11 The burden of a word of Jehovah unto Israel by the hand of Malachi: 2 I have loved you, said Jehovah, And ye have said, 'In what hast Thou loved us?' 3 Is not Esau Jacob's brother?—an affirmation of Jehovah, And I love Jacob, and Esau I have hated, And I make his mountains a desolation, And his inheritance for dragons of a wilderness. 4 Because Edom saith, 'We have been made poor, And we turn back and we build the wastes,' Thus said Jehovah of Hosts: They do build, and I do destroy, And 'men' have called to them, 'O region of wickedness,' 'O people whom Jehovah defied to the age.'
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Malachi 1:1-4
Commentary on Malachi 1:1-5
(Read Malachi 1:1-5)
All advantages, either as to outward circumstances, or spiritual privileges, come from the free love of God, who makes one to differ from another. All the evils sinners feel and fear, are the just recompence of their crimes, while all their hopes and comforts are from the unmerited mercy of the Lord. He chose his people that they might be holy. If we love him, it is because he has first loved us; yet we all are prone to undervalue the mercies of God, and to excuse our own offences.