Malachi Chapter One, Questioning God's Love

 

Malachi 1:2 “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;

 

God begins this burden with a declaration of love toward His people. Malachi, in an interesting dialectical approach, asks on Israel’s behalf: HOW have You loved us?” The verse impugns God’s sovereign love by indicting Him with a lack of demonstrable care. This travesty of flippant callousness in opposition to God’s unceasing love for His people is utterly amazing. Starting after the Flood, one can veritably track the progress of proto-Israel from Shem (whose lineage conspicuously looms into the fore during Genesis chapter 10). We read: “And children were born also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder,” Genesis 10:21. Chapter 11 also singles out Shem and his lineage for consideration, tracing the patriarch to Abraham, to demonstrate that the bloodline of Adam, and from Adam to Noah (and through Shem) carried on in Abraham. God was narrowing His focus after the Flood to a particular bloodline for a particular purpose. Among other things, securing the coming promise given originally in Eden. “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He will bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel,” Genesis 3:15. It should be noted that Shem, by the time his great grandson Eber was born, was only 165 years old, give or take. This same patriarch was still alive (324 years old or so) when Abram (Abraham) was born.

From Shem comes the term “Semite,” which is loosely defined: “a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs.” The peoples Shem is credited for fathering are: Persia, Assyria, Chaldea, Lydia and Syria, based off of the names of his children. Seeing that Shem lived a very long time after the Flood, “and begot sons and daughters,” it is not shocking to find that his name typifies the people indigenous to the region. Following Shem we come to Eber. Reaching back to Genesis 10:21 we find that according to Moses, who compiled Genesis that Shem is, “the father (or patriarch) of all the children of Eber.” The Holy Spirit is taking pains to ensure that the reader understands that the Jews descent hails from Noah to Shem, and from Shem’s bloodline through Eber. “The children of Eber,” also sounds as if it might be a euphemism for Shem’s descendants: namely the Jews, or the Hebrews. The first time the ethnic title of Hebrews rears its head in Scripture is during the days of Abram (Abraham), during the battle of kings in the Valley of Siddim. When Sodom had been sacked by the coalition of kings, Lot had been taken captive. “Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew,” Genesis 14:13. Thrice more the term “Hebrew” comes up in Genesis: 39:14, 17, and 41:12. 39:17 seems to already link the term Hebrew with a certain geographical region, as Potiphar’s wife refers to Joseph as a “Hebrew slave.” In other words, the Hebrews (Abram, Joseph, et al) were the “children of Eber.”

 

God’s grace had been given to Noah, and from Noah the middle son, Shem, was chosen. From Shem’s many bloodlines, the one leading first to Eber, and through Eber to Abram (Abraham) was chosen. The patriarchal line becomes increasingly clearer at this point with Isaac being the son of promise, Genesis 17:15-19. It might be noted that Shem might have been alive during Isaac’s youth, since he lived 500 years after begetting Arphaxad. By the time of the approaching Exodus, Shem, Eber, and the other patriarchs had died, but the lineage of the seed of the woman through Judah remained. “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people,” Genesis 49:10. Jacob, with his dying breath, blessed his sons with prophesies of their (descendants’) future. For Judah, his lineage would produce kings (symbolized by the scepter and the title of lawgiver) until the one referred to as Shiloh comes. The word Shiloh, whose meaning is uncertain, is said to possibly derive from the Hebrew word for peace, or “shalom,” possibly meaning “one who brings peace.” If this is the case, the messianic thread God is weaving into Israel’s fabric continues to run ever deeper.

 

But now we return to Isaac’s son, Jacob. The heel-catcher, Jacob was a conniving and duplicitous man. Esau, Jacob’s twin brother and the firstborn, was a hearty man of the land. He was a robust hunter and lived off of his wit and strength. Being the firstborn, that would have given Esau primacy for the blessings Isaac wished to impart before dying, Genesis 27:4. But when Esau was gone and Isaac incapacitated from age and blindness, Rebekah and Jacob conspired to steal Esau’s blessing through trickery. As it happened, Esau had already surrendered his birthright to Jacob on account of a bowl of stew, Genesis 25:33, 34. Clearly, Esau was a man that lived in and for the moment. What lay ahead mattered little to him; nor did the consequences of the decisions he rashly made. While I have labored to present my case of God’s sovereign love for the Hebrew people until this point, we find another divergence in the path of their inception. The nation of Israel proper began in embryo in Genesis, and was carried to term in Egypt. When it became time to deliver, God led them out through Moses, and into the land he would plant them in through Joshua. Jacob’s part of the narrative shows that if nothing else, he had a much better eye for the value of future investment than his brother did. Whereas Abram (Abraham) was called out of Ur of the Chaldees so God could begin in earnest the historical and epic narrative of the Hebrew people, Jacob would be the bearer of the name by which God’s people would forevermore be recognized as: Israel, Genesis 32:28. While Abram was changed from “exalted father” to “father of a multitude” in Abraham, Jacob, the supplanter or heel-catcher was renamed Israel, meaning “He who strives with God.”