Mining the Minors: Malachi (2)

“I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.”

Few statements in scripture are so frequently alleged to teach something they really don’t. Paul’s famous quotation of Malachi is not about election to individual salvation or damnation, not in Romans 9 and definitely not in its original context, which we will look at today. Rather, let me suggest it concerns the election of two nations to strategic roles in human history (as discussed here): one as the beneficiary of grace and the other as an object lesson never to be forgotten. “Loved” and “hated” are relative terms that have more to do with God’s sovereign dispensation of mercy and justice than with his emotional state.

1/ Proof of God’s Ongoing Love for Israel

Malachi 1:1-5 — I Have Loved You

“The oracle of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.

‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. But you say, ‘How have you loved us?’ ‘Is not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.’ If Edom says, ‘We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins,’ the Lord of hosts says, ‘They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called “the wicked country,” and “the people with whom the Lord is angry forever.” ’ Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, ‘Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!’ ”

Love and Action

“I have loved you,” says the Lord. This is the main message of the first five verses of Malachi, and the Lord goes on to prove his case.

How can you tell God has shown love to Israel? Well, here’s what his hatred looks like. It looks like Edom in the late fifth century BC, its impregnable fortress cities overrun by Nabonidus and his Chaldean armies in 553 BC, then its people eventually pushed westward during the Persian period so they could never again muster the strength to rebuild. Even today, historic Israel is called Israel, historic Lebanon is Lebanon and historic Syria is Syria, but historic Edom is now known as Jordan. The descendants of Esau who ruled the area for centuries have never returned.

Throughout scripture, love and hatred are most often action words, not merely descriptions of an emotional state. “I have loved you” means “I treated you well”, and “I have hated” means “I treated you badly.” Malachi says nothing about the various ways in which God had shown his love to Israel, but Bible history enables us to enumerate them. Both Israel and Edom had offended God, though in different ways. In contrast to his treatment of Edom, the Lord had punished Israel for seventy years, then allowed his people to return to their land, where they had rebuilt Jerusalem and its temple and had then dwelt in relative peace and safety for almost a century. Judah received the unlikely favor of multiple Persian monarchs. Edom did not. Judah repopulated its territory. Edom didn’t. Judah was enjoying the ongoing blessing of God. Edom was not.

All that was the Lord loving Israel, and it was easiest to understand and appreciate when set alongside the alternative.

Jacob and Esau

As our introduction contends, I believe the statement “I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated” is national, not personal. It has nothing to do with individuals, though the nations involved are personified in the names of their forefathers, a device we find repeatedly in the prophetic scriptures. The northern kingdom was called “Ephraim” almost as often as “Israel”.

How do we know this is not a statement about the historical individuals? God’s hatred was expressed to the descendants of Esau for reasons that had nothing to do with their famous ancestor or to the character and works of individual Edomites; it is stated more than a thousand years after Esau died. In fact, Esau led a pretty charmed life for a guy who despised his birthright and was tricked out of his blessing. No, God’s anger with the nation of Edom related to its recurring mistreatment of Israel.

God’s purposes in election had made the nation of Edom second banana to Israel over the course of centuries, but they did not do so badly for themselves at first. They became a nation well before Israel did. God blessed them and gave them territory of their own, and even warned Israel against fighting with them. That’s a funny way to express hatred: by granting blessing and protection. Nevertheless, that is what God did. Where individual Edomites were concerned, the Law of Moses commanded, “You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother … Children born to them in the third generation may enter the assembly of the Lord”.

Under the Law of Moses, individual Edomites always had the option to become proselytes of Judaism and live in Israel under a restricted citizenship, even after Edom refused Israel passage through its territory on their way to the Promised Land. However, when Edom’s hatred of their brothers persisted generation after generation, the nation finally incurred the ongoing judgment of God. As Ezekiel puts it, they “cherished perpetual enmity”. That never works out well. In this case, the anger of the Lord against Edom was richly deserved.

Our introduction to the book of Obadiah examines the relationship between Israel and Edom over the centuries in greater detail.

Edom in the Prophets

Probably because Esau was brother to Israel (Jacob), both Major and Minor Prophets had much to say about Edom over a 400-year period, beginning with Amos and ending with this final passage in Malachi. Almost all of it is negative. Many of the prophecies of Edom’s national demise were fulfilled in the Babylonian invasion shortly after Judah went into exile. Several prophecies concerning Edom remain to be fulfilled during the coming day of the Lord. There are also prophecies of Christ’s coming from Edom after destroying the nations that will invade Israel in the end times, but these are probably geographical references to historic Edom intended to be understandable to the audience of the day, and need not be taken to imply that Edomites will return to their ancestral home in the future.

Here’s an Edom prophetic checklist if you are interested in seeing how the Lord’s “hatred” of Esau’s descendants played out throughout history, listed in rough chronological order:

Amos 1:11-12; 9:11-12
Isaiah 11:14; 34:5-17; 63:1
Habakkuk 3:3
Jeremiah 9:25-26; 25:17-26; 49:7-22
Lamentations 4:21-22
Joel 3:19
Obadiah 1:1-21
Ezekiel 25:12-14
Daniel 11:40-41
Psalm 137:7
Malachi 1:1-5

All these passages have something prophetic to say about Edom.

The Fulfillment of God’s Promises

The Bible is not a book about Edom’s history. After the early chapters of Genesis, Edom comes and goes from the pages of scripture only insofar as the nation ties in with the fates of Israel and Judah. Kings and Chronicles mention Edom rarely, Ezra and Nehemiah not at all. The story of their nation, therefore, must be inferred primarily from the accusations and prognostications of the Hebrew prophets.

Between secular historians and the writings of the later prophets, we can confirm that most of what these men wrote, including Malachi, has already taken place. Today’s passage ends with these words: “Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, ‘Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!’ ” I take “your own” to mean the Jews of Malachi’s day. What they would have seen, if we look at the secular historians, is the Nabateans making themselves at home in Edom, and the Edomites migrating west, a people without a nation, eventually settling south of Judah in the Negev, intermarrying with Jews and ceasing to be a distinct people. The fortunes of Edom had plunged drastically compared to 150 years previously, when its people mocked, jeered and profited as Judah went into Babylonian exile. Provided the people of Israel were paying attention, they were seeing God’s promises fulfilled in their own lifetimes.

Love and Correction

As we will see beginning next week, most of Malachi is corrective. The people of Judah were sinning in various ways, and God was giving them opportunity through Malachi’s message to hear his complaints, respond wisely and make a national course correction before they too encountered the kind of disaster he had inflicted on Edom.

Malachi ends with a threat, which the Lord eventually carried out a few years after Israel rejected and crucified his beloved Son. But he begins with a declaration of love for Israel, and an acknowledgement of the sad reality that it did not have to be this way. God is sovereign, but Edomites made repeated bad choices. Judah did too.