The burden of the word of Jehovah to Israel by Malachi.
Malachi opens the last book of the Old Testament with a title, not a story. The verse names a heavy word, a nation, and a man we are told almost nothing about.
Where the ESV says "oracle," older translations say "burden." They also print God's name as "Jehovah," where the ESV has "the LORD." The word opens other prophecies too, and scholars read it in more than one way.
Besides its common use, this word starts several prophecies: "The burden of Babylon," "the burden of Moab" (Isaiah 13:1; 15:1, and others). Scholars do not agree on the force of massa in such places. Its natural meaning would be "a judgement that lies heavy on the people." But some take it to mean "an oracle or sentence pronounced against them." The word also occurs in Jeremiah 23:33-38, where it is "the burden of the Lord." The false prophets were not to use this expression, as if they had a message from God. If they did, it would bring judgement on them.
The verse names the prophet and says nothing else about him. One writer sees purpose in that silence.
It is clear that God has a purpose in His silence as truly as in His speech. The prophet differs from other men in one thing: he gives us not man's mind but God's revelations — though certainly for the good of man. If then the person of the prophet is hidden, we may gather that it is best to leave it so. The purpose is met only by what God had to say.
The verse gives no father and no birthplace. Some have argued the name is a title, not a person's name.
Critics have therefore doubted whether Malachi is really the prophet's personal name. Many believe it is only an ideal name, given to an unknown person because of his message. Malachi means "my messenger" or "the messenger of Jehovah." … One reason for this theory is that "the first verse does not contain any further personal description, and nothing is said about his father or place of birth." But Obadiah and Habakkuk leave out the same details. … There is no reason to doubt that Malachi is the real name of the prophet.
The name also matters inside the book. It ties the prophet himself to chapter 3.
It is interesting to note, especially in connection with chapter 3, that "Malachi" means the messenger of Jehovah. So the prophet, as was often the case, was himself a type — a picture pointing beyond himself.
The message is national. Only a fraction of the nation was there to hear it.
This prophecy is a message to God's chosen earthly people. All Israel may fall within the scope of the prophecy. Yet it goes only to the small part (often called "the remnant") set free from the captivity of Babylon. We learn this from other parts of Scripture. Most of the people were still in captivity. But in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah some sixty thousand had been allowed to return to the land of their fathers. There they rebuilt the Temple, revived the sacrifices, built the walls and set up the gates of Jerusalem.
The earlier messages had targets that this one no longer had.
It was no longer a charge of idolatry, as in the days of the Kings. It was not a call to return to the Land, as in the days of Ezra. It was not a call to rebuild the Temple, as in the days of Haggai, or to rebuild the walls, as in the days of Nehemiah. Idolatry had stopped. The remnant were back in the Land. The Temple stood rebuilt, and the round of religious observances went on with the appearance of outward order. Outwardly they held a right position, with a correct ritual, yet their moral state was completely wrong. So the burden of the Lord, in this last message, is mainly a solemn appeal to the conscience of the remnant about their low moral and spiritual state.
This message closes the Old Testament. What follows it is silence.
Jehovah's silence for four centuries in the history of His chosen people is very solemn. Think of the widespread evil they pursued for so long, recorded by their inspired writers, despite the goodness and patience God had shown them. … In this solemn way the Old Testament writings came to a close. We have no God-given records of the Hebrew people for the next four hundred years. May we ponder its grave significance!
You would expect a heavy word to open with an accusation. It does not.
Whatever the state of His people, the Lord never forgets, and never hesitates to declare, His love for them. It is in this way indeed that He brings their true condition to light. We might have supposed that the first word would be warning and rebuke for their sins. But no. God's first word is one that ought to have recalled the length and breadth, the depth and height, of that unchanging love. That love had flowed out in His mercy and grace from the call of Abraham until now.
- Burden. The heading word means a weight. It is either a judgement pressing on a people or a sentence spoken against them; commentators differ on which.
- Bearer. The verse tells us nothing about the man. One view is that God hides him on purpose, so that only what God had to say remains.
- Messenger. His name means "my messenger," and it ties the man himself to chapter 3.
- Reach. The word is addressed to Israel as a whole, but lands on the small group brought back from Babylon.
- Weight. The burden is not about idols, exile or ruined walls. It is about a right position held with a wrong heart. And God brings that charge only after telling them He has loved them.
I have loved you, saith Jehovah; but ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith Jehovah, and I loved Jacob,
God opens His message not with a charge or a warning, but with love. The people answer Him with a question. That exchange sets the tone for the whole book. It raises two questions: why would anyone doubt God's love, and what does it mean that He loved Jacob?
God declares His love before He names a single sin. One writer shows how deliberate that order is.
Whatever the state of His people, the Lord never forgets, and never hesitates to declare, His love for them. It is in this way indeed that He brings their true condition to light. We might have expected His first word to be a warning and a rebuke for their sins. But no. God's first word should have reminded them of the length and breadth, the depth and height, of that unchanging love. That love had flowed out in His mercy and grace from the call of Abraham until now. It is the same in the New Testament letters. God always shows His heart for His saints before He gives the warnings and corrections they need… We can never be reminded too often that we do not belong to the Lord because we love Him, but because He has loved us and made us what we are.
