Albert Barnes Commentary Malachi 1

The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel – “The word of the Lord is heavy, because it is called a burden, yet it has something of consolation, because it is not ‘against,’ but to Israel. For it is one thing when we write to this or that person; another, when we write ‘against’ this or that person; the one being the part of friendship, the other, the open admission of enmity.”

“By the hand of Malachi;” through him, as the instrument of God, deposited with him; as Paul speaks of (1 Corinthians 9:17; Titus 1:3), “the dispensation of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 5:19), the Lord of reconciliation; the Gospel of the uncircumcision (Galatians 2:7), being committed to him.”

I have loved you, says the Lord. What a volume of God’s relationship to us is contained in these simple words: "I have loved you." God would not speak this way unless He still loved. "I have loved and I 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 outflow of that everlasting love. He, the Unchangeable, has always loved, as the apostle of love says, we love Him, because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

The deliverance from the bondage of Egypt; making them His special people; the adoption, the covenant, the giving of the Law, the service of God, and His promises (Romans 9:4); all the various 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—all these were so many individual pulses of God’s everlasting love, uniform in itself, yet 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 you have said, Wherein have You loved us? It is a characteristic of Malachi to exhibit in all its nakedness human ingratitude. This is the one voice of all people’s complaints, ignoring all God’s past and present mercies, in view of the one thing which He withholds, though they dare not put it into words: Wherein have You loved us? Within a while they forgot His works, and the wonders that He had showed them (Psalms 78:11); they made haste, they forgot His works (Psalms 106:13).

Was not Esau Jacob’s brother! says the Lord: and I loved Jacob, and Esau I have hated.

"While they were still in their mother’s womb, before any good or evil deeds of either, God said to their mother, The older shall serve the younger (Genesis 25:23). 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 it says, The Lord saw that Leah was hated (Genesis 29:31); where Jacob’s neglect of Leah, and lesser love for her 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 Chaldeans for the punishment of their sins; but the Jews He brought back, Edom He left unrestored.

And I made his mountains a waste, and his heritage for the jackals of the wilderness.

Malachi attests the first stage of fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy (Joel 3:19, vol. i. pp. 214, 215), “Edom shall be a desolate wilderness.”

In temporal things, Esau’s blessing was identical with Jacob’s; “the fatness of the earth and of the dew of heaven from above;” and the rich soil on the terraces of its mountain-sides, though yielding nothing now except wild, beautiful vegetation, and its deep glens, attest what they once must have been, when artificially watered and cultivated.

The first desolation must have been through Nebuchadnezzar, in his expedition against Egypt, when he subdued Moab and Ammon; and Edom lay in his way, as Jeremiah had foretold (Jeremiah 25:9, Jeremiah 25:21).

Whereas Edom says -

We are impoverished - ידשׁשׁ, or, more probably, “we were crushed.” Either interpretation provides an adequate meaning. Human self-confidence will admit anything concerning the past; indeed, it will even exaggerate past evil to itself, saying, “Crush us as they may, we will arise and repair our losses.”

So Ephraim said long ago (Isaiah 9:9–10), in the pride and stoutness of heart, The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn-stones: the sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars. It is the common language of what calls itself “indomitable”—in other words, “untameable”—whether spoken by conquerors or any other gambler: “we will repair our losses.” All is again staked and lost.

They shall call them the border of wickedness. Formerly, Edom had its own proper name, “the border of Edom,” just as other countries had theirs (Exodus 10:14, 10:19). There was “all the border of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 2:18), “the border of Moab” (1 Samuel 11:3), and references such as 1 Samuel 11:7; 1 Samuel 27:1; 1 Chronicles 21:12; “the whole border of Israel” (2 Chronicles 11:13), “the border of Israel” (Judges 11:22), and “the whole border of the Amorite.”

From now on, it would no longer be known by its own name, but as the border of wickedness—a place where wickedness formerly dwelt, and therefore the judgment of God and desolation from Him came upon it, making it “an accursed land.”

In a similar manner, Jeremiah says something about Jerusalem (Jeremiah 22:8–9): Many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say, every man to his neighbor, Wherfore hath the Lord done this unto this great city? Then they shall answer, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshiped other gods and served them.

Only Israel would retain its name, as it has; Edom would be blotted out completely and forever.

And your eyes shall see - Malicious pleasure in looking at the misery of Judea and Jerusalem had been a special sin of Edom: now God would show Judah the fruit of this reversal and His goodness toward them.

“You will have assurance of His love toward you and His providence over you when you see that you have returned to your own land and can inhabit it, while they cannot do this. But ‘they build and I throw down,’ and you, therefore, praise and magnify My name for this. And you shall say, ‘The Lord shall be magnified on the border of Israel; that is, His greatness shall always be manifest upon you.’”

He will be high above and exalted over the border of Israel, which shall retain its name, while Edom will have ceased to exist.

Wickedness gives its name to Edom’s border, just as in Zechariah’s vision, wickedness was removed and settled in Babylon (Zechariah 5:8, Zechariah 5:11).