How has God loved us?
Malachi 1:2-5
God pleads His love for Israel, yet the people ask Him: "In what way have You loved us?"
They had become blind to God's love. Deeply involved in the pressures of daily life, they no longer gave any thought to all that God had done for them in the past.
So God reminds them that He had preferred their ancestor Jacob over his twin brother Esau (Genesis 25:19-26). As the first-born Esau had a right to his father Isaac's inheritance and, he thought, the promises of blessing from God to Abraham, passed on to his father.
But, from early in life, Esau gave little thought to spiritual things, whereas Jacob valued the blessing so highly that he was prepared to blackmail his brother and cheat his father in an attempt to inherit it himself.
Because God chose Jacob, who He renamed Israel, and his descendants as the nation through whom the world would be blessed as promised to Abraham, God cared for them in a special way. Ironically, they rejected God a number of times even though He chose them.
The phrase "Esau I have hated" does not mean an implacable detestation of Esau or his eternal destiny. It simply means that God chose Jacob, not his brother Esau, to be the one through whom the nation of Israel and the Messiah would come (see Romans 9:10-13).
God allowed Esau to father a nation, but this nation, Edom, later became one of Israel's chief enemies and God brought His judgement upon them for this.
Edom means "red" and was given to Esau because of the red stew he accepted from Jacob in exchange for his right of primogeniture (Genesis 25:30).
The land of Edom extended from the head of the Gulf of Akabah, the Elanitic gulf, to the foot of the Dead Sea (1 Kings 9:26), and is now the kingdom of Jordan.
It is a mountainous region and, even today, it is a wild and rugged region, traversed by fruitful valleys. The early inhabitants of the land were Horites. They were destroyed by the Edomites (Deuteronomy 2:12), who later churlishly refused permission to the Israelites to pass through their land (Numbers 20:14-21), and ever afterwards maintained an attitude of hostility toward them.
They were conquered by king David, but rebelled against his descendant the evil king Jehoram of Judah, and became independent again.
They took part with the Chaldeans when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, and afterwards they invaded and held possession of the south of the land of Israel as far as Hebron. At length, however, Edom fell under the growing Chaldean power (Jeremiah 27:3, 6).
Its old capital was known as Bozrah (Isaiah 63:1), of which there is a town with this name today. But in recent times the rock-hewn Selah, (Isaiah 16:1, Obadiah 1:3), generally known by the Greek name Petra, rock (2 Kings 14:7) was rediscovered by the Western world, and is now recognised as the true old capital of Edom. It is near Mount Hor, close by the desert of Zin, and was doomed to destruction by the prophets.
It became totally uninhabited in the fifth century AD, and is now visited by tourists, who marvel at the large city carved in the rocks.
There are many prophecies concerning Edom (Isaiah 34:5, 6; Jeremiah 49:7-18; Ezekiel 25:13; 35:1-15; Joel 3:19; Amos 1:11; Malachi 1:3, 4) which have been remarkably fulfilled. The present desolate condition of that land is a standing testimony to the inspiration of these prophecies. After an existence as a people for above seventeen hundred years, they have utterly disappeared, and their language even is forgotten for ever.
2 "I have loved you," says the LORD. "Yet you say, 'In what way have You loved us?' Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" Says the LORD. "Yet Jacob I have loved;
3 but Esau I have hated, and laid waste his mountains and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness."
4 Even though Edom has said, "We have been impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places," thus says the LORD of hosts: "They may build, but I will throw down; they shall be called the Territory of Wickedness, and the people against whom the LORD will have indignation forever.
5 Your eyes shall see, and you shall say, 'The LORD is magnified beyond the border of Israel.'