Romans 9:13

A second quotation, meant to confirm the first; it is taken from Malachi 1:2-3. The conjunction as may be understood in two ways: either in the sense that God's love to Jacob and His hatred to Esau were the cause of the subjection of the latter to the former; or it may be thought that Paul quotes this saying of Malachi as demonstrating by a striking fact in the later history of the two peoples the truth of the relation expressed in Romans 9:12. Malachi lived at a period when, in their return from exile, Israel had just received a marvellous proof of God's protection, while Edom was still plunged in the desolation into which it had been thrown by its eastern conquerors. Beholding those ruins on the one side and this restoration on the other, Malachi proclaims, as a fact of experience, the twofold divine feeling of love and hatred which breaks forth in these opposite modes of treatment. I have loved and I have hated do not signify merely: I have preferred the one to the other; but: I have taken Jacob to be mine, while I have set aside Esau. Calvin here employs the two verbs assumere and repellere. God has made the one the depositary of His Messianic promise and of the salvation of the world, and denied to the other all co-operation in the establishment of His kingdom. And this difference of dealing is not accidental; it rests on a difference of feeling in God Himself. On the one hand, a union founded on moral sympathy; on the other, a rupture resulting from moral antipathy; on hating, comp. Luke 14:26: “If any man hate not his father and mother..., and his own life”...

God's love to Jacob is neither merited nor arbitrary. When we think of the patriarch's many grave sins, when we think of Israel's endless apostasies, it will be seen that merit cannot enter into the case. But when we take account of God's prevision of the power of faith, and of its final triumph in that man and people (the foreknowing of Romans 8:29), it will be seen as follows otherwise from the divine essence itself that neither is the prerogative bestowed on Jacob arbitrary. As to Esau, let the three following facts be remarked in regard to the hatred of which he is the object: 1. In speaking of Jacob and Esau, either as men or nations, neither Genesis nor Malachi nor St. Paul have eternal salvation in view; the matter in question is the part they play regarded from the theocratic standpoint, as is proved by the word δουλεύειν, to serve. 2. Esau, though deprived of the promise and the inheritance, nevertheless obtained a blessing and an inheritance for himself and his descendants. 3. The national character inherited from the father of the race is not so impressed on his descendants that they cannot escape it. As there were in Israel many Edomites, profane hearts, there may also have been, as has been said, many Israelites, many spiritual hearts, in Edom. Comp. what is said of the wise men of Teman, Jeremiah 49:7, and the very respectable personage Eliphaz (notwithstanding his error) in the Book of Job.

The two examples of exclusion, given in the persons of Ishmael and Esau, have served to prove a fact which Israel embraced with their whole heart: God's right to endow them with privilege at the expense of the Arab (Ishmael) and Edomite (Esau) nations, by assigning to them in the history of redemption the preponderating part to which the right of primogeniture seemed to call those excluded. Now, if Israel approved the principle of divine liberty when it was followed in a way so strikingly in their favor, how could they repudiate it when it was turned against them!

To explain the apostle's view, we have added at each step the explanatory ideas fitted to complete and justify his thought; this was the business of the commentator. But he himself has not done so; he has been content with referring to the biblical facts, setting forth thereby the great truth of God's liberty. And hence this liberty, thus presented, might appear to degenerate into arbitrariness, and even into injustice. This gives rise to the objection which he puts in Romans 9:14, and treats down to Romans 9:24; this is the second part of this discussion: Does not liberty, such as thou claimest for God in His decrees and elections, do violence to His moral character, and especially to His justice? It is to this question that Romans 9:14-18 give answer; the apostle there proves that Scripture recognizes this liberty in God; and as it can ascribe to Him nothing unworthy of Him, it must be admitted that this liberty is indisputable. Then in Romans 9:19-24 he shows by a figure that the superiority of God to man should impose silence on the proud pretensions of the latter, and he applies this principle to the relation between God and Israel.