Weird Stuff in the Bible

Did God Actually HATE Esau?
Malachi 1

Introduction
One of the most puzzling verses in the whole Bible is
Malachi 1:3, where God says
“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.
Again, that’s God speaking. It’s written by Malachi, but it’s a quote from God. The same God who will be telling us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us just a handful of pages later. The same God who says feed and clothe your enemies. The same God who gave us the story of the Good Samaritan, right here, is declaring His hatred for Esau.
Who had his problems, but really wasn’t such a terrible guy in my opinion. Especially not compared to his sniveling trickster brother, Jacob.
Now, some Christians swallow Malachi 1:3 without a second thought. They say, “If God hates Esau, then God hates him. Esau must have deserved it.” And while I appreciate their willingness to accept whatever the Bible says at face value, I gotta admit, I’ve struggled with this one.
I mean, I’ve done episodes on Scripture’s talking donkeys and demon-human hybrids, and I don’t even blush at those passages. But Esau I have hated- THAT’S the one where I have some hang-ups.
I find it to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Malachi 1, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

Let’s Make it Worse
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about whether God actually, literally hated Esau, or if perhaps He meant something else.
And let’s start, as we pretty much always do, by analyzing the context of this expression. We’ll do that by reading how Malachi begins. Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament, and it was written to a group of Israelites who had become very casual in their attitude toward God and very lazy in their spiritual walk. And so Malachi was written to snap these Christians out of their spiritual stupor. It features 6 or 7 short conversations or arguments with God.
It’s actually one of my favorite books of the Old Testament. When our son was born, I really wanted to give him the name of one of the great spiritual giants like Elijah, or Daniel, or Gandalf. And the name Malachi was on the short list as well, but we ended up going with something else. We had actually had a foster kind named Malachi before, too, and we decided to basically leave that name as special to him. But I will say, my wife struck Gandalf off the list a lot faster than we struck of Malachi.
And something else I’ll mention about my history with Malachi is that when I was a youth pastor, which I did for nearly a decade, one of the very last books I went through with my youth group was Malachi. I always loved Malachi, but I held off on teaching it for so long because I really didn’t know how I was going to handle the opening verses.
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.”
So there are the verses in context. Let’s analyze the attitude with which Israel is addressing God. God tells them He loves them, and they reply, “How? How have you loved us?” Imagine a snotty teenager telling his or her parents: “What you have ever done for me?” A very ungrateful attitude. You’d probably ground them for a week and take away their PS5.
Well, God doesn’t take away Israel’s PS5. God is a God of love and patience and compassion, which makes his response quite shocking. God pleads with Israel to consider how much He has given them favor, and that’s when God says, “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.”
Well if you’re familiar with the book of Genesis, you know that there are these two brothers born from Isaac and Rebekah- twins, actually- named Jacob and Esau. Esau was actually born first, but Jacob was the child of the promise. Jacob was the child that the Messiah would someday come through.
I kind of referred to this in the Christmas episode late last year called Satan’s Master Plan. I highly encourage you to go back and listen to that episode if you haven’t. Broke another record for this podcast in Day One downloads. And on that episode, I explained how there was a commitment God made to send the Messiah, and how God narrowed that commitment (or promise) down to Abraham’s descendants, and then to one of Isaac’s descendants, and then to one of Jacob’s descendants, and so on. You can read Jacob and Esau’s story, and neither of them were perfect- of course, no one is perfect- and both made mistakes, but in my opinion, Esau really isn’t all that bad of a guy. Especially, compared to Jacob. Of course God is the final judge, but when I’m reading through the Bible, I get a lot more ticked off at Jacob than I do at Esau. I feel like Jacob does a lot more devious things than Esau does.
So this is a very troubling statement that God says here about Esau, and before I try to explain it in a way that sounds better, first I’m actually going to make the problem a whole lot worse.
Worse? Yes, worse. God is not even talking about Jacob and Esau the individuals; God is talking about the peoples who descended from Jacob and Esau, which would be the nations of Israel and Edom. This is very clear if you keep reading
verses 4 and 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 was comparing Jacob and Esau back in verses 2 and 3, God was not even talking about the men themselves. God was talking about the people groups who descended from Jacob and Esau: Israel and Edom.
And by the way, it’s very common for God in the Old Testament to do this. God refers to Israel as simply “Jacob” constantly. Isaiah 44:21, Jeremiah 30:10, Ezekiel 39:25, Micah 3:1. And it’s also common for God to refer to the Edomites as “Esau,” especially if you read the little book of Obadiah.
So it is very clear that Malachi 1 right here is talking about the nations who descended from Jacob and Esau, not the men Jacob and Esau themselves. But like I said, this makes the problem of verse 3 a whole lot worse. God is not just declaring that He hates one guy; God is declaring that He hates an ENTIRE NATION of people.
What in the world are we gonna do with this verse? Well, we’ve talked about what Esau meant. Let’s talk about what “hate” means.

