forever; the territory of Edom doomed to be a perpetual desolation. There can be but one reason for all this Jehovah loved Jacob, but Esau he hated. This love of Jehovah for Israel, the prophet thinks, should be the motive and model for Israel’s attitude toward him.

2, 3. I have loved you In his emphasis of the divine love which manifested itself throughout the entire history of Israel, Malachi resembles Hosea (see p. 30).

Yet ye say These words give the first illustration of the dialectical and didactic character of the literary style of Malachi (compare Mal 1:6-7; Mal 2:17; Mal 3:13-14). The author states a simple thesis, in this case “I have loved you.” Over against it he sets an objection which may have been raised at some previous time, or which he suspects may be in the mind of some one. This gives to him an opportunity to elaborate and prove the truth which in the beginning he simply affirmed.

Wherein hast thou loved us? These words express the objection. During the postexilic period doubts of this sort arose in the minds of many Jews, who were disappointed because the bright visions of the pre-exilic prophets were not realized; and this skepticism increased when it was seen that the expectations of Haggai and Zechariah also were not being fulfilled (see pp. 553f. and pp. 695). The prophet introduces his answer by another question.

Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? The two earliest of the Minor Prophets, Amos (Amo 1:11) and Hosea (Hos 12:3), call attention to this relationship. As the succeeding verses show, the prophet is thinking primarily of the descendants of the two, but he traces the history back to the ancestors, because in their lives the difference in the attitude of Jehovah could already be seen. Everything else being equal, twin brothers might be expected to have similar experiences in life, and their descendants might be expected to enjoy similar fortunes. In the case of these two a vast difference could be seen.

Yet Though they were twin brothers.

I loved Jacob, hated Esau Keil is right in insisting that the meaning of these words “must not be weakened down into loving more and loving less To hate is the opposite of love. And this meaning must be retained here.” At the same time the meaning must not be pressed too literally. The expression is an anthropomorphism like repent (see on Joe 2:13) and swear (Amo 4:2), used by the prophet to present to his listeners or readers an idea in a form which they could easily understand. The great mass of Jews considered prosperity an infallible proof of the divine love and favor, adversity of the divine hatred. But if they explained their own present prosperity as an evidence of the divine favor, they must explain the affliction of Esau as an evidence of the divine wrath. The prophet says nothing concerning the ground of distinction, for to judge the motive was outside of his sphere. So far as his words are concerned Jehovah might have had good grounds for his action or he might have been arbitrary; but when we bear in mind the date of Malachi we must consider it very probable, to say the least, that he possessed a sufficiently lofty conception of the character of Jehovah to exclude arbitrariness (compare Mal 1:4).

R.V. renders the rest of Mal 1:3, “and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness.” These words and Mal 1:4 supply the proof of the divine hatred against Edom, and by implication the divine love for the Jews.

Mountains The territory of Edom was rocky and mountainous (see on Amo 1:11; Oba 1:3-4), therefore the whole country might be called mountain.

Heritage Denotes the territory of the Edomites as a possession inherited from their ancestors and from their god (compare Jdg 11:23-24).

For the dragons of the wilderness R.V., “to the jackals.” The meaning of the Hebrew word translated dragon or jackal is not quite certain, since it occurs nowhere else in this form. It is related to a word ordinarily translated sea-monster (compare Gen 1:21), which is used in an oracle against Edom in Isa 34:13, where it is translated jackals. The idea is that Edom has been wasted so completely that now only beasts of the desert live there. LXX. and Peshitto read, “into dwellings of the wilderness.” A similar expression, to which Stade proposes to change the phrase in this verse, “pastures of the wilderness,” occurs in Jer 9:10; but here it would be no improvement, and unless a more serious corruption is assumed the translation of R.V. is preferable. If an emendation is thought necessary, that suggested by Marti is the most satisfactory, “and made his heritage to a wilderness.”

When the devastation of Edom took place is not stated; however, Mal 1:4 suggests that it occurred quite recently, for at the time of the utterance the damage had not yet been repaired, nor had there been made any attempt in that direction. In all probability Malachi has in mind the expulsion of the Edomites from their territory by the Nabatean Arabs, which began during the period of the exile and reached its culmination during the early part of the fifth century B.C. (compare Amo 1:11; Joe 3:20; Oba 1:1-15).

But, some one might say, the Israelites also passed through a period of oppression and homelessness, and yet they were restored to their old home, and prosperity is returning; may not the Edomites enjoy a similar restoration? This objection is met in Mal 1:4 by the declaration that the desolation of Edom will continue forever, that every attempt to restore its fortunes will prove futile.

We are impoverished R.V., “beaten down.” This the Edomites admit, but they are not disheartened, for they expect to rebuild the waste places.

We will return and build If the calamity alluded to is the expulsion of the Edomites from their home land (see on Mal 1:3), this translation should be retained. They expect to recover the territory, and then to rebuild the desolate places. The Hebrew idiom also permits the translation “we will build again,” which does not imply an expulsion or a hope of return. Jehovah will prevent the execution of their plans (compare Isa 9:8-10), for his hatred against Edom will continue, and he will keep it in ruins forever.

I will throw down Bring to naught all attempts of restoration.

They shall call Better, R.V., “men shall call.” The subject is indefinite. Whoever observes the vain struggle will pass the judgment expressed in the rest of the verse.

The border of wickedness, The people against whom Jehovah hath indignation The continued desolation and the failure of every attempt to rebuild the waste places would constitute conclusive evidence that the wrath of Jehovah is resting upon Edom, but that presupposed, according to popular belief, the commission of some great crime by the Edomites. If they or men include people outside of the Jewish community the expression “Jehovah hath indignation” implies that Malachi assumes the recognition of Jehovah as the true God by people other than the Jews (compare Mal 1:11).

Forever See on Joe 3:20.

5. When the Jews see with their own eyes the fulfillment of these threats upon Edom they will be convinced of the divine majesty and love.

Your eyes shall see They need not depend upon hearsay, for with their own eyes will they witness the humiliation of Edom.

Ye shall say Convinced by the fulfillment of the threats.

Jehovah will be magnified from the border of Israel R.V., “Jehovah be magnified beyond the border of Israel”; margin R.V., “Jehovah is great beyond the border of Israel.” Of these three translations the last is the best. The treatment accorded to the Edomites will prove to the Jews that Jehovah is supreme even over the nations outside of Israel. However, the force of the preposition is not quite clear; literally it is “from upon,” which may be used in the sense of above or over, “Jehovah is great over the borders of Israel,” that is, the contrast between the fortunes of Edom and those of Israel is proof that Jehovah’s great powers are exercised especially on behalf of the Jews in other words, that he loves them. This thought would seem to fit even better into the context.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Love Of YHWH For Jacob, And His Hatred For Esau ( Mal 1:2-5 ).

YHWH now makes a positive affirmation of love for His people Israel (Jacob). This love had often been affirmed by previous prophets. ‘When Israel was a child, I loved him, and called My son out of Egypt’ (Hos 11:1). ‘YHWH did not love you nor choose you because you were more in number than any people, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because YHWH loves you, and because He would keep the oath that He swore to your fathers, has He brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt’ (Deu 7:7-8). ‘YHWH appeared of old to us saying, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore with covenant love have I drawn you’ (Jer 31:2).

It was a love that arose out of God’s sovereignty, it was guaranteed because of His promises to their forefathers, it was a love that drew them into His covenant, and it was also a love that required obedience. ‘And it will come about that because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them, YHWH your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers , and He will love you and bless you —’ (Deu 7:12-13). It was also a love that would write His Instruction in their inner hearts (Jer 31:33). Thus it was a love for those who truly responded to Him, although also reaching out to them even when they were holding back (as they were now).

Mal 1:2-3

“I have loved you,” says YHWH.

“Yet you say, ‘In what have you loved us?’

Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” says YHWH.

“Yet I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated,

And made his mountains a desolation,

And gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness.’

Here then YHWH affirms His love for His people. But the question lying deep in His people’s hearts, and brought to the surface by Malachi, was ‘how have you loved us?’ And they could have added, ‘here we are living under hard conditions with our capital city in ruins, and with the future not at all rosy. Where is the coming King you promised us? Where is the prosperity? Where is the subservience of the Gentile nations? Why are we still ruled by Persia?’ What evidence is there of your love?’

God answers the suggested question by a negative example. ‘Consider Esau,’ He says. ‘I did not have the same love for him. And when, as with you, I made his land a desolation, and his heritage was handed over to the wild beasts of the wilderness, I did not restore him like I have restored you. For I hated Edom (Esau) because of how they had treated you.’

