Malachi 1
God’s Love and Honor
Malachi’s prophecies read like a conversation between God and His people. In this section, God reminded Israel that He had chosen them and had been faithful to His covenant while rebuking them for doubting His love and defaming His honor.
A Message from God
Vs. 1 - A pronouncement: The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.
“The word of Yahweh" refers to a message that comes from Him with His full authority. "Yahweh" is the name that God used in relationship to Israel as the covenant-making and covenant-keeping God. What follows is evidence that Israel was in trouble with Yahweh because the Jews had not kept the Mosaic Covenant. Yahweh, of course, was completely faithful to His part of the covenant. - Thomas Constable
Failure to Love
God: I Have Loved You - Vs. 2 - “I have loved you,” says the Lord.
Malachi’s message began with the overflowing love of God for His people. This is where God always begins. He had chosen His people and had communicated and demonstrated His affection for them time and time again.
Israel: How Have You Loved Us? - vs. 2 - Yet you ask, “How have you loved us?”
This question seems ridiculous. But the confusion makes more sense with context. Most commentators date Malachi’s ministry around a century after Cyrus’ decree that Jews could return to Jerusalem. So after around 100 years had passed, God’s people were back in their promised land, the walls of Jerusalem rebuilt, and the temple of God restored. But progress came with problems.
Israel was still a small, seemingly insignificant people group under the authority of the Persian empire. And as that first generation of exiles began to die, and as their social and spiritual problems persisted, they wondered, “Where was their glorious day of peace and prosperity? Where was the grand fulfillment of the prophetic promises?” The people were struggling, and God was silent.
So as this conversation begins, we find that the people’s problems have obscured God’s provision. And in their desperation, they began to doubt His love.
God: I loved Jacob - vs. 2-3 - I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau.
To prove that He had always loved His people, God reminded them that He had specifically chosen them for Himself when He could have selected the Edomites, or any other nation.
God loved Jacob in that He sovereignly elected Him and his descendants for a covenant relationship with Himself, as His special possession. When He said here that He hated Esau, He meant that He did not choose to bestow His favor on Esau to the extent that He did on Jacob. - Thomas Constable
God hated Esau insomuch as He did not choose to make a covenant of blessing with him and his descendants but instead destroyed them for their rebellion. - E. Ray Clendenen
The apostle Paul quoted Malachi in his letter to the Romans to illustrate how God, in the mysterious dance of divine sovereignty and human will, had always chosen to accomplish His redemptive plan through a specific remnant.
Within Isaac and Rebekah’s cultural context, the younger son should have “served” the older brother. But God, in His infinite wisdom and foreknowledge, elected Jacob to bear His name.
Romans 9:10-13 - Rebekah conceived children through one man, our father Isaac. For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand—not from works but from the one who calls—she was told, The older will serve the younger. As it is written: I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.
Vs. 4 - They will be called a wicked country and the people the Lord has cursed forever.
It seems clear from Malachi’s description here, as well as from the whole biblical text, that Edom’s judgment was not arbitrary and unjust, but rather the result of the people’s own wickedness. God interacted with Esau’s descendants as He does with all men. He reveals Himself to the receptive and rejects the rebellious.
Failure to Honor
God: You have not honored me - vs. 6 - But if I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is your fear of me?
Through Malachi, God asked the priests of Israel why they showed so little respect and honor to Him in their sacrifices. They called God Father, they called Him Master, yet they did not honor Him and show Him reverence with their sacrifices. - David Guzik
Israel: How have we dishonored You? - vs. 6-7 - Yet you ask, “How have we despised your name?”
“How have we defiled you?” you ask.
Again, the response seems ludicrous in light of all that Malachi would reveal next. The lack of respect was glaringly obvious.
God: You have disobeyed and disrespected my name. - vs. 7 (NLT) - You defile them by saying the altar of the Lord deserves no respect.
The Lord responded through Malachi that the priests had despised the Lord by presenting defiled sacrifices to Him (Leviticus 22:2; Leviticus 22:17-30; Leviticus 22:32). Defiled sacrifices were sacrifices that were not ritually clean or acceptable, as the Law specified. - Thomas Constable
The people and priests were offering God their spoiled leftovers. Their deeds revealed their disdain.
Vs. 10 - “I wish one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would no longer kindle a useless fire on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord of Armies, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.
The Lord ironically wished the priests would shut the temple gates and stop offering sacrifices since they had so little regard for Him. He was displeased with them and would not accept any offerings from them. Obviously the Lord had ordained the offering of sacrifices under the Law, but He preferred that the priests not offer them rather than offering them when they were meaningless, simply as an obligation. - Thomas Constable
Religious activity not rooted in humble adoration of God as the source of all goodness and authority is… repulsive to Him because it slanders His character. - E. Ray Clendenen