Should you hate your mother and father?
There are actually two different definitions or uses of the word “hate” in the Bible. And unfortunately, it can be hard to prove which is which, although I think it’s pretty intuitive when you study the context and also keep in mind the character of God.
When it comes to who God loves, I feel like there’s a pretty wide swath of verses we can look at to demonstrate how much He loves everybody.
Romans 5:8- while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us
Ezekiel 18:23- God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked but rather that he should turn and live
John 3:16- for God so loved THE WORLD.
And there is so much more we could go to. In word and in deed, I think God has proven His love for us, for humanity, by sending His son to die for us. By constantly affirming that He loves the world and doesn’t desire sinners to perish. I think it breaks God’s heart to have to send someone to hell.
And on that subject of love, God also instructs us to love everybody. That just as God loves all people, we should love all people- despite their race, despite whether they’re sinners, despite even if they are our enemy. We should still love them in word, in deed, and in our hearts. The Bible is abundantly clear about that, too.
But there is another way that the Bible uses the terms “love” and “hate.” Usually the word “hate” means to have contempt for somebody, or to harbor extreme ill will toward them. That’s how we usually use the word hate. But also, the word hate can sometimes mean, “to give lesser preference” or “to not prioritize.” And this use of the word hate does not imply contempt or enmity, it merely means to give something second or third place rather than first. A really good example of this is in
Luke 14:26, where Jesus said
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.
Well that’s a heavy one right there. Jesus just said to hate members of our own family. The same Jesus who said to love our enemies just told us to hate our mothers and fathers. This could have been a Weird Stuff in the Bible episode all on its own.
So is Jesus using the word “hate” here to mean that we should have contempt for the members of our own family? Or is he telling us that we should give members of our family a lesser preference or priory than we do toward Jesus?
Well, I think the answer to that is kind of obvious intuitively, but we can actually prove which way He meant it by looking at a parallel passage.
In Matthew 10:37, Jesus says
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.
So clearly, it’s obvious to us that Jesus does not mean to “hate” your family in the sense that we should bear ill-will or contempt for them, but that we should “hate” them in the sense of giving them a lesser preference or priority than we do toward Jesus. We should not literally hate our own parents- even if they take away our PS5. There are many many many more verses in the Bible that tell us to honor our parents.
So I think it’s clear what Jesus means in Luke 14. It means we choose Jesus over our parents. Hopefully, if you have a Christian family, there won’t ever be a conflict between choosing or parents and choosing God. One of the blessings of having a Christian family is that we’re usually all on the same page, spiritually. But if there ever is a conflict, Jesus says we should love Him enough to choose Him over our parents. I don’t think that is controversial to interpret it that way.

Chosen
So let’s go back to Malachi one more time and try to figure out: is God saying that He hates the Edomites in the sense that He bears extreme ill will toward that nation? Or is God saying that He chose Israel instead of Edom to accomplish His purposes in the world?
Well, let’s talk about Edom for a minute. If God had extreme contempt for Edom, it wouldn’t be hard to see why. The Edomites were a wicked people, and their treatment of Israel was horrible. The Edomites had more said against them in the Old Testament than any other group of people, and for good reason. It would actually be a lot more understandable why God might say He hates Edom than it would be for why God hated Esau.
But is that the point that God is making in Malachi 1? Well, remember that it starts off with the snotty teenagers telling God, “How have you loved us?” They’re saying, “What have you ever done for us?” And God says, “Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated.”
God is saying He has given the descendants of Jacob much more favor than He gave the descendants of Esau. If God had loved the Israelites because of the good things they had done and hated the Edomites because of the bad things they had done, then that’s not favor. That’s payment. God’s just giving them what they earned.
But God isn’t giving Israel what they deserved. God is giving Israel what they didn’t deserve. Edom may have acted wickedly, but Israel sure has acted wickedly, too. Here’s what God did for Israel, though: He chose them over the descendants of Esau. When Isaac had two sons, the promise could have gone one of two ways. It could have gone through Jacob or it could have gone through Esau. And here’s what God said prophetically when these twin boys were still in the womb:
Genesis 25:23
Two nations are in your womb,
Two peoples shall be separated from your body;
One people shall be stronger than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger.
Jacob was the younger. Before they were even born, God chose Jacob. God chose to send the promise of the Messiah through Jacob. The land of Israel was given to Jacob’s descendants. The Old Testament was given to the Israelites to live by.
So when Israel now, hundreds of years later, comes to God and says, “What do you mean you love us? What have you ever done for us?” God is replying back, “I chose you all over Esau’s kids. The mere fact that you’re standing here right now is because of my undeserved grace and favor.
This is really important because there are some Christians who seem quite intent on making the case today that God hates most people. That God has no love for the unbeliever. I see it more and more on Christian Twitter, and frankly, it concerns me. And their favorite verse to go back to on this subject is Malachi 1:3- Jacob I have loved and Esau I have hated. And they start going into Esau’s many mistakes and sins, and so they say, “see, God hates some people. God actually hates most people.
And yet they don’t seem to understand two important things about that passage. One, it’s not about the individuals of Jacob and Esau. If you want to judge Esau, that kind of gets into the realm of personal opinion, but it doesn’t matter because this passage in Malachi is not even about the individuals of Jacob and Esau. It’s the descendants. Two, I don’t think God is saying He personally had a hatred in the sense of an enmity against the Edomites. I think God was simply making the point that He had chosen Israel for the purpose of telling the story of the salvation. God blessed Israel with the Bible and the land and bringing forth the Messiah. God is telling Israel in Malachi 1: “look at all I’ve done for you.”
It’s not about what they’ve earned. It’s about the blessings they’ve been given. God’s grace.
Now many people are going to say, “But this doesn’t seem fair to Edom.” But Edom had their own chance to live righteously. God didn’t write them off. God didn’t doom them to hell just because they weren’t Jews. The Edomites had their own choice to make, just as you and I have our own choices to make.
Not everyone is given the same thing. But we’re judged on what we did with what we have. To whom much is given, much is required.
So before you complain about fairness to Edom, remember that Edom would only be judged for what it was given. Israel was given a lot more, so a lot more was expected of them. You let Edom worry about Edom, and you worry about you, and I’ll worry about me.