It is probable that they were intended to see this declaration of YHWH as an invitation and a warning, as well as a declaration of love. He is saying that His love was stretched out towards them, but that it was not unconditional. It was theirs if they would respond to it. Thus in Mal 3:16-17 He will later describe those on whom His love is finally set.

It should be noted that Edom is not cited here because it was a Gentile nation (contrast Mal 1:12), because that was not how it was seen. It is precisely because it was a brother nation that the situation arose. It is a warning that those who see themselves as among the chosen must not presume.

Mal 1:4-5

“Whereas Edom says,

‘We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places,’

Thus says YHWH of hosts,

‘They will build, but I will throw down,

And men will call them The border of wickedness,

And The people against whom YHWH has indignation for ever.’

And your eyes will see, and you will say,

‘YHWH be magnified beyond the border of Israel.’ ”

‘Indeed,’ says YHWH. ‘Edom do plan to return and build up their land again like you are doing, but the fact is that I will not allow it. I will throw it down, so that men will call them ‘The border of wickedness’, (the place in which wickedness abounds once you cross their border) and ‘the people against whom YHWH has indignation for ever’ (compare Isaiah 34).

This judgment on them was partly because of the way that Edom had regularly behaved when Judah was invaded, taking advantage of it for their own benefit and adding to Judah’s tribulations, and partly because of their general attitude towards Israel, which had even been patent in the time of Moses (Num 20:14-21). That was why centuries before Isaiah had spoken of the coming destruction of Edom (Isa 34:5-17; compare Jer 24:7-10; Amo 1:11-12; 2Ch 28:17; Psa 137:7; Oba 1:11-14). There may, of course, also have been other factors of which we are not aware.

But however that may be, destruction was certainly to be the experience of the remnants of Esau/Edom. For the Nabataeans swept into Edom and the Edomite refugees were gradually driven into southern Judah, settling in Idumaea in the Negev, where they were eventually forced by John Hyrcanus, a Jewish leader in 1st century BC, to be circumcised and become Jews. (So even in this judgment they indirectly experienced the possibility of mercy. For if they did truly respond to the God of Israel they would now find mercy).

‘And your eyes will see, and you will say, ‘YHWH be magnified beyond the border of Israel.’ And one of the results of what will happen to Edom will be that the eyes of His people will see what happens and recognise that God is not just effective in Israel, but is revealed as powerful even outside the borders of Israel. Thus it will make them comment to one another that YHWH is magnified even outside Israel.

So YHWH was emphasising to His people that His love was truly being shown to them in the fact that He was preserving them in the land to which He had returned them, in spite of their undeserving, while acting externally against their enemies. But He will then go on to demonstrate why in spite of that, the remainder of the promises have not been fulfilled. It is because they have not been faithful to the covenant. Thus they need to take Edom as a salutary warning lest they lose His love and it happen to them.

This charge to consider their ways is demonstrated first in relation to the failures of the priesthood, then in relation to the people stumbling at His Instruction because of the priesthood (Mal 2:8; Mal 3:5; Mal 3:15; Mal 4:1), and then in relation to their behaviour with regard to divorce (Mal 2:14-16) and foreign wives (Mal 2:11), followed by a charge that they were failing to give their tithes to His House (Mal 3:8-9) and were openly speaking against Him (Mal 3:13). And all these failures indicated an underlying hardness of heart.

Note On ‘Jacob Have I Loved And Esau Have I Hated’.

The word translated ‘hate’ has a wide variety of meaning. For example it is used in Genesis of Jacob as ‘loving Leah less’ than Rachel (Gen 29:30-31). Furthermore the words here in Malachi clearly refer initially to God’s relationship with Jacob and Esau. But a glance at Genesis reveals that God did not hate Esau in any sense in which we mean hate. He simply arranged for him to have a lesser inheritance, and one that did in fact suit his nature better. He certainly made the greater promises through Jacob (and we should note that He did so from birth). So the point is that Esau was simply not taken up into His promises as Jacob was. There is no doubt that this was partly because of the weakness in his character, but as Paul stresses the decision was made before either of them had done good or bad. Thus Paul saw it as evidence of God’s activity in ‘election’. On the other hand God did always insist that Israel treat Edom as brothers (Deu 23:7). However, that very fact in itself was partly what drew God’s and Israel’s ‘hatred’ on Edom because of its later treatment of its ‘brother’ Judah when things were going hard for Judah, for they took advantage of it, invading their land and greatly adding to Judah’s troubles. This was why they now came under His judgment (compare Amo 1:11-12; 2Ch 28:17; Psa 137:7; Oba 1:11-14).

End of note.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Mal 1:2-3. Yet I loved Jacob, &c. These words are not to be taken according to modern ideas; for in Scripture, when love and hatred are spoken of God, are set in opposition to each other, and applied to his dispensations towards particular people, the propositions are not to be understood separate, but are to be taken together; and they will then only imply a preference of one to the other, or that he loved Esau less than Jacob, or shewed him less favour, when he gave him and his posterity the desert mountains, and Jacob and his sons a land flowing with milk and honey; for God is the supreme arbiter of his own gifts. St. Paul accommodates the present sentence to his subject, Rom 9:13 proving by this example that God hath mercy, or shews his distinguished favour to whom he will, and in like manner withholds it. The reader will observe, that this is not spoken of Esau and Jacob personally, but of their posterity. Houbigant renders the latter part of Mal 1:3. And made his mountains desert, and his inheritance the habitations of the wilderness.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

DISCOURSE: 1266
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GODS GRACE

Mal 1:2-3. I have loved you, saith the Lord. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacobs brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau.

THE scope of this prophecy is, to reprove the Jews for their impiety, after their re-establishment in their own land, especially for their neglect and profanation of Gods ordinances. To give the greater weight to his reproofs, he begins with reminding them of the mercies which they, above all people, had received; and which they, therefore, should have requited in a far different manner.
To us, no less than to them, may this address be applied. In considering it, I shall be led to shew you,

I.

The distinguishing mercies which we have received at Gods hands

These may be contemplated,

1.

In our national capacity

[It is in this view that our text must be primarily understood: for of the temporal condition of the Jews, as contrasted with that of the Edomites, the prophet evidently speaks; the Jews having been favoured with the possession of Canaan, and restored to it after their temporary captivity in Babylon; whilst the Edomites had a very inferior portion in Mount Seir, to which, now that they were expelled from it, no efforts of theirs should ever be able to restore them [Note: Compare Gen 25:23. with ver. 4, 5 and Jer 49:17-18.].

And what nation under heaven has ever been more highly favoured than ours? What nation has more to be thankful for, than we have at this time; having for so long a period escaped the desolations with which other countries have been visited, and been so elevated amongst the kingdoms after so many and great perils [Note: After the war, during the French Revolution.]? The very constitution of our kingdom is such as no other nation in Europe enjoys, or is found capable of enjoying; so great is the liberty possessed by every subject of the realm, and such safeguards existing in the very constitution itself for the preservation of it. As for our religious advantages, they are of incalculable value. No nation under heaven possesses either more light than we, or more liberty to walk, every one of us, according to the dictates of his own conscience. Not Israel itself was more highly favoured than we, in the administration of divine ordinances, or in the communications of Gods blessings by means of them.]

2.

In our individual capacity

[St. Paul evidently understood our text as comprehending this also: for, having quoted the words in proof of Gods right to dispense his blessings to whomsoever he will, without any respect to their character, past, present, or future, he deduces from it this universal position: So, then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy [Note: See Rom 9:16.].

Let us see then, whether, as individuals, we have not received many distinguished mercies from Gods hands. If we look around us, may we not see thousands whose lot differs widely from ours, in that we are living in the enjoyment of health, and peace, and perhaps of plenty too, whilst others are pining away, under disease of body, or trouble of mind, or want of even the necessaries of life. Yet is not Esau Jacobs brother? and are not we thus favoured solely through the good providence of our God?
But let us come to things of greater moment, even to those which affect our everlasting state. May I not say, that God has highly distinguished you, in that you have had, and that for the space of forty years, the Gospel ministered unto you, in all its freeness, and in all its fulness. If all the same truths have with the same fidelity been proclaimed in every place, whence is it that any stigma has been affixed to the ministrations which ye attend? I have no wish to speak of others: but, respecting the Gospel as preached unto you, I am in duty bound to speak; and to say, before you and the whole world, that I have kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have declared unto you, as God has helped me, the whole counsel of God. Yes, verily, many kings and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to bear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them. To some of you, too, I trust, the word has come with power, even to the quickening, and sanctifying, and saving of your souls; so that you are walking in the light of Gods countenance, and in a prospect of his glory, whilst others around you are yet sitting in darkness, and perishing in their sins. Yea, I must further add, that many, who were once partakers of all the same advantages with yourselves, are now gone beyond the hope of redemption, and suffering the vengeance of eternal fire; whilst ye are numbered with the saints of God, heirs and expectants of all the blessedness of heaven. Yet, Is not Esau Jacobs brother? Are not those very persons, whose misery we have so much reason to bemoan, members of the same community with you; yea, perhaps of the very same family?

