1 A revelation, Yahweh’s word to Israel by Malachi.
2 “I have loved you,” says Yahweh. Yet you say, “How have you loved us?” “Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” says Yahweh, “Yet I loved Jacob;
3 but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness.”
4 Whereas Edom says, “We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places”; Yahweh of Armies says, “They shall build, but I will throw down; and men will call them ‘The Wicked Land,’ even the people against whom Yahweh shows wrath forever.”
5 Your eyes will see, and you will say, “Yahweh is great—even beyond the border of Israel!”
6 “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father, then where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is the respect due me? Says Yahweh of Armies to you, priests, who despise my name. You say, ‘How have we despised your name?’
7 You offer polluted bread on my altar. You say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ In that you say, ‘Yahweh’s table is contemptible.’