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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
1:2-5 First Disputation: Does God Make a Distinction between the Good and the Arrogantly Wicked? God's Elective Love Vindicated in His Judgment. Malachi exposes and answers the doubts of his contemporaries who question God's love because of their political, economic, and spiritual destitution.
1:2-3 In a classic text, which Paul quotes in Rom. 9:13, Malachi appeals to God's elective and unconditional love of Jacob and corresponding hatred of Esau. In this context loved refers to choice rather than affection, and hated refers to rejection rather than animosity (which was explicitly prohibited against Edomites, Esau's descendants, in Deut. 23:7). For a similar use of these terms, see Prov. 29:24; Luke 14:26; 16:13. Although Jacob and Esau were brothers, Jacob experienced God's sovereign favor by which he was granted a privileged role in redemptive history as a bearer of the messianic promise, while Esau experienced God's rejection in terms of this same role. Malachi's concern, however, is primarily with the nations of Israel and Edom, of which Jacob and Esau were the representatives and progenitors. To Malachi's contemporaries, it must have seemed that the prophet had committed a terrible blunder by citing the contrasting national fates of Israel and Edom as proof of Israel's favored status. If God had chosen Jacob/Israel over Esau/Edom, why did he allow his people to suffer the total devastation of their country in by Nebuchadnezzar and of Babylonian captivity, while Edom remained intact and seemed only to benefit from Israel's loss? Malachi makes his point, however, by alluding to Jer. 9:11. Jeremiah announced the Lord's impending judgment against Judah: "I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a lair of jackals, and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant." By applying this same threat to Edom, Malachi makes clear that, like Judah, Edom would not escape God's judgment. It is likely that this judgment came through the agency of Nabatean Arabs, who gradually forced the Edomites from their homeland , causing them to resettle in an area later called Idumea. Being semi-nomadic, the Nabateans allowed the cities of Edom to go to ruin while their herds overgrazed and destroyed previously arable land. Whereas Judah was graciously restored after her punishment, reflecting the Lord's love for his people, Edom's judgment was to be permanent and irreversible (Mal. 1:4). There would continue to be individual Edomites (implied by 1:4; cf. Mark 3:8), but they had forfeited their national identity.