Mailbag
Next time on this podcast, I plan to talk about the difference in the soul and the spirit. To most people, even most Christians, these terms are synonymous. I’d like to clarify the distinction between those two things, which I will do next week.
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I heard from a couple listeners this past week. Nate says he was catching up on some episodes during Christmas break and actually fell asleep while listening. He said, “I woke up about 1 am to a strange voice talking about a demon possessed girl and an apparition in their home, and some suggestion to look under a bed for some demonic trinket (or something like that). Needless to say, I was awake re for a while after that.” So that cracked me up because he woke up to my interview with Bill Scott, the author of the book The Day Satan Called. I highly encourage you to check that interview out if you haven’t listened to it yet, it’s an amazing story and book. As I say in that interview, if you read the book, read it in the daytime. Start it early, because if you start it late at night, you won’t be able to sleep. I mean that.
Also received another very kind email from a listener named Greg. He said, “I have been listening to your Ezekiel podcast for about a year now and just found your weird stuff in the Bible podcast as well. With your podcast I’ve had many different revelations and other topics I go on to further study and look into and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the content.” So Greg, thank you so much for the email, it was very kind of you to send that. The more I can learn about the people who are listening out there, the more I can understand what kind of content you all want to hear about. So feel free to send me an email: weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com, if you ever have questions or just want to let me know what kind of episodes or topics are your favorite. That helps me a lot to give me direction to what I should discuss in the future.

Closing Thoughts
I want to say this before I close down: I am just struck anew by God’s blessing in my life in this new year. My church had a worship service a few nights ago that they call Behold, and we just worship and sing scriptures for a couple of hours, and I was just struck so hard by the love of God and recognizing His goodness in my life. And I thought, I hope that in anything I do, including this podcast, I hope we never lose sight of how good God is to each one of us.
Yes, we dig into the weird stuff in the Bible. I want to help you make sense of and know more about the Bible. But it’s really not worth it unless it also brings you closer to knowing the God of that Bible.
This is a time of year when I sit and think about all the ways that God has blessed me. And I do that because I just got done filling out the tax assessment form and sending it off to the county assessor so she charge me property taxes later this year. And I must say, I am very very blessed by God, and I’ll be paying for it in about 11 months.
But in all seriousness, I just want to say this before I close down. We’re all given different things. Call it grace, call it gifts, call it favor, call it whatever. Some of us our born in Christian families and some aren’t. Some of us are born into money and some aren’t. We can all point at someone else who seems to have been given a break we weren’t given. We forget that perhaps more is required of them than us. Or we might even get so whiny as to look at God and say, “what have you done for me? Why haven’t you helped me as much as you’ve helped them.”
So I just want to remind us of something before we close down: God loves you so much that He allowed you to be born in a place where you heard the Gospel.
If you ever feel lesser than someone else, if you ever wonder why it seems like God favors someone else more, remember that you’ve been given the Gospel. Not even everybody in the world right now can say that. But God made sure you did. And that doesn’t make you or I superior to anyone else. We just need to recognize it as an act of God’s undeserved grace.
Most of my listeners live right here in America like me. Statistically speaking, if you could have been born at any random place in the world, there is a 4.5 percent chance you would have been born in America. And America doesn’t always do the right thing, but there is no nation on earth with a higher concentration of churches than right here in the US of A. So I am thankful just for where I was born. It is more important that you should have been born in a place where you heard the Gospel than how much money or comfort or health or anything else that you could have been born into.
And if you’re listening outside of America, the grace of God has been extended to you as well. Because no matter where you’re listening from, if you’re hearing this podcast, then you have heard the Gospel, and God’s favor has been extended to you as well.
And God is not grading you based on a curve and comparing you to someone else and what they have been given. God is asking what you will do with what you’ve been given.
And I point this out because late last year, I got a notification from my podcast host that Weird Stuff in the Bible has been downloaded in 50 different countries. Which means I am not just weird. I am internationally weird.
And I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.