LOVE, To
LOVE, To
To Love in the style of the Holy Scripture, signifies to adhere or cleave to; as in Gen 34:3, to love and to cleave to, are put as synonymous, “his soul cleaved unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel,” And so also in Deu 11:12; Deu 30:20.
On the contrary, to hate is to forsake; thus, in Rom 12:9, “to hate evil, and to cleave to that which is good,” is to forsake evil and love good. And in Isa 60:15, forsaken and hated, are put as synonymous.
Thus a man “must hate his father for the sake of Christ;” i.e. forsake or leave him, to follow and obey Christ, when it stands in competition. Thus God hated Esau, that is, passed by him, when he preferred before him his younger brother Jacob, in entitling Jacob to greater worldly privileges, and entering into a closer covenant with him. See Mal 1:2-3. The meaning is, that God chose rather to make the posterity of Jacob a greater nation than the posterity of Esau. For the words, Jacob and Esau, are not to be understood of their persons but of their offspring; as is evident from what was said of them by God to their mother, before they were born, “Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.” Gen 25:23.