See, then, the truth of Gods assertion in my text: I have loved you, saith the Lord.]
Yet, whilst we contemplate these mercies, let us mark also,

II.

Our insensibility in relation to them

The question with which Gods assertion was repelled by Israel may serve to shew us how his distinguishing favours are regarded by us.

1.

By some they are utterly disclaimed

[This is the plain import of that impious reply, Wherein hast thou loved us? The same kind of reply is made to every accusation which is brought by the prophet; and it invariably imports a denial of his assertions [Note: ver. 6, 7 and Mal 2:17 and Mal 3:7-8; Mal 3:13-14.]. There is not any thing more offensive to the proud heart of man, than to be told that God has dealt with him in a way of sovereign grace and love. Men will not hear of Gods sovereignty: and, though they claim a right to dispose of their own things according to their own will, they deny that right to God. They affirm, that the idea of electing love is subversive of Gods justice: as though man had any claim upon the justice of his God. We had no claim on his justice, as creatures: he might, if it had so pleased him, have reduced us to a state of non-existence, the very hour after he had formed us: how much less can. we have claim on his justice, as sinners! The very devils have as much claim on his justice as we: and if mercy did not rejoice over judgment, there is not one of us that would not, in one moment, be a partaker of their doom.

By many, it is supposed, that, to speak of an interest in Gods electing love, must necessarily be an indication of the most insufferable pride. But who, I would ask, are lifted up with pride; those who acknowledge every blessing to be the unmerited gift of God; or those who imagine that God has had respect to some goodness in them, as the ground on which he has been constrained to distinguish them from others? Who, I say, are obnoxious to the charge of pride, they who give all the glory to Gods free and sovereign grace; or they who arrogate to themselves some good qualities, as determining God in his selection of them in preference to others? If, of two stones lying in a quarry, a builder take one, and polish it with care for a conspicuous ornament to his edifice, and leave the other without so much as giving it any place in his building; has that favoured stone any ground for glorying? Or, if a potter take of one lump of clay a portion, to make it a vessel of honour, whilst of another portion, equally good in itself, he makes a vessel into dishonour; has the one any reason to glory, or the other any reason to complain? This is St. Pauls own application of our text [Note: Rom 9:19-21.]. One distinction indeed he makes; and it is of great importance that we should make it also; namely, that the vessels of honour are made so by Him; whereas the vessels of dishonour are made so by themselves [Note: Rom 9:22. See the Greek.]: but this is clear, beyond a possibility of doubt, that it is not the person who refers every thing to God as its Author, and acknowledges his obligation to His free and sovereign grace; it is not he, I say, that is to be accused of pride; but he who founds his hopes on some past or future good within his own bosom, as the determining cause with God for the bestowment of his blessings, and the procuring cause of them to his own soul.

Those, therefore, who, in the language of my text, deny the exercise of Gods sovereign grace, are justly obnoxious to his heaviest displeasure.]

2.

By others they are received with sad indifference

[This is the least that the question in my text can possibly import: You speak of Gods love to me; but I need to be informed what evidence you have of it: for, if any instances of it have occurred, I have quite forgotten them.
Now, it is in this way that Gods mercies are, for the most part, received by us. How little do we reflect on the blessings of a free government, which, as Britons, we possess in rich abundance! And how sadly are our personal and domestic comforts overlooked! But, not to dwell on matters of subordinate importance, how little are we sensible of the blessings of a preached Gospel? How many refuse to avail themselves of the advantages they enjoy! and how many make no better use of them than to lull their consciences asleep in sin! Even of those who, in the judgment of charity, are partakers of salvation, how few are impressed with this privilege as they ought to be! Little do they think of the awful state of the Esaus that are around them, and of the obligations they owe to God for his distinguishing love and mercy. My dear brethren, if our minds were in a proper state, we should scarcely find time to think of any thing else but of the wonders of Gods love to us in Christ Jesus, and of the privileges we enjoy as his redeemed people. Suppose an angel were sent down from heaven to occupy our post, would he ever have occasion to put the question, Wherein has thou loved me? No: he would never for a moment be insensible of Gods love towards him. And, though we cannot hope to attain to the perfection of angels, this should, on the whole, be our state; more especially because our calls for gratitude infinitely exceed all that angels have ever experienced.]

Let us learn, then, from hence,
1.

To trace all our mercies to the proper source

[Gods love is the true source of all. And if we were in the habit of tracing them to this, how sweet would our smallest and most common mercies appear! Verily, such a habit as this would be a foretaste even of heaven itself. But the mercy which swallows up, as it were, every other, is the gift of Gods only dear Son to die for us: God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life [Note: Joh 3:16.]. In this we are told, God commendeth his love towards us [Note: Rom 5:8.]: referring to it as the most stupendous display of his love that ever was, or ever can be, exhibited to mortal man. On this, then, we should dwell with wonder and amazement: for no such mercy was ever vouchsafed to the fallen angels; yet as creatures, they were our elder brethren: nor is the knowledge of him vouchsafed to above one-sixth of the human race; yet are that vast majority descended from one common parent with us: nor, where his name is known, is his Gospel truly preached, probably not to one part in a hundred of the Christian world: and of those to whom it is ministered, how few receive it in truth! Yet, Is not Esau Jacobs brother? What thanks, then, do we owe to God, if it has been made the power of God to the salvation of our souls! Beloved brethren, trace ye this to its proper source. God has loved you with an everlasting love; and therefore with loving-kindness has he drawn you: and whereinsoever ye differ from others, it is He, and he alone, that has made you to differ.]

2.

To improve them for their proper end

[The Apostle tells us, We love him, because he first loved us. And, verily, so it ought to be. The mercies of God ought so to affect our minds, as to make us yield up our whole selves as living sacrifices unto him. This is our reasonable service: and to perform it should be the continued labour of our lives. What was it that wrought so powerfully on the heart of Paul, and made him so zealous in the service of his God? He tells us, The love of Christ constraineth me [Note: 2Co 5:14.]; or, as the word imports, carries me away, like an impetuous torrent. Thus, then, should it operate on us: and verily it would so operate, if we reflected on it as we ought. If we strove, as we ought, to comprehend the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of Christ, it would surely fill us with all the fulness of God [Note: Eph 3:18-19.]. I am perfectly persuaded, that the reason of our making such low attainments in religion is, that we forget to meditate on this glorious subject, and occupy our minds with considerations which tend only to depress them and to enervate all their energies. Let us turn our eyes from the world and from our various discouragements, to view the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; and we shall soon be changed by it into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord [Note: 2Co 3:18.].]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

Every word in this address of the Lord is weighty, and deserves the closest attention. Reader, pray observe how the Lord opens his discourse, with referring to his love. Yes! this is the source, the fountain, and cause of all Israel’s mercies; and the subject begins in eternity, in the gift of Christ, God’s dear Son, and reaches through time to eternity, forever. And observe further, the insensibility of God’s people here pointed out by the question, wherein hast thou loved us? Reader! do not in considering the Israel of old, as spoken of in this Chapter, overlook the Israel now. The Lord’s Israel are all the same in every age in themselves; ignorant, ungrateful, and for the most part lost to a sense of distinguishing mercies. Rom 3:9 . I beg the Reader, before he goeth further, to turn back to Jer 31:1-4 . And when he hath duly pondered the wonderful subject. I would have him particularly to attend to this doctrine of distinguishing grace, here preached to the Church by the Lord himself The Lord demands concerning the fact, Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? Yes! he was, yea, his elder brother, and therefore as such, concerning the right of inheritance, was legally intitled, and by the Lord’s own appointment, to the birth-right. But gospelly considered, he was set aside, and by the Lord himself from it, and Jacob preferred. And what tended to confirm this doctrine yet more, and to make it; unanswerably conclusive, was, that this choice of the younger, and rejection of the elder, was in the decree of the Lord, before that either was born. Paul, the Apostle, was commissioned by the Holy Ghost, in the after ages of the Church, to preach on this Sermon of the Lord, and to make this comment upon it; and certainly by that authority, the doctrine is laid down with a firmness of divine decision none can safely dispute. I beg the Reader to turn to the Apostle’s subject. Rom 9:6 to the end, and then see the history of this memorable transaction. Gen 25:20 to the end, and Gen 27 , throughout. And I beg further to call the Reader’s attention to this doctrine, from the same scriptural authority, that all these tokens of distinguishing grace, personally to Jacob, was not limited to Jacob, but included all the seed of Jacob. In confirmation, see Gen 28:1-14 . Hence therefore, the burden of Malachi’s prophecy you see is a blessed burden indeed; for it contains Christ in his fulness, suitableness, and all-sufficiency. The blessings given to Jacob, it is plain, were not temporal, for he no sooner had it, than he was compelled to flee for his life; and few and evil, as he told Pharaoh at the close of his pilgrimage, had been his days. Gen 47:9 . But the whole of this distinguishing grace and love the Lord had to Jacob and to his seed, as beheld in Christ, and accepted in Christ, was in respect to the blessings of redemption. Reader! what a vast thought is here, in proof of the love of God in Christ, being set forth altogether free, without all motives of good or evil, in the happy receivers of this unspeakable mercy; not only before they have done good or evil, but before they were born! Reader! do not turn hastily away from this subject. Pause over it. How many are there the distinguishing objects of this rich, free mercy in Christ, who through the weakness of their faith, and their inattention to divine things, even after partaking of the sweet effects of it, in regenerating, converting, renewing grace, are frequently without full and clear views of their happy and unspeakably blessed state in Christ, in the enjoyment of it?

