The event to which “Malachi” appeals as evidence for God’s rejection of Edom is _the desolation_ of the latter’s ancient _heritage_, _and_ the abandonment of it to the _jackals of the desert_. Scholars used to think that these vague phrases referred to some act of the Persian kings: some removal of the Edomites from the lands of the Jews in order to make room for the returned exiles.[1007] But “Malachi” says expressly that it was Edom’s own _heritage_ which was laid desolate. This can only be Mount Esau or Se’ir, and the statement that it was delivered _to the jackals of the desert_ proves that the reference is to that same expulsion of Edom from their territory by the Nabatean Arabs which we have already seen the Book of Obadiah relate about the beginning of the Exile.[1008]
But it is now time to give in full the opening passage of “Malachi,” in which he appeals to this important event as proof of God’s distinctive love for Israel, and, “Malachi” adds, of His power beyond Israel’s border (“Mal.” chap. i. 2-5).
_I have loved you, saith Jehovah. But ye say, “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” Is not Esau brother to Jacob?—oracle of Jehovah—and I have loved Jacob and Esau have I hated. I have made his mountains desolate, and given his heritage to the jackals of the desert. Should _the people of_ Edom say,[1009] “We are destroyed, but we will rebuild the waste places,” thus saith Jehovah of Hosts, They may build, but I will pull down: men shall call them “The Border of Wickedness” and “The People with whom Jehovah is wroth for ever.” And your eyes shall see it, and yourselves shall say, “Great is Jehovah beyond Israel’s border.”_
2. “HONOUR THY FATHER” (Chap. i. 6-14).
From God’s Love, which Israel have doubted, the prophet passes to His Majesty or Holiness, which they have wronged. Now it is very remarkable that the relation of God to the Jews in which the prophet should see His Majesty illustrated is not only His lordship over them but His Fatherhood: _A son honours a father, and a servant his lord; but if I be Father, where is My honour? and if I be Lord, where is there reverence for Me? saith Jehovah of Hosts_.[1010] We are so accustomed to associate with the Divine Fatherhood only ideas of love and pity that the use of the relation to illustrate not love but Majesty, and the setting of it in parallel to the Divine Kingship, may seem to us strange. Yet this was very natural to Israel. In the old Semitic world, even to the human parent, honour was due before love. _Honour thy father and thy mother_, said the Fifth Commandment; and when, after long shyness to do so, Israel at last ventured to claim Jehovah as the Father of His people, it was at first rather with the view of increasing their sense of His authority and their duty of reverencing Him, than with the view of bringing Him near to their hearts and assuring them of His tenderness. The latter elements, it is true, were not absent from the conception. But even in the Psalter, in which we find the most intimate and tender fellowship of the believer with God, there is only one passage in which His love for His own is compared to the love of a human father.[1011] And in the other very few passages of the Old Testament where He is revealed or appealed to as the Father of the nation, it is, with two exceptions,[1012] in order either to emphasise His creation of Israel or His discipline. So in Jeremiah,[1013] and in an anonymous prophet of the same period perhaps as “Malachi.”[1014] This hesitation to ascribe to God the name of Father, and this severe conception of what Fatherhood meant, was perhaps needful for Israel in face of the sensuous ideas of the Divine Fatherhood cherished by their heathen neighbours.[1015] But, however this may be, the infrequency and austerity of Israel’s conception of God’s Fatherhood, in contrast with that of Christianity, enables us to understand why “Malachi” should employ the relation as proof, not of the Love, but of the Majesty and Holiness of Jehovah.