Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Malachi 1:1 - 1:5
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
God's Peculiar Love For Israel
v. 1. The burden of the word of the Lord, the sentence which He found Himself compelled to pronounce, to Israel by Malachi.
v. 2. I have loved you, saith the Lord, Jehovah placing this at the head of His message as a fundamental, absolute fact. Yet ye say, in expressing their doubts of His sincerity, Wherein hast Thou loved us? What proofs could He adduce to show the greatness of His love? The form of presentation throughout is nervous, vivid. Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord, his full brother at tha. ; yet I loved Jacob
v. 3. and I hated Esau, in the sense of not loving him, without any idea of vindictivenes, and laid his mountains and his heritage, the land which he inhabited south of the Dead Sea, waste for the dragons of the wilderness, so that it was a fitting home for jackals.
v. 4. Whereas Edom saith, or, "Although Edom should say," in an attempt to set aside the ruling of the Lord, We are impoverished, ruined, but we will return and build the desolate places, rebuild the ruins, thus saith the Lord of hosts, They shall build, make an attempt to restore their original power, but I will throw down, destroying their country a second time; and they shall call them "The border of wickedness," that is, men would designate them as the region of wickedness, punished by God, and "The people against whom the Lord hath indignation forever," a monument of God's wrath.
v. 5. And your eyes shall see, the facts before their eves convincing them, and ye shall say, The Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel, rather, "over the border of Israel. " The children of Israel would be compelled to acknowledge the particular favor and love which the Lord showed them by so many manifestations.