Malachi 1:3

But you reply, “In what way have you loved us?” Yahweh replies, “ This is how I loved you: It is true that your ancestor Jacob was [RHQ] Esau’s younger brother, and I loved Jacob, but I rejected Esau. I caused his hilly region to become ◄desolate/a place where crops did not grow►. I caused the land which he possessed to become a desert where jackals/wolves live.”

Translation for Translators

In The King James Version

And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

In Context

2Yahweh says, “I have always loved you Israeli people.”

4The descendants of Esau who live in Edom may say, “ Yes, we have been crushed/ruined, but we will rebuild houses in the ruins.” But the Commander of the armies of angels replies, “They may build houses again, but I will demolish them again. Their country will be called ‘The land where wicked people live’ and their people will be called ‘The people with whom Yahweh is angry forever’.”

Read all of Malachi 1

Cross References

Deuteronomy 21:15“Suppose that a man has two wives, but he likes one of them and dislikes the other one. And suppose that they both give birth to sons, and the oldest son is the child of the woman that he does not like.

Isaiah 34:9The streams in Edom will be full of burning pitch/tar, and the ground will be covered with burning sulfur.

Isaiah 34:14Animals that live in the desert and hyenas/wolves will be there, and wild goats will bleat/call to each other. There will also be creatures/animals that roam around at night.

Jeremiah 9:11Yahweh also says, “I will cause Jerusalem to become a heap of ruins, and only jackals/wolves will live there. I will destroy the towns of Judah, with the result that they will be completely deserted; no one will live there.”

Jeremiah 49:10But I will cause everything in Edom to be destroyed, and there will be nothing left, and there will be no place for people to hide. Many of [HYP] the children, their relatives and their neighbors, will die, and Edom will not exist any more.

Jeremiah 51:37Babylon will become a heap of ruins, a place where jackals/wolves live. It will become a place that people are horrified about and will ridicule; it will be a place where no one lives.

Matthew Henry on Malachi 1:2-6

Malachi God's prophets were his witnesses to his church, each in his day, for several ages, witnesses for him and his authority, witnesses against sin and sinners, attesting the true intents of God's providences in his dealings with his people then and the kind intentions of his grace concerning his church in the days of the Messiah, to whom all the prophets bore witness, for they all agreed in their testimony; and now we have only one witness more to call, and we have done with our evidence; and though he be the… Read the whole commentary →

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