Malachi: God’s Unchanging Love
This book has appeared at the top of new pre-pubs today - although I thought it had previously appeared too. Just be careful though as it appears to be almost word for word the same as the Malachi section in this book.
This is the new pre-pub:
https://www.logos.com/product/177214/malachi-gods-unchanging-love
Looking at the screenshots of sample pages I haven't been able to discuss any significant difference.
I'd be interested if others know different.
Comments
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It looks like it rephrases a lot of things and adds some and deletes some. But virtually the same in the end.
DAL
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I would agree with DAL here that it re-phrases a lot.
I have the Preacher's Commentary (same resource, different software) and tried to find the same passage in that resource as is displayed in the sample from the pre-pub. I have included it below.
Snip-it...
Chapter One—A Call to Respond to God's Love
1:1The burden of the word of the Lordto 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;
3But Esau I have hated,
And laid waste his mountains and his heritage
For the jackals of the wilderness."
4Even though Edom has said,
"We have been impoverished,
But we will return and build the desolate places,"
Thus says the Lordof hosts:
"They may build, but I will throw down;
They shall be called the Territory of Wickedness,
And the people against whom the Lordwill have indignation forever.
5Your eyes shall see,
And you shall say,
'The Lordis magnified beyond the border of Israel.'
The theme of Malachi's first message, and of the whole book, is: "I have loved you, says the Lord"(v. 1). Like a banner over a Bible Conference, this theme of God's love hangs over every message the prophet delivers. His banner over us is love!
The Hebrew verb "to love" (˒āhab) is used thirty-two times in the Old Testament to describe God's love, twenty-three of which describe God's love of Israel or particular individuals. The noun form of the word, meaning God's love of His people, occurs four times in the Old Testament, making a total of twenty-seven times that God's love for humans is affirmed.
Norman Snaith notes three main characteristics that help us understand God's love. First, God's love is a sovereign love. As lord over all, God is not required to do anything except that which is directed by His own character and being. Love proceeds from His own character and being; thus no definition of God's love can be separated from what He is and does.
The second characteristic of God's love is that it is unconditional. Further, the motivation for God loving us comes entirely from God and is not derived from anything we or Israel are or pretend to be (Deut. 7:7-8).
The third characteristic of God's love is that it is intimately personal. In spite of the fact that our Lord is the one to whom the heavens and earth belong, He has decided to set His love and affection on human beings (Deut. 10:14-15). It is the love of a father taking his infant son by the arms and teaching him how to walk (Hos. 11:4).
One more characteristic can be added to these three. God's love is like the love that exists between a husband and a wife. This is the fourth of four analogies of God's love proposed by C. S. Lewis, and the one that comes closest to Malachi's depiction of what God's love for us is like. In his fourth analogy of God's love, C. S. Lewis compared God's love to "the love between a husband and a wife, wherein each is willing to forgive the most (because that love is willing to love beyond any faults) while condoning the least in the other partner (because that love, while continuing to forgive, nevertheless never ceases to coax, urge, wish and hope for the best in the other partner). In the same way, God continually offers us pardon and acceptance while maintaining the high and holy standards of His righteousness. It is precisely in this tension between forgiving the most and condoning the least that we can understand the uniqueness of God's love. It is this tension that also explains how God can call for justice to be meted out in judgment while at the same time declaring, "I have loved you."
This raises the question of how to reconcile the anger of God (ira dei) with the love of God. In the history of the Church, this became the question of divine passibility (i.e., whether God was capable of having feelings or emotions) or divine impassibility (i.e., whether God was without the capacity to feel, suffer, or be angry).
Gnosticism took a strong lead in the discussion of this question by denying that God could ever experience anger or other feelings, or suffer at all. A second century heretic named Marcion declared that God was totally free of all affections or feelings—Marcion's god was totally apathetic.
The church father Lactantius (last half of the third century) put the question in a more biblical perspective: "He who loves the good also hates the evil, and he who does not hate the evil does not love the good because, on the one hand, to love the good comes from hatred of evil and to hate the evil rises from the love of the good."
Our difficulty in accepting that anger is part of the character of God is related to our improper association of anger with "the desire for retaliation," or the desire to "get even." Anger, properly defined, however, is the legitimate emotion of a person rising up to resist evil. Anger need not be unchecked or uncontrolled. God's anger is certainly never explosive, unchecked or uncontrolled. In fact, in comparison to His love, His anger passes quickly (Isa. 26:20; 54:7-8; 57:16-19) while His love endures (Jer. 31:3; Hos. 2:19).
