“Esau I Have Hated”
God’s declaration in Malachi 1:3, “I have hated Esau,” follows immediately on the heels of his declaration of love for Israel. What does it mean that God hated Esau? At least part of an answer to this question lies the way in which God’s hatred of Esau/Edom was expressed. In a nutshell, they were not his chosen people and therefore God would not allow them to become prosperous or dominant. Malachi expressed this in two ways. The first was that God had given them a second-rate land as their inheritance; the second......