I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob,
I have loved you - above other men; nay, even above the other descendants of Abraham and Isaac. Such gratuitous love on my part called for love on yours. But the return ye make is sin and dishonour to me. This thought, which is to be supplied, is left unexpressed, sorrow, as it were, breaking off the sentence (Menochius). Compare, as to God's gratuitous love to His people, Deuteronomy 7:8; Hosea 11:1.
Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? In painful contrast to the tearful tenderness of God's love stands their insolent challenge. The root of their sin was insensibility to God's love, and to their own wickedness. Having had their full prosperity taken from them ever since their nation was taken away to Babylon, they imply they have no tokens of God's love; they look at what God had taken, not at what God had left. They forget how graciously God has restored them from Babylon to their own land, and enabled them, though a weak and small remnant, to set up again the temple service and the Jewish polity. God's love is often least acknowledged where it is most manifested. We must not infer God does not love us because He afflicts us. Men, instead of referring their sufferings to their proper cause, their own sin, impiously accuse God of indifference to their welfare (Moore). Thus, the four first verses form a fit introduction to the whole prophecy.
Was not Esau Jacob's brother? - and so, as far as dignity went, as much entitled to God's favour as Jacob.
Yet I loved Jacob - my adoption of Jacob, therefore, was altogether by gratuitous favour (Romans 9:13). So God has passed by our older brethren, the angels who kept not their first estate, and yet has provided salvation for man. The perpetual rejection of the fallen angels, like the perpetual desolations of Edom (Malachi 1:3), attests God's severity to the lost, and goodness to those gratuitously saved. The sovereign eternal purpose of God is the only ground on which He bestows on one favours which are withheld from another. There are difficulties in referring salvation to the election of God, there are greater in referring it to the election of man (Moore). Yahweh illustrates His condescension and patience in the very fact of His deigning to argue the case with them.