They had been through hard years, and they read hardship as proof that God did not care.
Satisfied with themselves, they were dissatisfied with God. So when the prophet made his first statement — "I have loved you, says the LORD" — they challenge it at once. Many troubles afflicted the Jews in Palestine in those years. God allowed these troubles as a chastisement because of their state. They resented them, and saw them as harshness, the opposite of love. So they challenged the statement, in an insolent way, asking, "How have you loved us?"
Their answering back runs through the whole book.
If God reminds them of His love, they say, "How have you loved us?" If He rebukes them for despising His name, they say, "How have we despised it?" If He accuses them of wearying Him, they say, "How have we wearied Him?" If God charges them with robbery, they say, "How have we robbed You?"
God could have said "Israel," the honoured name. He says "Jacob."
God's love is free. In Malachi He appeals to His people on the ground of the love He had shown to Jacob, and He uses the name that recalls their father's natural character — a character stamped on his descendants too, before divine grace had made him Israel… The name shows how little the "worm Jacob" had deserved divine love. But when He has to say, in contrast, "Esau I have hated," He marks out the wickedness on their part that stirred His anger against them… The free love of divine grace has no matching free hate. God is patient toward the creatures He has made.
Many read God's word about Esau as if He spoke it at the children's birth. The timing matters.
God did not say "I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated" before the children were born. He said it hundreds of years later, after the real character and practical ways of each had been shown in full. Before the children were born, God said only this: "the older shall serve the younger." It is more than a sad mistake to represent God as hating a man before he was born.
God answers with proof: one from the past, one from the future.
The Lord takes them back to the past and reminds them of the sovereign love that chose their father Jacob. He leads them on to the future and shows them that His love has purposed to make Israel the centre of blessing on the earth… In the prophet's day they claimed they could not see His love. But the Lord replies that a day is coming when they will see.
We can make the same mistake. We read God's discipline as a sign that He no longer loves us.
The Lord may have to speak to us in the most serious way about our moral condition. He may have to deal with us severely because of it. But behind His rebukes and His chastenings there is love. The hand that strikes is moved by a heart that loves.
- Love speaks first. God's opening word to a failing people is not rebuke but love — and that love is what exposes their real condition.
- Love doubted. They measured His love by their circumstances and resented His chastening. The same "How?" comes back at every charge in the book.
- Love is free. He names Jacob, not Israel — the undeserving name — so no one can imagine the love was earned.
- Love, then judgment. God spoke the word about Esau centuries later, after Esau's line had shown what it was. Free grace has no matching free hate.
- Love will be seen. The proof runs from a choice made in the past to a day when their own eyes will see the Lord magnified.
and I hated Esau; and made his mountains a desolation, and [gave] his inheritance to the jackals of the wilderness.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
If Edom say, We are broken down, but we will build again the ruined places, -- thus saith Jehovah of hosts They shall build, but I will throw down; and [men] shall call them the territory of wickedness, and the people against whom Jehovah hath indignation for ever.
Malachi opens with God's love for Israel, and He proves it by pointing across the border to Edom, the nation that came from Esau, Jacob's brother. Verse 4 gives Edom's reply to its ruin and God's answer back: can a nation out-build His judgment, and why does His anger last "forever"?
(The older translation these writers used reads "the border of wickedness" where the ESV has "the wicked country".)
Edom does not deny the ruin. It answers with a building plan, and one commentator hears Esau's own defiance in it.
"And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste." God was against him. Edom says, "We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins." Here we see the strength of will to the last: he would fight it out even with God.
That reply carries a spirit anyone can copy. What God tears down, self-confidence plans to put back up.
In verse 4 we get another thing — independence. God has pulled down. Well, we will build it up again. That is the character. Nothing marks departure from God more than independence. Yet how often we bring God into certain things where we think we cannot do without Him, while there is a sad independence in what we think we can manage ourselves!
God does not stop the building. He lets it rise and throws it down. One commentator draws two lessons from this for anyone who judges God by what he can see today.
Edom would try to build in the energy of their own strength. But God was against them, and He would throw down and make them a byword among their neighbours. … Two most instructive lessons flow from this. First, that God is not to be judged by present circumstances. It is the result of His ways that vindicates His name. Faith always justifies God in His dealings with His people; but in the end all His ways will be seen, as here, to express both His love and His truth.
Verse 4 names the wickedness behind God's anger. That matters for how we read His choice of Jacob.
On the other hand, if He has to say in contrast, "I hated Esau," He carefully marks the wickedness on their part which had called out His anger against them. "They shall call them the border of wickedness, and the people against whom the Lord has indignation for ever." This was not, as in the former case, before the children were born, or had done good or evil; and the free love of divine grace has no matching free hate, but patient longsuffering toward the creatures He had made. "Esau have I hated" was said at the close of the Old Testament, after a long trial stretching over many centuries.
Another writer points out that the proof here is drawn "not from God's action towards Esau himself, but from God's judgments upon his posterity." Those judgments fell because of Edom's unbending hatred of Israel.