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Mal 1:2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? [Was] not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,

Ver. 2. I have loved you, saith the Lord ] Thou hast loved us (might they reply) while we were willing and obedient. Thou lovest them that love thee, Pro 8:17 “and showeth mercy to thousands of them that love thee, and keep thy commandments,”Exo 20:6Exo 20:6 ; but now “thou hast utterly rejected us: thou art very wroth against us,” Lam 5:22 . Nay, saith God, I do love you, so Tremellius renders this text: I am Jehovah, “I change not,” Mal 3:6 . I do rest in my love, and will seek no further, Zep 3:17 . Surely “Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of hosts: though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel,” Jer 51:5 . Thus it was before the captivity. But how after? See Zec 1:17 . The Lord had professed before that he had been sore displeased with their fathers, Zec 1:2 , and it appears, Zec 1:3-4 , they were no better than their fathers; all which notwithstanding, see a sweet promise, Zec 1:17 “Cry yet, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad, and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem.” There are four “yets” in the text, and all very gracious ones; to show that the fulness of sin in us doth not abate the fulness of love in God towards his people. And the same in effect is thankfully acknowledged by those holy Levites at their solemn fast, held much about the time of our prophet Malachi, Nehemiah, where they make a catalogue of the many fruits and expressions of God’s love to themselves and their fathers. Besides extraordinary favours not a few, he gave them good laws, Neh 9:13 , good sabbaths, Neh 9:14 , his good spirit to instruct them, Neh 9:20 . He forsook them not when they dealt proudly against him, Neh 9:16-17 , but crowned them with outward comforts, Neh 9:21 ; Neh 9:25 , afflicted them when they provoked him, Neh 9:26-27 , sent them saviours when they cried to him, Neh 9:27 , after often revolts was often entreated, Neh 9:28 , withheld his worst and consuming judgments for a long time, Neh 9:30-31 . And was there not love in all this? Might not God well say, I have loved you? Ribera thinks there is an aposiopesis a in the words, as if God would have said more; but very grief breaks off his speech, out of a deep sense of their detestable ingratitude. David hath such an abrupt expression, Psa 116:1 , I love, because the Lord hath heard my voice. Such a pang, such a passion he felt, that he was not able to say, I love the Lord, but I love, and so breaks off abruptly. The like whereunto may here be conceived of God; who cannot endure to have his love lost, his grace undervalued, as it was by these obstreperous questionists, who put him to his proof, as those did Jer 2:25 .

Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? ] Their recent captivity and calamity so stuck still in their stomachs, that they could not see wherein he had showed them any love. But had they considered Daniel’s weeks they might have known that (besides their free election, all blessings flowing therefrom, as Dan 9:3-5 ), for their seventy years’ captivity, they had seven seventies of years granted them afterwards for the comfortable enjoyment of their own country. Sed ingrato quod donatur, deperditur, But for ingratitude which was forgiven, he is utterly destroyed, saith Seneca. And Amare non redamantem est amoris impendia perdere, saith Jerome. All is lost that is laid out upon an unthankful people, who devour God’s best blessings as brute beasts their prey, haunch them up and swallow them, as swine do swill; bury them, as the barren earth doth the seed; use them as homely as Rachel did her father’s gods, which she laid among the litter, and sat upon; yea, fighting against God with his own weapons (mercies, I mean), as Jehu did against Jehoram with his own messengers, as David did against Goliath with his own sword, as Benhadad against Ahab with that life that he had given him; as if God had hired them to be wicked, &c.

Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?] Did they not both tumble in a belly? were they not both dug out of the same pit, hewn out of the same rock? Isa 51:1 ; and yet, as the Great Turk and his brethren, born of the same parents, the eldest is destined to a diadem, the rest to a halter, so here Esau, though the elder and heir, was rejected, at least he was less loved (for so the word hated is to be taken, Gen 29:31 Luk 14:20 Mat 10:37 ). Jacob, though the younger and weaker (for Esau was born a manly child, born with a beard, as some think, and was therefore called Esau, that is, Factus et perfectus pilis, a man already, rather than a babe), yet was God’s beloved one. And so were his posterity too the people of God’s choice, above the Edomites; who were now left in captivity at Babylon, when as the Jews were returned into their own country; yea, for the Jews’ sakes and as a testimony of God’s love to them, were these Edomites still held captives, and their land irreparably ruined because they showed themselves merciless and bloody in the day of Jerusalem’s calamity, Oba 1:10-11 Psa 137:7 . God had charged the Israelites, saying, “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother,” Deu 23:7 ; but as Esau began betime to persecute Jacob, bristling at him, and bruising him in their mother’s womb, Gen 25:22 , so his posterity were bitter enemies to the Church, joying in her misery, and joining with her enemies, wherefore thus saith the Lord God, “I will also stretch out mine hand upon Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it,” Eze 25:13-14 .

Yet I loved Jacob ] And preordained him to a crown that never fadeth, as Paul expoundeth this text, Rom 9:13 , of election to eternal life, which is the sweetest and surest seal of God’s love. Let us secure our election, and so God’s special love to our souls, by those infallible marks, 2Th 2:13 . First, belief of the truth, that articularity and propriety of assurance Secondly, sanctfficahon of the Spirit, unto the obedience of truth. And as God loved Jacob’s person, so he loved his posterity, the Israelites, above all other people; not because they were more in number, or better in disposition, ex meliore luto, &c.; out of better clay, but “because the Lord loved you, therefore he set his love upon you, and chose you,” saith Moses, Deu 7:7-8 : the ground of his love was wholly in himself; there being nothing in man, nothing out of God’s self, that can primarily move and incline the eternal, immutable, and omnipotent will of God. The true original and first motive of his love to his creature is the good pleasure of his will. See Eph 1:5 , where all the four causes of election are showed to be without us.

a A rhetorical artifice, in which the speaker comes to a sudden halt, as if unable or unwilling to proceed. D

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Mal 1:2-5

2I have loved you, says the Lord. But you say, How have You loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? declares the Lord. Yet I have loved Jacob; 3but I have hated Esau, and I have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness. 4Though Edom says, We have been beaten down, but we will return and build up the ruins; thus says the Lord of hosts, They may build, but I will tear down; and men will call them the wicked territory, and the people toward whom the Lord is indignant forever. 5Your eyes will see this and you will say, The Lord be magnified beyond the border of Israel!

Mal 1:2 I have loved you What a powerful way to start a prophetic book. This VERB (BDB 12, KB 17, Qal PERFECT) is used three times in this one verse:

1. two Qal PERFECTS

2. one Qal IMPERFECT

This word speaks to the intimate personal relationship involved in covenant faith! This is what allows God to be seen as

1. a Father (Mal 1:6)

2. a lover (Hosea 1-3)

3. a near kin (Ruth, cf. Rth 4:1; Rth 4:3; Rth 4:6; Rth 4:8; Rth 4:14)

It is His longsuffering love for the covenant people that causes Him to enter into the diatribe of Malachi. He starts the conversation with His own character (cf. Mal 3:6). See Special Topic: CHARACTERISTICS OF ISRAEL’S GOD .

But you say This formula (most are Qal PERFECTS) is repeated several times throughout the book (Mal 1:2; Mal 1:6 [twice], Mal 1:12-13; Mal 2:14 [twice], Mal 2:17; Mal 3:7-8; Mal 3:13-14) and forms the structure of the literary technique used by this author to communicate truth (i.e. diatribe). The rabbis used this very same question and answer form in the Talmud. Malachi is often called the Hebrew Socrates because of this particular form of teaching. This is very similar to Paul, James, and John’s use of diatribe in the books of Romans, James, and 1 John.

