Charles Ellicott Commentary Malachi 1:4

"Whereas Edom saith, We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places; thus saith Jehovah of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and men shall call them The border of wickedness, and The people against whom Jehovah hath indignation for ever." — Malachi 1:4 (ASV)

Whereas ... says. —Better, If Edom says.

We are impoverished. —Better, we are broken to pieces. Edom’s ineffectual attempts to restore itself will be looked on as proofs of God’s wrath against the nation on account of its wickedness, and will acquire for it the titles the border of wickedness, and the people against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever. “Border” means “confines,” “territory;” Latin, fines.

Keith, in Evidence of Prophecy, pages 309–310, referring to the literal fulfillment of this prophecy, writes as follows: “In recording the invasion of Demetrius, about three hundred years before the Christian era, into the land of Edom, Diodorus describes the country as a desert and the inhabitants as living without houses; nor does he mention any city in that region but Petra alone.

Yet the names of some of the cities of Arabia Petræa, enumerated by Josephus, as existing at the time when the Romans invaded Palestine—the names of eighteen cities of Palestina Tertia, of which Petra was the capital and the metropolitan see in the times of the Lower Empire—and the towns laid down in D’Anville’s map, together with the remaining ruins of towns in Edom, specified by Burckhardt and also by Laborde, give proof that Edom, after having been impoverished, did return and build the desolate places. Even as ‘the ruined towns and places,’ still visible and named, show that though the desolate places were built again according to the prophecy, they have, as likewise foretold, been thrown down, and are ‘ruined places’ lying in utter desolation.”