The word "forever" is not just strong language. The hatred it names shows up again at the end of the Bible story, in the man who ruled Judea when Christ was born.
The name Idumea is the Greek form of Edom, the land of the descendants of Esau… Hatred, jealousy and bitter hostility against God and the people of God mark the Edomites all through the Old Testament records. The last of the prophetic "burdens" declares them to be the people against whom Jehovah has indignation for ever (Mal. 1:4). And the New Testament opens with the effort of the Edomite, who ruled Edom as well as Judea and Galilee, to destroy Him who was born King of the Jews (Matt 2).
Edom's border is not the last word. A second border stands against it, and that contrast is God's proof of the love Israel doubted.
The Lord takes them back to the past and reminds them of the sovereign love that chose their father Jacob. He leads them on to the future and shows them that His love has purposed to make Israel the centre of blessing on the earth… In the prophet's day they claimed they could not see His love. They said, "How have you loved us?" But the Lord replies that a day is coming when you will see… Edom may try to oppose, but all in vain; Edom will be called "the border of wickedness," but "the Lord will be magnified from the border of Israel."
- Defiance — Edom admits the ruin but not the God behind it. The plan to rebuild is Esau's old will, still fighting it out with God.
- Independence — the same spirit lives in us whenever we call God in for what we cannot manage, then build the rest ourselves.
- Decree — God does not block the building. He lets it rise, throws it down, and leaves the builders with a name instead of a city.
- Cause — the anger is not random. Love chose Jacob before he had done anything. God's word against Esau comes at the Old Testament's close, after centuries of trial and marked wickedness.
- Result — "forever" held all the way to the Edomite ruler who tried to kill the newborn King. Yet across from the border of wickedness stands the border of Israel, from which the Lord will be magnified.
And your eyes shall see [it], and ye shall say, Jehovah is magnified beyond the border of Israel.
Israel had just answered God's love with a question: "How have you loved us?" Verse 5 is God's reply — a day is coming when they will see the proof with their own eyes and say it themselves.
What their eyes will see is the collapse of Edom's determination to rebuild. Edom is the nation descended from Esau. It answers God's judgment with defiance, not repentance.
"And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the jackals of the wilderness." God was against him. "Whereas Edom says, We are impoverished, but we will return and build the desolate places." Here we see the strength of will right to the end: he would fight it out even with God. "Thus says Jehovah of hosts, They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them, The border of wickedness, and, The people against whom Jehovah has indignation forever."
The phrase points outward. Edom lay outside Israel's land. That is where God showed His greatness.
Now God maintained His attitude of judgment against Esau, as verses 4 and 5 show, and so magnified Himself beyond the border of Israel.
Some older translations read "from the border of Israel" instead of the ESV's "beyond the border."
The people wanted evidence of love in their present circumstances. God gives it by pointing backwards to His choice of Jacob and forwards to what He still intends for the nation.
The Lord not only reminds His people of His love, He would gladly recover them by unfolding the purposes of His love… He takes them back to the past and reminds them of the sovereign love that chose their father Jacob. He leads them on to the future and shows them that love has purposed to make Israel the centre of blessing on the earth. "The Lord will be magnified," but it will be from the "border of Israel."
Because the seeing is still future, the present cannot measure God's heart. And the promise comes at the worst moment in Israel's spiritual life.
Two very instructive lessons flow from this. First, we must not judge God by present circumstances. It is the result of His ways that vindicates His name. Faith always justifies God in His dealings with His people. But in the end we shall see that all His ways, as here, express both His love and His truth. The second lesson is that God never lets the state of His people block the carrying out of His purposes of grace. He declares their future blessing at the very moment when He is about to expose Israel's wretched spiritual condition. Knowing this should humble us. It should also give us a deeper sense of the sin of coldness, indifference and backsliding in the presence of such unchanging grace and love.
Verse 5 and verse 11 name the same end. The blessing lands on the people; the greatness belongs to God.
Satan's power, and the intrusion of the flesh and the world, ruined the testimony of God's ancient people. They have ruined the testimony of God's people today in the same way. Yet in the end God's purposes will prevail, for the earthly people and the heavenly people alike. The glorious result will be that "the Lord will be magnified" and His name "shall be great" (verses 5 and 11). We shall be blessed, but He will be magnified.
The same doubt returns today. The answer is the same: look at what love settled long before your circumstances began.
And are we tempted in our day, because the way is rough, to call God's love in question and say again, "How have You loved us?" Then let us remind our souls once more of the Father's sovereign love that chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Let us remember His settled purpose to get glory to Himself in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout the ages of ages. Do not let the passing sorrows of time dim our vision of that love, even for a moment. It chose us before time was, and it will bless us for ever when time has ended.
- Doubt — Israel asked for proof of God's love; verse 5 answers not with an argument but with a date: your own eyes will see it.
- Judgment — Edom keeps rebuilding, and God keeps throwing down. One border is called wicked. The other is where His greatness shows.
- Reach — His greatness shows outside Israel's land, not only inside it.
- Grace — God promises their future blessing at the very moment He is about to expose their condition. Their state never blocks His purpose.
- Result — the story ends with Him magnified, not us: we shall be blessed, He will be great.