How has Thou loved us This question highlights the underlying resentment that most of the returnees felt toward God for the difficult times they faced after they, in faith, left Babylon and returned to Judah. They were only a remnant of the exiled Jewish community. They were the ones who left everything to return.

Mal 1:3 Yet I have hated Esau Paul quotes this in Rom 9:13. Easu (i.e. Edom) stands for all non-covenant people, especially the enemies of God’s people! The VERB (BDB 971, KB 1338, Qal PERFECT) is apparently a Hebrew idiom of comparison (cf. Gen 29:30-32; Deu 21:15-18; Pro 13:24; Mat 6:24; Mat 10:37; Luk 14:26, see Hard Sayings of the Bible, pp. 347-348). This is not a rejection of individuals (same as Romans 9), but a way of showing the removal of a traditional, national enemy of the covenant people.

NASBand appointed his inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness

NKJVhis inheritance for the jackals of the wilderness

NRSVhis heritage a desert for jackals

TEVabandoned the land to jackals

NJBhis heritage into dwellings in the wastelands

The NKJV follows the MT. The NJB follows the Septuagint. The JPSOA says the Hebrew is uncertain and translates it as his territory a home for beasts of the desert. The theological concept behind this statement is twofold:

1. total destruction, no human population

2. the presence of the demonic (i.e., cursed)

See Introduction to Obadiah for a complete list of prophecies against Edom.

Mal 1:4 Though Edom says Edom was a descendant of Esau (cf. Gen 36:1).

They may build, but I will tear down Edom was a proud nation (cf. Jer 49:14-22; Oba 1:1-4). Most biblical historians see this as a prediction of the Nabatean invasion of Edom (500-450 B.C., cf. I Maccabees, chap. 4 and 5).

NASBindignant

NKJVindignation

NRSV, TEV,

NJBangry

The NIDOTTE, vol. 1, p. 1129, says of this VERB (BDB 276, KB 277, Qal PERFECT) that God is usually the subject and the object is usually personal. Faith is personal, rebellion is personal because God is personal.

forever YHWH was angry at Israel for a period (cf. Romans 9-11), but He was angry with Edom forever. See Special Topic below.

SPECIAL TOPIC: FOREVER (‘OLAM)

Mal 1:5 This expresses the historical evidence of God’s sovereignty over all nations. In the ancient Near East gods were worshiped within national contexts and national boundaries (i.e., 2Ki 5:17). If one nation defeated another, then the victor’s god was considered to be more powerful. Israel’s defeat by her neighbors was seen as their gods being more significant. The plagues on Egypt were intended to demonstrate the opposite!

This text’s theological significance lies in

1. YHWH’s power over other nations (cf. Job 12:23)

2. YHWH’s power over all nations (i.e., Deu 32:8; Amo 9:7; Act 17:26)

This is true because He is the only God, the only Creator, the only Savior.

NASBbe magnified

NKJVis magnified

NRSVgreat is

TEV, NJBis mighty

This VERB (BDB 152, KB 178) is a Qal IMPERFECT used in a JUSSIVE sense. It is often used to describe YHWH (cf. 2Sa 7:22; Psa 35:27; Psa 40:16; Psa 70:4; Psa 104:1; Mic 5:4); it is used as an ADJECTIVE in Deu 3:24; Psa 48:1; Psa 86:10. YHWH wants the nations to know Him, but He protects Israel in a special way until she brings forth the Messiah.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

I have loved Reference to Pentateuch (Deu 7:8; Deu 10:15; Deu 33:3).

saith = hath said. Quoted in Rom 9:13, Esau Jacob’s. Put by Figure of speech Metonymy (of Adjunct), App-6, for their posterities. Quoted in Rom 9:13,

saith the LORD = [is] Jehovah’s oracle.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Mal 1:2-5

GOD LOVES ISRAEL . . . Mal 1:2-5

In these verses Israel is charged with being insensible to Gods love. To overcome this insensitivity, He says emphatically, I have loved you. It is not the first time He has declared His love. (cp. Jer 31:3-4) All of His dealings, from the initial establishment of the covenant, have been the result of this love.

In answer to the anticipated question Wherein hast thou loved us? Jehovah answers specifically in terms of His preference for Jacob over Esau.

The Jews were prone to think of themselves as superior to other races. Here God reminds them He has shown His love to them, not just in preference to other races, but in preference over those of their own race. Jacob and Esau were twin brothers, yet God established His covenant with Jacob, father of all Israelites, rather than with Esau, father of the Edomites. I loved Jacob . . . I hated Esau.

Zerr: Mal 1:2-5. When the Lord censured them for their worldliness they com plained that He did not love them. The Lord’s reasoning that he still loved his people is couched in the Question Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? The fact that while these men were brothers, the Lord chose Jacob or Israel instead of Esau was proof that He loved him.. Hated Esau means the Lord denied him any special favors, also He chastised him severely for wrong doings. Esau was the founder of the Edomites who thought they could resist the work of God that was meant for their punishment. Yet they failed, for the Lord was determined to through doing their work. All of this was evidence that Israel had fared better than his brother and hence was beloved by the Lord. The objective of the Lord in thus punishing Esau or Edam was that He might be magnified. Israel was supposed to see all this and ac- knowledge God’s greatness.

God does not, of course, unequivocally, hate any man or race of men. (cf. Act 10:34-35) This statement must be kept in context. It is in contrast to His great love for His covenant people that His love for others seems hatred by comparison. Much in the same vein, Jesus demands that we hate father, mother, brother, sister, wife and even self. (Luk 14:26) We know He does not want us to literally hate anyone. (cp. Mat 5:43-48) Neither does He hate anyone, excepting in comparison to His love for His chosen people.

The evidence of His preferential love for Israel over Edom is pictured in contrast of Edoms homeland to the land flowing with milk and honey into which He led His people. Edom lies southeast of the Dead Sea in the Arabian desert. Its capital, Petra, was cut out of solid red limestone cliffs. The surrounding area is desolate and barren.

Paul set upon the contrast between Jacob and Esau in establishing Gods love for His covenant people. (Rom 9:13) The apostle points out the contrast is not between two nations per se, for they are not all Israel that are of Israel. (Rom 9:6) The real contrast is between the covenant people and the non-covenant people for this is a word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sarah shall have a son. And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. (Rom 9:9-13)

Since it was His promise to redeem all mankind that was the heart of His covenant, His preferential treatment of Israel is ultimately evidence of His love even for Edom! Nevertheless, in the years before Christ, He could point with justification to His treatment of His people in comparison to others as evidence of His love.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

SERMON #3. I LOVED JACOB.

Text:Mal 1:2-5

Subject:The Distinguishing Love of God for His Elect

Date:Sunday Evening April 5, 2009

Introduction:

After being delivered from 70 years of captivity in Babylon, you would think the children of Israel would have been humbled, thankful and full of praise, utterly consecrated to God. But that was not the case. In Malachis day they were a nation of self-absorbed complainers, griping and whining about everything, and full of unbelief. In this brief prophecy, we hear the chosen people raising question after question, expressing their unbelief. No matter what the Spirit of God inspired his prophet to declare, they raised an objection. It seems that they were determined to have the last word with God. But, blessed be his name, the Lord God will never allow his chosen to have the last word with him! Thank God, he never will. He always has the last word with us; and makes us thankful for it! Here is the Lords last word to you tonight.

(Mal 1:2) I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacobs brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob.

I LOVED JACOB. That is my subject tonight. Lets read the rest of our text, and I will get right to my message.

(Mal 1:2-5) I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacobs brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, (3) And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness. (4) Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever. (5) And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.

Like the children of Israel, we often fall into ill humor, and to appear beaten down, depressed, and full of sullen unbelief. What wretched state of affairs! What a dishonor we cast upon God our Savior by our unbelief! What then? Are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved that Gods people are all the same in every age. In ourselves, we are ignorant, ungrateful and, for the most part, oblivious and insensible to his distinguishing mercies (Rom 3:9).

It is this evil of unbelief that I want to combat tonight. May God the Holy Spirit use his Word by Malachi to teach you and me to trust our God! May he graciously make us aware of Gods unalterable, free, sovereign, distinguishing mercy, love and grace in Christ Jesus!

LOVE DECLARED

Every word in this paragraph is weighty, and deserves the closest attention. The Lord God begins his message to his chosen people with an unqualified, unconditional declaration of his love for us. I have loved you, saith the LORD!

The love of God is greater far

Than tongue or pen can ever tell;

It goes beyond the highest star,

And reaches to the lowest hell;

The guilty pair, bowed down with care,

God gave His Son to win;

His erring child He reconciled,

And pardoned from his sin.

