The burden of
the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi. I have loved you, saith the Lord.
Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the
Lord: yet I loved Jacob, and I hated
Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of
the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are impoverished, but we will return and
build the desolate places; thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, but
I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The
people against whom the Lord hath indignation for ever. And your eyes shall
see, and ye shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel
(Mal. 1:1–5).
(For the
children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the
purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that
calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but
Esau have I hated. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness
with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then
it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth
mercy (Rom. 9:11-16).
QUESTION
BOX:
Q. 1. “When God says ‘Jacob have I
loved, but Esau have I hated’ (Rom. 9:13; Mal. 1:2-3) I’ve heard it suggest
many times that ‘hated’ in that text means ‘loved less’ ...”
(a)
Prof. David J. Engelsma:
To translate “hated” as “loved less” is sheer
exegetical outrage. “Hated” means hated:
to abominate someone and to will his destruction. It is the opposite of “loved”
in the first part of the text. Malachi 1, the passage from which Paul quotes,
bears this out. God’s hatred of Esau moves Him to destroy Esau: “… laid his
mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.” When Edom
vows to rebuild, Jehovah declares, “They shall build, but I will throw down;
and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and; The people against,
whom the LORD hath indignation for ever” (vss. 1-5). To see the absurdity of
translating “hated” as “loved less” one needs only to read Malachi 1 this way:
“I loved Jacob, And I loved Esau less (I loved Esau also, but not as much), and
laid his mountains and his heritage waste … (and) I will throw down; and they
shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom the
LORD hath indignation for ever.” In His lesser love, God utterly destroys and
pours out His wrath! With love like this, what need is there of hatred? (Source:
The Standard Bearer, vol. 55, no. 6
[Dec. 1978], pp. 133-134)
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(b)
Rev. Angus Stewart:
[The
following is a partial transcript of a sermon preached by Rev. Angus Stewart,
entitled “God’s Doubted Love Demonstrated”—the first in a fine series of
sermons covering the book of Malachi: http://www.cprf.co.uk/audio/OTseries.htm]
When God says in verse 3, “I hated Esau,” we run up
against the common misinterpretation of that word of God. The majority in the
professing Christian church at large think that “hated” here means “loved
less”—that it means merely that God loves Esau “less” than He loves Jacob. In
other words, God’s love for Jacob is so great that the little love that He has
for Esau, in comparison to it, is as nothing—it’s as if God really “hates” Esau.
Now I’m not going to argue that this doesn’t obtain
in certain places of the Bible—this is not the issue—but I’m saying that it
certainly does not obtain here.
There are various ways of proving this. When God
says “I hated Esau,” it means that God abhorred
Esau and willed Esau’s destruction because of his sins. “Hated,” here, means
“hated,” and that’s indicated by the strong word in the Hebrew original (שָׂנֵ֑אתִי—saneti) which
simply means “hatred.”
It’s indicated too when the apostle Paul quotes
this text in Romans 9:13. He doesn’t quote it as “Jacob have I loved, and Esau
have I loved less.” He sticks with
the exact same words that Malachi used 400-500 years ago: the word “hated.”
Moreover, we learn that the word “hated,” here,
does indeed mean “hated” by the use of synonyms (words that mean approximately
the same thing) in the text. The text speaks of God showing indignation towards Edom (v. 4)—Edom is
“the people against whom the Lord hath indignation
for ever.” Indignation means burning anger. They are the people against whom
God has a burning anger forever. That’s certainly not “loved less.”
That God’s hatred is indeed hatred is also shown by
the result of this hatred. God, we’re
told in verse 4, lays Edom desolate.
That means He makes Edom an appalling sight, something you would look at and
become aghast. God has done that to Edom. You don’t do that to someone whom you
merely “love less” or just even “dislike.” You do that to someone whom you
“hate.”
Moreover, God “hates” Edom because our text speaks
of wickedness. And the question then
comes (and everyone who wants to go with the idea that “hatred means love less” has to face this), “Does God
merely love wickedness less? Is that
God’s attitude towards sin, that He
just loves it less than He loves righteousness? or even that He is just
“displeased” with it? The answer of every Christian must be that God “hates”
wickedness with all that is within His divine being.
From a further consideration, if Esau was not
rejected, how do you know that Jacob was chosen? Or, to put it slightly
differently, if Esau is not hated,
how do you know that Jacob is loved?
Those two things in the Bible hang together—“Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated.”
If He didn’t hate Esau, then He really didn’t love Jacob. And if He didn’t hate
Esau, this word of God in Malachi 1 explaining to the Israelites that God loved
Israel because He destroyed Edom
doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s a fool’s comfort that Malachi would then be
bringing.
Conclusively, therefore, “hated” here means
“hated”—God hates Esau.
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