One of the most puzzling verses in the whole Bible is where God says this:
Malachi 1:3 – “Jacob I have loved; but Esau I have hated”
If that doesn’t make you do a double-take while you’re reading your Bible, I’m not sure what will. It may be transcribed by Malachi, but it’s a direct quote from God. The same God who tells us to pray for those who persecute us, who says to feed and clothe our enemies, is right here declaring His hatred for Esau.
Some Christians swallow Malachi 1:3 without a second thought. If God hated Esau, then Esau must have deserved it.
But others wonder: Is this actually something God literally meant, or is there something deeper going on?
Let’s unpack the context of Malachi 1.
Making the Problem Worse
The book of Malachi is a series of conversations between the people of Israel and their God. These Israelites had become quite stagnate and lazy in their spiritual walk, and Malachi’s book was written to snap them out of it.
In the opening lines of the book, the people of Israel come at God with a shockingly disdainful and entitled attitude.
Malachi 1:1-3 – 1 The burden of the word of the Lord to Israel by Malachi.
2 “I have loved you,” says the Lord.
“Yet you say, ‘In what way have You loved us?’
Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?”
Says the Lord.
“Yet Jacob I have loved;
3 But Esau I have hated,
And laid waste his mountains and his heritage
For the jackals of the wilderness.”
God declares His love for His people, and they ungratefully reply, “How? How have you loved us?”
God’s response: “Didn’t I love Jacob and hate Esau?”
If you’re familiar with the book of Genesis, you probably know about the twin brothers born to Isaac and Rebekah. Esau was born first, but Jacob was actually the child of promise- the one whom the eventual Messiah would someday come through. Not only that, Jacob’s descendants received the Promised Land, the Bible, and a covenant relationship with God- something Esau’s descendants didn’t receive. And this is what God is referring to about loving Jacob and hating Esau.
But it gets worse. As we continue in the verses, we see that God is not even talking about Jacob and Esau the individuals. God is talking about the people groups who descended from Jacob and Esau- the nations of Israel and Edom.
Malachi 1:4-5 – 4 Even though Edom has said,
“We have been impoverished,
But we will return and build the desolate places,”
Thus says the Lord of hosts:
“They may build, but I will throw down;
They shall be called the Territory of Wickedness,
And the people against whom the Lord will have indignation forever.
5 Your eyes shall see,
And you shall say,
‘The Lord is magnified beyond the border of Israel.’
So when God spoke of loving Jacob and hating Esau above, He is not even primarily talking about the men themselves. God is saying He “hates” an entire nation of people.
The problem that this passage presents just got a whole lot worse.
Should you hate your father and mother?
Now that we have identified what is meant by “Jacob” and “Esau,” let’s drill down on defining “hate.”
There are two definitions or uses of “hate” in the Bible. There is the traditional definition of hate, which means to have strong contempt for someone, to despise them, to harbor extreme ill will toward them. It is this type of hate that the Lord tells us to avoid, even toward our enemies (Matthew 5:43-45).
But there’s another type of hate in the Bible which can mean “to give lesser preference” or “to not prioritize.” And this use of the word does not imply contempt or enmity; it merely means to give something second or third (or lesser) place than first. There’s a really clear example of this in:
Luke 14:26 – If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.
Is Jesus using the word “hate” here to mean that we should have animosity for members of our own family? Of course not. He is simply saying that we should give anyone else- even our own family- a lesser place in our priorities than we give to Him. In fact, we can prove this by looking at a parallel passage in:
Matthew 10:37 – He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.
It’s obvious that Jesus does not mean for us to “hate” our families in the sense that we bear ill-will or contempt for them.
And it would not be hard for us to find a plethora of verses that speak of God’s love for all mankind. The same God who instructs us to love our enemies would of course love His own.
Romans 5:8- …while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us…
John 15:13 – Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
John 3:16 – For God so loved the world…
Chosen for a Purpose
So let’s go back to Malachi one more time and try to figure out what God means in verse 2. Does God hate Esau/the Edomites in the sense that He bears extreme ill will toward those people? That they were doomed to God’s scorn, villainy and an eventual eternity in hell even before they existed?
No. God is responding to the complaint of the Israelites: “How have you loved us?” In other words: “What have you ever done for us?”
God replies that He has given the descendants of Jacob much more favor than He gave the descendants of Esau. God chose them as the recipients of His Word. He gave them the promised land of Israel. He even chose them to be the nation through whom the Messiah would someday come. God is saying: “I chose you all for that purpose over Esau’s kids. I preserved you in spite of your rebellion because of that purpose. The mere fact that you’re standing here right now is because of my undeserved grace and favor.”
This wasn’t a slight against Esau and the Edomites; it was simply a fact. The Messiah could only come through one of those bloodlines, and God picked Jacob’s. It wasn’t because Jacob was a good man (he often wasn’t) or that Esau was worse (Esau was arguably a better man than Jacob). Only one could be chosen, and the Messiah was chosen to come through Jacob’s bloodline.
Jacob was chosen for a purpose to fulfill in God’s plans. And God chose Esau for different purposes.
Every Israelite individual still had their own choice to make whether to follow God- and the same is true for every Edomite individual. And the same is true for you and I.
If you’d like to dive deeper into why this particular passage in Malachi is so controversial today, here is an episode of the Weird Stuff in the Bible podcast addressing it:
