Malachi 1:1-10
WE have at length reached the last book of that part of the Holy Scriptures which is commonly called the Old Testament. The prophecy of Malachi does not contain a reference to the time of its utterance, but its message is exactly suited to the end position which it occupies in both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. As the prophecies of Haggai and Zechariah belong to the period of Ezra, so that of Malachi suggests the time of Nehemiah, and he is believed to be the last inspired penman of the Old, as the apostle John was of the New Testament. The Old Testament Scriptures were now complete, and we have no knowledge of subsequent prophets, if there were such, until Christ came.
The burden of the word of Jehovah to Israel by Malachi is a very solemn, searching message, but it begins with a touching expression of His heart: “I have loved you.” How unfeeling, how cold, is their answer: “Wherein hast Thou loved us?”
Thirteen hundred years had now passed since Esau and Jacob completed their spans of life and passed into eternity, but their lives now pass in review before God, as He declares “I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau,” The occasion for this sentence is found in the history of each as told in Genesis, but the children of Esau closely followed in the footsteps of then father, and God identifies them with him here. We have seen in several Scriptures, notably Obadiah’s short prophecy, the judgment of God concerning the nation which sprang from Esau; like their father, they had no regard for God (Scripture records not one as turning to Him), and they hated Jacob and his children. Yet it is only at the end of the Old Testament that God says, “And I hated Esau”; this is not the sovereignty of God (as in Romans 9), but what He felt having seen the course of one who made himself an enemy, and whose children kept up the enmity, deepened it.
Verse 3: “dragons” may be read “jackals”—wild creatures of the desert, Verse 4: “the border of wickedness” means the territory, or land, of wickedness. Verse 5 is more exactly translated “ ... ..and ye shall say, the Lord (Jehovah) is magnified beyond the border of Israel” (N. T.)
After speaking of His love for the children of Jacob, God in verse 6 begins to lay before them their shameful treatment of Himself; and, mark, this is after the return from the seventy years’ captivity in Babylon. Alas! the majority of the people had evidently not profited at all by the humbling God had given them, Deeper lessons must yet be put before the Jews, and fearful trials given them, before they will turn in heart to their God. The end of this book however reveals that there was a remnant at this time who really feared Him and thought upon His name, giving joy to Himself in an utterly contrary scene.
ML 11/14/1937