Ancient hatreds between brothers led to those same types of hatreds we see in our world today. It is not in man to admit their failings and to forgive without God and ultimately it will play out in His hands. Forgiveness is not an option for Christians… it is commanded. The sins of others or those that we commit are festering wounds if we hold onto them. We need to turn them over to God asking for His will not ours. In doing so His name alone will be exalted among all nations of the earth. God is in total control and does not need our directions He only needs our submission.
Edom was a nation descended from Esau, and they shared Esau’s unbelief and self-confidence. Destruction made Israel reexamine her relationship to God. But destruction for Edom resulted only in continued pride and self-effort.
This final book of the Old Testament is about the error of forgetting the love of God. When people forget God’s love, it affects their attitudes, home, and worship. With God’s love and loyalty in doubt, sacred commitments no longer remain sacred. God sent Malachi to rouse the people from their spiritual stupor and to exhort them to return to the living God. But the Book of Malachi reveals a people who question the reality of their sin and the faithfulness of God, a people hardened through and through. Thus the book ends on a poignant note, a confrontation between a disappointed God and a disappointed people. In a sense, the Book of Malachi shows that the Old Testament comes to a chasm, with the bickering voices of the people on one side and the stern warnings of God on the other. Only the Lord Himself could provide a way out of this impasse. Malachi looks forward to this deliverance, for he speaks of the one who would prepare the way for the Messiah. The promised Messiah was the only One who could bridge that widening chasm between the people and their God.
Malachi 1:2-5
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.”
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.’
8 but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 7:8
8 “But you, Israel, are My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, The descendants of Abraham My friend.
Isaiah 41:8
3 The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.
Jeremiah 31:3
15 As you rejoiced because the inheritance of the house of Israel was desolate, so I will do to you; you shall be desolate, O Mount Seir, as well as all of Edom—all of it! Then they shall know that I am the Lord.” ’
Ezekiel 35:15
16 Your fierceness has deceived you, The pride of your heart, O you who dwell in the clefts of the rock, Who hold the height of the hill! Though you make your nest as high as the eagle, I will bring you down from there,” says the Lord. 17 “Edom also shall be an astonishment; Everyone who goes by it will be astonished And will hiss at all its plagues. 18 As in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah And their neighbors,” says the Lord, “No one shall remain there, Nor shall a son of man dwell in it.
Jeremiah 49:16–18
27 Let them shout for joy and be glad, Who favor my righteous cause; And let them say continually, “Let the Lord be magnified, Who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant.”
Psalm 35:27
4 And He shall stand and feed His flock In the strength of the Lord, In the majesty of the name of the Lord His God; And they shall abide, For now He shall be great To the ends of the earth;
Micah 5:4
Esau was also known as Edom, the progenitor of the Edomites who were established to the south of the Israelites. They were an enemy nation of Israel. The minor prophets, such as
Obadiah, claim that the Edomites participated in the destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. Exactly how the Edomites participated is not clear. (Psalm 137) suggests merely that Edom had encouraged the Babylonians: The Lord is asked to "remember against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said 'raze it, raze it to its foundations'" (Psalm 137: 7). But the prophecy of Obadiah insists on the literal "violence done" by Esau "unto your brother Jacob" when the Edomites "entered the gate of my people..., looted his goods..., stood at the parting of the ways to cut off the fugitive,... delivered up his survivors on his day of distress" (
Obadiah 10:13-14). By the
intertestamental period, Edom had replaced Babylon as the nation that actually burned the Temple.Long after this, when the descendants of Jacob came out of Egypt, the Edomites remembered the old quarrel between the brothers, and with fierce hatred they warred against Israel.
ESAU
e'-so (`esaw, "hairy"; Esau):
Son of Isaac, twin brother of Jacob. The name was given on account of the hairy covering on his body at birth: "all over like a hairy garment" (
Genesis 25:25). There was a prenatal foreshadowing of the relation his descendants were to sustain to those of his younger brother, Jacob (
Genesis 25:23). The moment of his birth also was signalized by a circumstance that betokened the same destiny (
Genesis 25:26).
The young Esau was fond of the strenuous, daring life of the chase-he became a skillful hunter, "a man of the field" ('ish sadheh). His father warmed toward him rather than toward Jacob, because Esau's hunting expeditions resulted in meats that appealed to the old man's taste (
Genesis 25:28). Returning hungry from one of these expeditions, however, Esau exhibited a characteristic that marked him for the inferior position which had been foretokened at the time of his birth. Enticed by the pottage which Jacob had boiled, he could not deny himself, but must, at once, gratify his appetite, though the calm and calculating Jacob should demand the birthright of the firstborn as the price (
Genesis 25:30-34). Impulsively he snatched an immediate and sensual gratification at the forfeit of a future glory. Thus he lost the headship of the people through whom God's redemptive purpose was to be wrought out in the world, no less than the mere secular advantage of the firstborn son's chief share in the father's temporal possessions. Though Esau had so recklessly disposed of his birthright, he afterward would have secured from Isaac the blessing that appertained, had not the cunning of Rebekah provided for Jacob. Jacob, to be sure, had some misgiving about the plan of his mother (
Genesis 27:12), but she reassured him; the deception was successful and he secured the blessing. Now, too late, Esau bitterly realized somewhat, at least, of his loss, though he blamed Jacob altogether, and himself not at all (
Genesis 27:34, 36). Hating his brother on account of the grievance thus held against him, he determined upon fratricide as soon as his father should pass away (
Genesis 27:41); but the watchful Rebekah sent Jacob to Haran, there to abide with her kindred till Esau's wrath should subside (
Genesis 27:42-45).
Esau, at the age of forty, had taken two Hittite wives, and had thus displeased his parents. Rebekah had shrewdly used this fact to induce Isaac to fall in with her plan to send Jacob to Mesopotamia; and Esau, seeing this, seems to have thought he might please both Isaac and Rebekah by a marriage of a sort different from those already contracted with Canaanitish women. Accordingly, he married a kinswoman in the person of a daughter of Ishmael (
Genesis 28:6, 9). Connected thus with the "land of Seir," and by the fitness of that land for one who was to live by the sword, Esau was dwelling there when Jacob returned from Mesopotamia. While Jacob dreaded meeting him, and took great pains to propitiate him, and made careful preparations against a possible hostile meeting, very earnestly seeking Divine help, Esau, at the head of four hundred men, graciously received the brother against whom his anger had so hotly burned. Though Esau had thus cordially received Jacob, the latter was still doubtful about him, and, by a sort of duplicity, managed to become separated from him, Esau returning to Seir (
Genesis 33:12-17). Esau met his brother again at the death of their father, about twenty years later (
Genesis 35:29). The land in which he established himself was "the land of Seir," so called from Seir, ancestor of the Horites whom Esau found there; and called also Edom from Esau's surname, and, it may be, too, from the red sandstone of the country (Sayce).