When years of time shall pass away,

And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,

When men, who here refuse to pray,

On rocks and hills and mountains call,

Gods love so sure, shall still endure,

All measureless and strong;

Redeeming love and saving grace

The saints and angels song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

And were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill,

And every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above,

Would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole,

Though stretched from sky to sky.

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

The saints and angels song!

This love, the love of God, is the source, the fountain, and cause of all our mercies. It is a subject that begins in eternity, in the gift of Christ, Gods dear Son, reaches through all the ages of time, and continues through eternity! God himself calls it an everlasting love!

(Jer 31:1-4) At the same time, saith the LORD, will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. (2) Thus saith the LORD, The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest. (3) The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. (4) Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry.

I have loved you, saith the LORD. Gods free, distinguishing love is declared throughout the Scriptures to every believer. It is this special, distinct, distinguishing, free, and sovereign love that is referred to in Mal 1:2. I repeat, this is special, distinguishing love. It is not a meaningless, general love; but special, distinguishing love. Read the next words: Was not Esau Jacobs brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau. That is precisely language the blessed Spirit of God inspired Paul to use when speaking about the election of grace (Rom 9:13).

(Rom 9:11-18) (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) (12) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. (13) As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. (14) What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. (15) For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. (16) So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. (17) For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. (18) Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

I have loved you, saith the LORD! Multitudes will tell us that he loves us while we are willing and obedient. Indeed, the Scriptures say, Thou lovest them that love thee (Pro 8:17) and showeth mercy to thousands of them that love thee, and keep thy commandments (Exo 20:6). Though we might say, as Jeremiah did, Thou hast utterly rejected us: thou art very wroth against us (Lam 5:22), the Lord God says, No, I do love you! I am Jehovah, I change not (Mal 3:6). Does he not declare, I will rest in my love, I will joy over thee with singing (Zep 3:17). For Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the LORD of hosts; though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel (Jer 51:5).

The Lord had been displeased with their fathers (Zec 1:2); and they were no better than their fathers (Zec 1:3-4). Yet, the Lord God gives this sweet promise to his chosen: Cry yet, saying, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; My cities through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad, and the Lord shall yet comfort Zion, and shall yet choose Jerusalem (Zec 1:17). John Trapp observed, There are four yets in the text, and all very gracious ones; to show that the fulness of sin in us doth not abate the fulness of love in God towards his people!

It was at about this same time that the Levites held a solemn fast, described in Nehemiah 9, in which they made a catalogue of the many tokens and expressions of Gods love to his people. Besides countless extraordinary favors, he gave them

good laws to direct them (Neh 9:13),

good Sabbaths of rest to refresh them (Neh 9:14), and

his good Spirit to instruct them, (Neh 9:20).

He forsook them not when they dealt proudly against him (Neh 9:16-17),

but crowned them with outward comforts (Neh 9:21; Neh 9:25),

afflicted them when they provoked him (Neh 9:26-27),

sent them saviors when they cried to him (Neh 9:27).

Though often they revolted, he was often entreated (Neh 9:28) and withheld his judgments that would have destroyed them(Neh 9:30-31).

Children of God, ponder this wonderful subject of distinguishing grace and love, here preached to us by the Lord himself. The Lord demands concerning the fact, Was not Esau Jacobs brother? Yes! he was, his elder brother. As such, concerning the right of inheritance, Esau was legally entitled, and that by the very law of God, to the birth-right. But he was set aside by the decree of God from it; and Jacob was preferred and chosen. And this choice of the younger, and rejection of the elder, was in the decree of the Lord, before that either was born. Paul, the Apostle, was inspired by God the Holy Spirit to preach the sermon God gave Malachi to teach us the sweet, sweet doctrine of Gods sovereign election of our souls unto salvation in Christ. Mark, O my soul, mark the love tokens of God to his people!

Election in Christ Jesus from of old.

Covenant engagements made by Christ on his behalf.

Accomplished Redemption by the Lord Jesus.

Regeneration and the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Pardon of sin, free justification, adoption and sanctification.

Preservation to this hour, and promise for all future time.

Presentation in Glory!

This is a scanty list of the ways by which the Lord has said to every heaven-born soul, I have loved you.

Do we not remember times of love when this was personally sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit?

Even now the Lord speaks thus to his redeemed by his Word, and by his Spirit.

Do you not hear it?

Are you not touched with such a gracious and condescending avowal of Gods love to your soul?

All these tokens of special love and distinguishing grace personally bestowed upon Jacob, were not limited to Jacob, but included all the seed of Jacob (Gen 28:1-14). Those blessings were not merely temporal, physical blessings. We know that because as soon as the Lord bestowed them, Jacob was compelled to flee for his life. He told Pharaoh that the days of his pilgrimage had been few and evil (Gen 47:9). Yet, he knew himself to be a man distinctly blessed of God in Christ.

Chosen in Christ.

Redeemed in Christ.

Accepted in Christ.

And blessed in Christ!

What a vast thought this is! Gods love for our souls in Christ is here set forth as that which is altogether free, and altogether without motives and conditions in us. It was bestowed upon us in Christ before we had any being in ourselves, or even in Adam, before we had done or could have done any good or evil!

How many are there the distinguishing objects of this rich, free mercy in Christ, who through the weakness of their faith, and their inattention to divine things, even after partaking of the sweet effects of it, in regenerating, converting, renewing grace, are frequently without full and clear views of their happy and unspeakably blessed state in Christ, in the enjoyment of it? Robert Hawker

LOVED QUESTIONED

Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Shocking and disgraceful as it is, how often we question our Saviors love for our souls! How often, how sadly, how dishonoringly we hold the love of God to us in suspicion, as though his love for us depended upon something in us or done by us!

Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Such a question is asked

Under great afflictions in which there seems to be no relief. Petulantly, the sorrowing one sometimes questions divine love.

The sight of the wicked prospering often causes even a faithful David to vainly imagine that Gods love is suspended (Psalms 73). In horrid pride many a poor despised believer has rashly doubted the special love of God!

In times of grievous doubt as to ones personal salvation, and under heavy temptations of Satan, the same doubt has arisen.

LOVE ABOUNDING

(Rom 5:6-8) For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. (7) For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. (8) But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

(1Jn 4:9-10) In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. (10) Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

(Eph 3:14-19) For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, (15) Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, (16) That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; (17) That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; (19) And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

Illustration: Worm in the Fire

Upon what grounds dare we call into question the mercy, love, and grace of our God? We have absolutely no reason to entertain the slightest shade of doubt! Did he not promise? Will he not perform it? God is not a man that he should lie (Num 23:19).

Mr. Spurgeon reasoned like this The Scripture says, He that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life! I believe the Son of God. I have life! Why should we question that ever? Paul didnt! (2Ti 1:12; 2Ti 4:6-8).

If God be for us, who can be against us?

Who shall lay anything to the charge of Gods elect?

Who is he that condemneth?

Who shall separate us from the love of God?

I refuse to doubt Gods love because of something I have thought, or said, or done. His love is free and unconditional! I refuse to question his grace because of my sin. While I acknowledge the abundance of my sin, I will rejoice in the superabundance of Gods free grace in Christ. I am not going to be suspicious of his mercy because I do not deserve his mercy. Mercy is for the undeserving!

ESAU HATED

The Apostle Paul, in the Book of Hebrews, explains Malachis account of Esau in Mal 1:4. For those who seek to make Gods word in Mal 1:3, and I hated Esau mean something less than God intends, just read the meaning God gives of it in Mal 1:4. Even the Lords hatred of Esau was intended to display his love for Jacob. Even Gods treatment of the reprobate displays his love for his elect!

(Mal 1:4) Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places; thus saith the LORD of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever.

Esau, who was a fornicator, and a profane person (Heb 12:16), was left to a reprobate mind, being rejected, or as Malachi in this portion of Holy Scripture speaks, hated of God. So also was all his race, the Edomites. When it is said here that his mountains and heritages were laid waste, it is obvious that the meaning is altogether spiritual.

As the mountain of the Lords house is used to speak of the elect (Mic 4:1-2), so here the mountain of Esau represents the reprobate.

Esau, and the seed of Esau, void of grace in this world, shall have no part in the glory of Christ in the world to come.

(Mal 1:5) And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.

(Eph 2:7) That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

(Jud 1:24-25) Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, (25) To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and for ever. Amen.

(Rev 19:1-6) And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: (2) For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. (3) And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. (4) And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia. (5) And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. (6) And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

LOVE ADORED

(Mal 1:2-3) I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacobs brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, (3) And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

Child of God, before you go to bed tonight, sit down and mediate for a while upon some of the particulars and characteristics of Gods grace, and behold its freeness, fulness, greatness and sovereignty. How undeserving we are! How unexpected grace is! Yet, if possible, more astonishing still are the distinguishing operations of Gods grace for us and upon us!