Malachi announces three evidences of God's love that constitute in and of themselves sufficient reasons for Israel, and all who love our Lord but have gone astray, to return to Him. These three evidences are:
Our God's Election—Love (1:1-3a)
The message of God's love for His people is introduced as "The burden of the word of the Lordto Israel by Malachi"(v. 1). While most commentators and modern translations insist on translating "burden" (maśśā˒) as "oracle" or "declaration," there are at least three reasons why "burden" is a superior rendering: (1) The word appears twenty-seven times in the Old Testament, all in prophetic texts of threatened judgment, except Proverbs 30:1; 31:1; (2) The word is never followed by the genitive of the speaker, such as neºumof Yahweh ("the utterance of the Lord"), but is always connected with a genitive of an object such as the maśśā˒of Babylon, or Moab, etc. The only exception is where an additional item intervenes, such as "the word of the Lord" (Mal. 1:1; Zech. 9:1); and (3) There is no evidence of a root meaning "to utter" from which maśśā˒could have come that would also yield the meaning "oracle" or "declaration."
Accordingly, though the prophecy will exalt the love God has for His people, it opens on a threatening note. In spite of God's love for His people, He is going to come to judge the world (cf. Zech. 9:1and 12:1). The heavy note of judgment was meant to stir up men and women to prepare for that day.
This ominous note was directed towards "Israel". During the division of the kingdom from 931 to 722 b.c., the term "Israel" was used to designate the northern ten tribes, but it refers here to the whole Jewish community.
God's Word came by the hand of Malachi. While the Hebrew word for Malachi appears in Malachi 3:1meaning "My messenger,"in Malachi 1:1it is probably a proper name (contrary to the Septuagint Greek translation and the Jewish Targumim; seeour discussion of this point in the Introduction (in the section The Author).
In verse 2God says, "I have loved you"using in Hebrew a perfect tense of the verb, denoting completed action and making it clear that God had previously announced His love for Israel as the only reason for choosing her (Deut. 7:7; 10:18; Hos. 11:1) and that He continued to love Israel even in her present apostasy. The prophet appeals to God's long-abiding love for Israel in order to raise the sights of the recently returned exiles who had begun to wonder whether God still loved them.
The people's incredible response is "in what way have You loved us?"(v. 2). So insensitive were they to God's magnanimous declaration of love, and so hardened had they become through their own sinfulness, that they brashly demanded that God condescend to prove what He so generously claimed.
Amazingly, God condescends to answer their impudent question, thus further illustrating His patient love. God answers the people by reminding them of the election-love He gave to Jacob vis-á-vis His "hatred" of Esau.
But God's answer raises a significant question for modern readers: Does Yahweh "hate?" Yes; we can point in the Bible to some clear objects of God's hatred: hypocritical worship (Isa. 1:14; Amos 5:21) and evils such as pride, lying, evil imaginations, evil deeds, false witnessing. and stirring up dissension among the brethren (Prov. 6:16-19). Further, at the grave of Lazarus, our Lord was angry over the death of His friend (John 11:33, 38). Thus, hate and anger can be proper emotions for disavowing wrong and evil and for differentiating between them and their opposite—love. Only those who have truly loved can understand how it is possible to hate with a burning anger all that is wrong and evil.
However, there is a specialized biblical use of the antonymic pair "to love" and "to hate." A close parallel can be seen in Jacob's response to his two wives Rachel and Leah in Genesis 29:30-33and Moses' illustration of the two wives in Deuteronomy 21:15-17. The "hated" wife in both these illustrations is the less-lovedone. This same relationship between love and hate is seen in the Semitism (Hebraic idiom) found in the Greek use of "love" and "hate" in Matthew 6:24and Luke 16:13. "To love" is, in effect, to prefer and to be faithful to one, while "to hate" is to slight and to think less of another. Likewise, in Matthew 10:37Jesus says, "He who loves father or mother more than Me,"and in the parallel verse in Luke, Jesus says, "If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother" (14:26).
These illustrations make clear that the Bible does not call for psychological or absolute hatred; rather, it calls for ranking, preferring, or setting priorities. In Jacob's case, God's love signaled his election and call for service. In Esau's case, God's hatred was not a sign of God's disdain, disgust, or desire for unmitigated revenge. Esau too was an object of God's preached word (note the call in Obadiah to the Edomites, descendants of Esau). Esau's descendants would be objects of God's deliverance in the end times (Obad. 19, 21; Amos 9:12). In fact, the act of God's "love" and "hate" (as manifested in His choosing or not choosing people for certain tasks) took place apart from anything the people did or became (God's choice of Jacob, for example, took place before Jacob was born [Gen. 25:23; Rom. 9:11]) and apart from their merits or demerits. His election-love of the one son and His decision not to choose the other for a particular work in His plan was only the sovereign, unconditional, intimately personal, and discriminating love of God (seethe introductionto this chapter for a discussion of God's emotions and four characteristics of His love for us).
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citation info...
Walter C. Kaiser, The Preacher's Commentary – Volume 23: Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, ed. Lloyd J. Ogilvie, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1992)
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End of Snip-it
Whether the differences are enough to buy this new volume (assuming you own the 1st) is of course up to you.
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