Malachi 1:1-3

The burden of the Lord The word burden is here, as often elsewhere, equivalent to prophecy; to Israel To those of all the tribes that were returned from captivity. I have loved you, saith the Lord That is, in a particular and extraordinary degree; not only as men, but above the rest of men, and above the other posterity, both of Abraham and Isaac. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? That is, wherein does thy particular love to us appear? What proofs hast thou given of loving us in an extraordinary degree? Us, who have been captives, and have groaned under the miseries of captivity, and bondage all our days till of late? Is this a proof of thy love to us?

Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord Did not one father beget them, and one mother bear them? Yet I loved Jacob Namely, more than Esau; I preferred him to the honour and privileges of the birthright, and this of free love. I loved his person and his posterity. Here God is introduced as answering the question, which, in the preceding clause, they are represented as asking, namely, wherein his particular regard to them appeared. But it must be well observed, that Jacob and Esau, as elsewhere Israel and Edom, are put to signify the whole posterity arising from these two persons, namely, the Israelites and Idumeans. And in asking, Was not Esau Jacob's brother? God reminds them that the Idumeans, as they themselves very well knew, were descended from Abraham as well as they, and from a progenitor who was own brother to their progenitor Jacob. And I hated Esau I loved not Esau's posterity as I loved Jacob's. By hating here is only meant, having a less degree of love, for in this sense the expression is frequently used. Thus, Genesis 29:31, Jacob's loving Leah less than Rachel is termed hating her; and Luke 14:26, the loving father and mother, wife and children, less than we love Christ, is termed the hating of them. That this is the meaning of the expression hating, there, is evident from the parallel text, Matthew 10:37, where we read, He that loveth father or mother MORE than me, is not worthy of me, &c. From these, and other passages that might be produced, it is evident that the expression, hating, is frequently used to signify no more than loving in a less degree, or showing less regard or favour to one than another. Indeed, as it may be further added, it would be doing a high dishonour to the nature of God to suppose that the expression, as here applied to Jacob and Esau, is to be taken in the strict sense of the word hating. And laid his mountains and his heritage waste In these words the Lord shows in what sense he had hated Esau, that is, his posterity; he had given him a lot inferior to that which he had conferred on Jacob. Idumea had been laid waste by the arms of Nebuchadnezzar, five years after the taking of Jerusalem; and whereas Jacob's captivity, or that of the Israelites, were restored to their own land, and their cities rebuilt, Esau's never were. For the dragons of the wilderness Creatures which delight in desolate places, by which the utter desolation of Idumea is signified. The Hebrew word תנם, or תנות, here rendered dragons, signifies any large creature of the creeping kind, whether by land or sea. In this place it is taken for a great serpent, such as are commonly found in deserts and desolate places.