The Lord himself invites his redeemed people to this blessed study; and when a poor sinner can receive it, and mark his own interest in it, nothing more tends to humble the soul to the dust before God, and compels it to cry out, under a deep sense of its own unworthiness, Lord, how is it that thou hast manifested thyself to me, and not unto the world? Robert Hawker

In this demand of God, the question is decided and answered. I have loved you, saith the Lord. But ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? Those words might be read, Wherefore hast thou loved us, when we were utterly undeserving of your love? How is it, Lord, that your grace was so personal and distinct? To that the Lord replies, Was not Esau Jacobs brother? yet I loved Jacob, and hated Esau.

It is as if the Lord had said, I have been showing my distinguishing love for my elect from the beginning. Was not Esau Jacobs brother, his elder brother and his stronger brother? Had there been any right of inheritance by birth, or from my covenant with Abraham, was not Esau to be preferred to Jacob? Yet, to shew the freeness and sovereignty of my decrees, before the children were born, before they had done either good or evil, it was said by me, The elder shall serve the younger.

Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? Trace this grand, glorious theme through the Book of God; and when you have done so, think of your own experience of Gods special love for you, and fall in the dust before him! It is, and ever must be, from the same distinguishing mercy, love and grace, and from this alone, that one man differs from another; for all that we have is what we first received.

Where wert you, when the Lord Jesus passed by and bid you live?

How were you engaged, when grace first taught your eyes to overflow?

What were you, when he who persuades Japheth to dwell in the tents of Shem, persuaded you and constrained you by his love?

What is it that keeps you now, amid all your coldness, indifference, and wanderings, from falling away, but that same distinguishing love, and mercy, and grace? Who, but God our Savior, could keep the immortal spark of grace from going out, amidst those floods of corruption that arise within? Who but Christ could prevent the incorruptible seed, ever compassed about with weeds of wickedness in our nature?

Precious Lord Jesus! Let others say what they may, or think what they will, be it our portion to lie low in the deepest self-abasement, under the fullest conviction that it is your free grace alone, and not creature merit in our poor souls, that makes the difference between us and a reprobate world! Every time pride arises in our hearts, or any thought of personal excellence swells in our vain minds, speak these words to us by your Spirit and graciously make us hear your voice. Was not Esau Jacobs brother? saith the Lord; yet! loved Jacob, and Esau have I hated.

(Mal 1:5) And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say, The LORD will be magnified from the border of Israel.

Amen.

Fuente: Discovering Christ In Selected Books of the Bible

I have: The prophet shows in Mal 1:2-5, how much Jacob and the Israelites were favoured by Jehovah, more than Esau and the Edomites. Through every period of the history of Jacob’s posterity, they could not deny that God had remarkably appeared on their behalf; but he had rendered the heritage of Esau’s descendants, by wars and various other means, barren and waste forever. Deu 7:6-8, Deu 10:15, Deu 32:8-14, Isa 41:8, Isa 41:9, Isa 43:4, Jer 31:3, Rom 11:28, Rom 11:29

Wherein: Mal 1:6, Mal 1:7, Mal 2:17, Mal 3:7, Mal 3:8, Mal 3:13, Mal 3:14, Jer 2:5, Jer 2:31, Luk 10:29

yet I: Gen 25:23, Gen 27:27-30, Gen 27:33, Gen 28:3, Gen 28:4, Gen 28:13, Gen 28:14, Gen 32:28-30, Gen 48:4, Rom 9:10-13

Reciprocal: Gen 27:29 – be lord Num 20:14 – thy brother Deu 4:37 – because Deu 23:5 – because the Deu 23:7 – he is thy Deu 33:3 – he loved 1Sa 12:22 – it hath 1Ki 11:15 – after he had 2Ki 3:8 – the wilderness of Edom 1Ch 1:34 – The sons of Isaac Psa 44:3 – because Psa 47:4 – whom Isa 21:11 – me out Jer 25:21 – Edom Lam 4:21 – the cup Eze 16:8 – thy time Eze 36:5 – against all Hos 11:1 – Israel Amo 1:11 – because Mat 1:2 – Isaac begat Mar 3:8 – Idumaea Luk 14:26 – hate Rom 9:13 – Jacob

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Mal 1:2. When the Lord censured them for their worldliness they com plained that He did not love them. The Lord’s reasoning that he still loved his people is couched in the Question Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? The fact that while these men were brothers, the Lord chose Jacob or Israel instead of Esau was proof that He loved him.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Mal 1:2-5. Yahwehs Love for Israel.This truth is questioned by some of the prophets contemporaries, who are then reminded of the contrasted fortunes of the nations descended from Jacob and Esau. These peoples (Israel and Edom), sprung from twin brothers, and occupying adjacent lands, might have been expected to share equally in Yahwehs favour, but the recent desolation of Edom (probably by the Nabatean Arabs, who drove the Edomites away from their old territory to the district S. of Judah, hence called Iduma) shows that Yahweh metes out differential treatment. He will frustrate any attempt on Edoms part to reoccupy its former territory, and men will recognise that Yahweh is great, not only in Israel, but beyond it. The reason for this disparate action is found in the different religious temperaments of the two peoples, which perpetuate those of their eponyms. Edom reproduced the profanity of Esau; they were a people undisciplined and unspiritual, with no sense of the sanctities of life; Israel, like Jacob, had many and grave defects, yet withal a true realization of Gods nature and will, and a sense of kinship and communion with Him (Gen 25:19-34*). The mutual jealousy and hostility of the two peoples finds frequent expression in OT, e.g. Oba 1:10-14, Ezekiel 35, Jeremiah 49, Isaiah 34, 63.

Mal 1:2 b and Mal 1:3 are used by Paul in Rom 9:13.

Mal 1:5. ye is emphatic; mg. should be followed except for the second note in Mal 1:4.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

1:2 I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, {b} Wherein hast thou loved us? [Was] not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,

(b) Which declares their great ingratitude that did not acknowledge this love, which was so evident, in that he chose Abraham from out of all the world, and next chose Jacob the younger brother from whom they came, and left Esau the elder.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

II. THE PRIESTS EXHORTED NOT TO DISHONOR THE LORD (THE THEOLOGICAL ANGLE) 1:2-2:9

"Malachi’s first address is governed by the ironic exhortation in Mal 1:10, ’Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors.’ It is directed against the priests of the postexilic temple. Despite their responsibility under the covenant of Levi (cf. Mal 2:4; Mal 2:8) to be the Lord’s messengers of Torah (Mal 2:7), they were dishonoring the Lord (Mal 1:6), particularly in their careless attitude toward the offerings (Mal 1:8). Failing to take their responsibilities to the Lord seriously, they had become political pawns of the influential in Israel who used religion to maintain respectability (Mal 2:9). The priests are here exhorted to stop the empty worship and to begin honoring the Lord with pure offerings and faithful service. As motivation the Lord declares his love for them (and for all the people; Mal 1:2-5) and threatens them with humiliation and removal from his service (cf. Mal 2:1-3; Mal 2:9)." [Note: Ibid., p. 244.]

One’s attitude toward and his or her relationship with God determine that person’s health and wholeness as a child of God. They also determined Israel’s national health and wholeness. This first address deals with this subject particularly: the theological issue of attitude toward and relationship with God.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

A. Positive motivation: the Lord’s love 1:2-5

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

In replying to the people’s charge, the Lord asked them if Esau was not Jacob’s brother. The implication of the question is that these twins were both the objects of God’s elective love. Yet God had loved Jacob, the younger, and hated Esau, the older. The evidence of God’s hatred for Esau was that He had made the mountains of Seir, the inheritance that God gave Esau and his descendants, a desolate wilderness. Unstated is the fact that God had given Jacob a land flowing with milk and honey for his inheritance, which proved His love for that brother.

"It was not a question of selecting Jacob for heaven and reprobating Esau to hell." [Note: Harry A. Ironside, Notes on the Minor Prophets, p. 187.]

It is remarkable that God loved Jacob in view of the person Jacob was, and it is equally remarkable that God hated Esau, because in many ways he was a more likeable individual than his brother.

"Someone said to Dr. Arno C. Gaebelein, the gifted Hebrew Christian leader of a generation ago, ’I have a serous problem with Mal 1:3, where God says, "Esau I have hated." Dr. Gaebelein replied, ’I have a greater problem with Mal 1:2, where God says, "Jacob, I have loved."’" [Note: Warren W. Wiersbe, "Malachi," in The Bible Exposition Commentary/Prophets, p. 479.]

Normally in the ancient Near East the father favored the eldest son, but God did what was abnormal in choosing to bless Jacob over Esau. God’s regard for individuals does not depend ultimately on their behavior or characters. It rests on His sovereign choice to bless some more than others (cf. Rom 9:13). This is a problem involving His justice since it seems unfair that God would bless some more than others. However, since God is sovereign, He can do whatever He chooses to do (cf. Romans 9).

