Not everyone in Malachi’s day shared this cynical attitude toward the Lord. Some still feared the Lord, and the Lord saw that attitude and kept them as His “treasured possession,” (segullah; Mal. 3:17), the same word used to describe Israel in Exodus 19:6. The Lord would soon appear in His temple to bring the justice for which people were supposedly longing (Mal. 3:1–2). He would separate the righteous from the wicked once for all, and those who feared the Lord would be vindicated as His true people, while the wicked would be judged and destroyed (Mal. 4:1–3). 

The Lord says many challenging things to His post-exilic people through the prophet Malachi. The book of Malachi is arranged as a series of seven prophetic disputations that each begin with a bitter saying of the people to which the Lord responds. Most of these oracles are searching rebukes of the attitudes and actions of Malachi’s contemporaries. However, before the Lord rebukes the people, He begins by affirming His electing love for them, which is the reason they continue to exist after the judgment of the exile. Before He says, “This is what I have against you,” the Lord first declares, “I love you” (Mal. 1:2).

1. Malachi reveals that God’s electing love is always the starting point.

The people, meanwhile, respond with a rebuff, “How have you loved us?” (Mal. 1:2). This is a question to which the Lord gives a surprising answer. We might have expected the Lord to point to the exodus and conquest of the land of Canaan, where He performed mighty miracles to protect His people and grant them their inheritance. Instead, the Lord points Israel even further back, to the election of their forefather, Jacob, and the contrasting rejection of his brother, Esau (Mal. 1:3). This utterly undeserved love is the reason there is still an Israel after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the exile. Israel had suffered for her sins, to be sure, but she had nonetheless been restored because of the Lord’s great love. Edom, the descendants of Esau, survived the Babylonian period relatively unscathed by aiding the Babylonians (see Obad. 1:10–14). But Edom’s present comfort would soon be destroyed, and her fall would be full and final (Mal. 1:4–5). God’s chosen people might stumble through their sins, but they will not fully fall, for the Lord holds them up out of love (see Ps. 37:23–24).

2. Malachi demonstrates that people are tempted to cynicism when life is hard.

In the book of Malachi, the people’s response to the Lord is deeply cynical from beginning to end. At the beginning, they brush off the Lord’s declaration love for them (Mal. 1:2).

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