For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election (i.e. the principle of his electing to privileges of his own good will and purpose, and not on the ground of any fancied human claims) might stand ( μένῃ, i.
e. should remain in force, ever applicable), not of works, but of him that calleth; it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger (Genesis 25:23). As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated (Malachi 1:2, Malachi 1:3).
It is here to be carefully observed that, though Jacob and Esau were individuals, yet it is not as such, but as the progenitors and representatives of races, that they are here spoken of. So it was, too, in both the passages quoted from the Old Testament.
In Genesis 25:23 the words are, "Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger."
In Malachi 1:2 the prophet's entire drift is to set forth the Divine favour shown, from the first and still, to the race of Israel as compared with the race of Edom. Hence, as well as from the purport of the chapter as announced at its beginning, it is evident that the subject of individual predestination does not really come in, as it did in ch.
8., but only that of nations or races of men to a position of privilege as inheritors of promises. It will be seen, also, as we go on, that the introduction in illustration of the case of the individual Pharaoh does not really affect the drift of the chapter as above explained.
The strong expression, "Esau I hated" (applicable, as shown above, not to the individual Esau, but to the race of Edom) is capable of being explained as meaning, "I excluded him from the love I showed to Israel."
The evidence of such alleged hatred the prophet expresses thus: "and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness;" whereas Israel, it is implied, had been protected from such desolation.
As to the necessary force of the word in the Hebrew ( אכש), we may compare Genesis 29:30, Genesis 29:31, where in Genesis 29:30 it is said that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, and in Genesis 29:31, as meaning the same thing, that Leah was hated; and Deuteronomy 21:15, "If a man have two wives, one beloved and another hated."
In both these passages the same verb is used as in Malachi, and need not, in either case, mean more than disregarding one in comparison with another who is loved. For the use, in the New Testament, of the Greek word μισεῖν in a sense for the expression of which our English "to hate," in its usual acceptation, is evidently too strong, cf.
Luke 14:26 (to be compared with Matthew 10:37) and John 12:25; so also, though not so distinctly, Matt, John 6:24 and Luke 16:13. It is, moreover, not improbable that the Prophet Malachi, in his patriotic ardour, had in his mind the idea of wrath against the race of Edom on the part of the LORD, as "the people," as he afterwards says, "against whom the LORD hath indignation for ever."
But even so, the glowing language of prophets need not be taken as dogmatic assertion; and certainly not as binding us to believe that any race of men is, in the literal sense of the expression, hated of Cod.
Such a view is in evident contradiction to the general teaching of Scripture, and notably so to that of St. Paul, who has so emphatically declared that God "made of one blood all nations of men," and is One to all.