Another problem that these verses raise concerns God’s love. Does not God love the whole world and everyone in it (Joh 3:16)? Yes, He does, but this statement deals with God’s choices regarding Jacob and Esau, not His affection for all people. When He said here that He hated Esau, He meant that He did not choose to bestow His favor on Esau to the extent that He did on Jacob (cf. Psa 139:21). He made this choice even before they were born (Gen 25:21-34; Rom 9:10-13). To contrast His dealings with the twins, God polarized His actions toward them in this love hate statement (cf. Luk 14:26). God loved Jacob in that He sovereignly elected Him and his descendants for a covenant relationship with Himself (Gen 29:31-35; Deu 21:15-17), as His special possession (cf. Deu 4:37; Deu 5:10; Deu 7:6-9). Often in Scripture to love someone means to choose to bless that person. Not to love someone means not to bless him or her.

"Modern studies of covenant language have shown that the word ’love’ (. . . ’aheb, or any of its forms) is a technical term in both the biblical and ancient Near Eastern treaty and covenant texts to speak of choice or election to covenant relationship, especially in the so-called suzerainty documents." [Note: Merrill, p. 391. See also Stuart, p. 1284; William L. Moran, "The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963):77-87; and J. A. Thompson, "Israel’s Haters," Vetus Testamentum 29 (1979):200-205.]

The fact that God gave Mt. Seir to Esau as his inheritance shows that He did love him to that extent. But He did not choose to bless Esau as He chose to bless Jacob, namely, with a covenant relationship with Himself. Similarly a man might love several different women (his mother, his sisters, his daughters, et al.) but choose to set his love on only one of them and enter into the covenant of marriage with her alone. His special love for the one might make it look like he hated the others. Again, eternal destiny is not in view here; God was speaking of His acts in history toward Jacob and Esau and their descendants.

Did not God choose to bless Jacob because Jacob valued the promises that God had given his forefathers whereas Esau did not (cf. Genesis 27)? Clearly Jacob did value these promises and Esau did not, but here God presented the outcome of their lives as the consequences of His sovereign choice rather than their choices. Clendenen believed God’s love and hatred of Jacob and Esau was His response to their respective regard and disregard of His covenant promises. [Note: Clendenen, p. 251.] Their choices were important, but the choice of God before and behind their choices that resulted in the outcome of their lives was more important (cf. Ephesians 1; Romans 9).

Some of God’s choices, the really important ones (His decree), determine all that takes place to bring those choices to reality. If this were not so, God would not be all-powerful; man could override the power of God with his choices. Some of God’s choices are stronger than others, as reflected, for example, in the words "will," "counsel," or "purpose" (Gr. boule) and "desire," "wish," or "inclination" (Gr. thelema). In some matters God allows people to influence His actions, even to cause Him to relent or change His mind from a previous course of action to a different one. Yet in the really important things that He has determined, no one can alter His will. [Note: See Thomas L. Constable, "What Prayer Will and Will Not Change," in Essays in Honor of J. Dwight Pentecost, pp. 99-113.] Yet God’s choices do not mean that man’s choices are only apparently real. Human beings have a measure of freedom, and it is genuine freedom. We know this is true because a just God holds human beings responsible for their choices. How humans can be genuinely free, to the extent that we are free, and how God can still maintain control is probably impossible for us to comprehend fully.

The bottom line is that God chose to bless Jacob to an extent that He did not choose to bless Esau. This decision lay behind all the decisions that these twin brothers made. They were responsible for their decisions and actions, but God had predetermined their destinies (cf. Eph 1:3-5; Rom 8:28-30).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

The Lord’s first word to His people was short and sweet. He had loved them. He had told His people of His love for them repeatedly throughout their history (cf. Deu 4:32-40; Deu 7:7-11; Deu 10:12-22; Deu 15:16; Deu 23:5; Deu 33:2-5; Isa 43:4; Hos 11:1; Hos 11:3-4; Hos 11:8-9). Yet they were now questioning His love and implying that there was no evidence of it in their present situation in life. This is the first of seven such dialogues in Malachi (cf. Mal 1:6-7; Mal 2:14; Mal 2:17; Mal 3:7-8, Mal 3:13-14). Yahweh had promised them a golden age of blessing, but they still struggled under Gentile oppression and generally hard times (cf. Mal 1:8; Mal 2:2; Mal 3:9; Mal 3:11). Their question revealed distrust of Him and hostility toward Him as well as lack of appreciation for Him. Israel should have responded to Yahweh’s love by loving Him and keeping His commandments (Deu 6:4-9).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

1. GODS LOVE FOR ISRAEL AND HATRED OF EDOM

Mal 1:2-5

He begins with Gods Love, and in answer to the disappointed peoples cry, “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” he does not, as the older prophets did, sweep the whole history of Israel, and gather proofs of Jehovahs grace and unfailing guidance in all the great events from the deliverance from Egypt to the deliverance from Babylon. But he confines himself to a comparison of Israel with the Gentile nation which was most akin to Israel according to the flesh, their own brother Edom. It is possible, of course, to see in this a proof of our prophets narrowness, as contrasted with Amos or Hosea or the great Evangelist of the Exile. But we must remember that out of all the history of Israel “Malachi” could not have chosen an instance which would more strongly appeal to the heart of his contemporaries. We have seen from the Book of Obadiah how ever since the beginning of the Exile Edom had come to be regarded by Israel as their great antithesis. If we needed further proof of this we should find it in many Psalms of the Exile, which like the Book of Obadiah remember with bitterness the hostile part that Edom played in the day of Israels calamity. The two nations were utterly opposed in genius and character. Edom was a people of as unspiritual and self-sufficient a temper as ever cursed any of Gods human creatures. Like their ancestor they were “profane,” {Heb 12:16} without repentance, humility, or ideals, and almost without religion. Apart, therefore, from the long history of war between the two peoples, it was a true instinct which led Israel to regard their brother as representative of that heathendom against which they had to realize their destiny in the world as Gods own nation. In choosing the contrast of Edoms fate to illustrate Jehovahs love for Israel, “Malachi” was not only choosing what would appeal to the passions of his contemporaries, but what is the most striking and constant antithesis in the whole history of Israel: the absolutely diverse genius and destiny of these two Semitic nations who were nearest neighbors and, according to their traditions, twin-brethren after the flesh. If we keep this in mind we shall understand Pauls use of the antithesis in the passage in which he clenches it by a quotation from “Malachi”: “as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.” In these words the doctrine of the Divine election of individuals appears to be expressed as absolutely as possible. But it would be unfair to read the passage except in the light of Israels history. In the Old Testament it is a matter of fact that the doctrine of the Divine preference of Israel to Esau appeared only after the respective characters of the nations were manifested in history, and that it grew more defined and absolute only as history discovered more of the fundamental contrast between the two in genius and destiny. In the Old Testament, therefore, the doctrine is the result, not of an arbitrary belief in Gods bare fiat, but of historical experience; although, of course, the distinction which experience proves is traced back, with everything else of good or evil that happens, to the sovereign will and purpose of God. Nor let us forget that the Old Testament doctrine of election is of election to service only. That is to say, the Divine intention in electing covers not the elect individual or nation only, but the whole world and its needs of God and His truth.

The event to which “Malachi” appeals as evidence for Gods rejection of Edom is “the desolation of” the latters ancient “heritage, and” the abandonment of it to the “jackals of the desert.” Scholars used to think that these vague phrases referred to some act of the Persian kings: some removal of the Edomites from the lands of the Jews in order to make room for the returned exiles. But “Malachi” says expressly that it was Edoms own “heritage” which was laid desolate. This can only be Mount Esau or Seir, and the statement that it was delivered “to the jackals of the desert” proves that the reference is to that same expulsion of Edom from their territory by the Nabatean Arabs which we have already seen the Book of Obadiah relate about the beginning of the Exile.

But it is now time to give in full the opening passage of “Malachi,” in which he appeals to this important event as proof of Gods distinctive love for Israel, and, “Malachi” adds, of His power beyond Israels border. {Mal 1:2-5}

“I have loved you, saith Jehovah. But ye say, Wherein hast Thou loved us? Is not Esau brother to Jacob?-oracle of Jehovah, and I have loved Jacob and Esau have I hated. I have made his mountains desolate, and given his heritage to the jackals of the desert. Should the people of Edom say, We are destroyed, but we will rebuild the waste places, thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, They may build, but I will pull down: men shall call them The Border of Wickedness and The People with whom Jehovah is wroth forever. And your eyes shall see it, and yourselves shall say, Great is Jehovah beyond Israels border.”

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary