Here is a short study I did on Esau a year or so ago when the subject came up on the now defunct Calvinism forum regarding whether "Esau I have hated" actually had to do with predestination:
Some of the statements in the Bible have led a number of people to feel that Esau is a good example of what is referred to as predestination, or the idea that before men were ever created, God had already chosen who He would save and who He would not save.
Let’s take a closer look at Esau and see if this is something that his story really does demonstrate.
The first time we have any indication of anything about him is before he was born. His mother, Rebekah, was somewhat alarmed about the amount of activity going on inside her and inquired of God about it.
The LORD said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.”
(Genesis 25:23)
There are a few things to note about this response from God:
1. There is no indication of anything good or bad about either of the children.
2. The nations arising from each will be separated, but the timing is not given.
3. One of these nations will be stronger than the other, at least at some point.
4. The nation arising from the older of the two children will either at some point, or eventually, end up serving the nation arising from the younger of the two children.
5. We don’t even know that the children are boys for sure yet!
The children are, as is well known, Jacob and Esau. Esau was born first. The boys were clearly not identical twins, as their difference in appearance is noted from the first. So there is certainly no confusion about who is who there.
We then read, about the boys,
The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
(Genesis 25:27-28)
The word for “loved” there is
‘ahab, which can mean “love or loved”, but also, “have affection for” or “be allied with.” It does not indicate in either case that the parent hated the other child. It does indicate favoritism, though.
They are young men in the next passage. Verses 29-34 tell the famous story of Esau, very hungry, trading his birthright for some of the stew or soup that Jacob is cooking. Some comments must be made here to correct some misconceptions. First of all, the birthright was literally something that was Esau’s right by birth. It was the double possession of all his father’s material wealth, but also, along with it, the responsibility for the family as, when Isaac died, Esau would then become head of the family group. The fact that Esau was born first showed to the people that he was God’s choice to receive the double portion and take control of the family affairs in the future.
But we are told that Esau sold this birthright to Jacob for stew! And the Bible then tells us that ‘thus, Esau despised his birthright.’
The word used for ‘despised’ means ‘disdain’ as well. Thus we have the indication that Esau considered his birthright of no value! This, because he was hungry?
Perhaps not.
The following has nothing to do with Calvinism or any other doctrine, but with what might have happened historically. Keeping in mind that the first four generations after the Flood lived until about an average of 400 years, we can see there is quite an overlapping of generations here. There are a number of extra-biblical stories that have come down through the millennia in not only Hebrew culture, but other Middle Eastern cultures as well. We know from the Bible that Nimrod was a mighty hunter. We know that Esau was a hunter. The following website references the book of Jasher with these two facts:
http://www.gods-kingdom.org/Birthright/Chapter2/Chapter%202.htm
Although the identity of Nimrod is disputable, which will be explained in a moment, there is a consistent theme in the stories about Esau and his sold birthright which are connected with both Abraham’s funeral and a murderous rampage by Esau afterwards. If, for some reason, something Esau did made him think he now had access to much wider power than Isaac’s birthright could give him, then we do have an understanding as to why he may have despised his birthright: he may have been thinking of it as a much lesser value than what he could get for himself. We should also note that Esau said to Jacob, “I am about to die!” Was this from hunger? Doubtful, or he would have been too weak to move. There is a strong indication there that he was being hunted down himself and was on the move.
The reason the identity of Nimrod is disputable where the book of Jasher is concerned is because there is also a consistent mention in ALL the Middle Eastern stories dating back to the immediate post-flood years that Nimrod was killed and dismembered by either Shem or some of his cohorts. The only way these legends could be successfully combined is if Esau was actively engaged in the Semite struggle against the Hamites at that point. Even so, it is more probable, if the Jasher account is true in any way, that the man Esau killed was Nimrod’s widow’s son or, if Hislop’s analysis of the Nimrod story is correct in “Two Babylons”, then Esau may have killed the man who was claimed by his mother (Nimrod’s widow) to be Nimrod reincarnated. However it works, or even if the person identified by the book of Jasher is simply the one on Nimrod’s throne, we have a consistent connection that seems to hold throughout the ancient stories in this account.
Because the Bible is not concerned with anything other than man’s relationship to God, we read only the briefest of accounts regarding this incident. There is also, however, an interesting Jewish analysis of Esau’s frame of mind concerning this incident here:
http://www.torah.org/learning/drasha/5756/toldos.html
And this brings us again to the biblical clues we have regarding Esau. In seeking to find out if the birthright and the blessing were inexorably tied together, I ran across the following, extremely interesting, essay from a Jewish scholar:
http://www.qc.edu/ENGLISH/Staff/richter/esau.html
The fact that, in the Hebrew, Esau’s blessing paralleled in form and language so closely to Jacob’s is very interesting. What we do know for sure is that Jacob received the blessing by deception, and yet God honored it! We can see there was animosity between the brothers quite early on, or Jacob would not have asked for the birthright in return for food. Had his mother told him he would be the more powerful one, according to prophecy? We don’t know.
With Jacob a deceiver and Esau possibly a murderer, we have a couple of young men that probably none of us would want for neighbors! And yet, it is not these sins which determine their final destinies, but rather their responses to correction from God. If we go far ahead in the Bible to Hebrews 12, we will see the warning:
See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son.
And we read in Malachi 1 that God hated Esau. Paul repeats this in Romans 9.
The question then becomes, did Esau behave the way he did because God hated him from the beginning, or did God hate him because of the way Esau chose to behave? Essentially, the first position is Calvinist and the second non-Calvinist.
It is imperative that we allow Bible to explain Bible.
Esau was also known as Edom. Right before the book of Jonah in the Bible is a tiny little book of one chapter, Obadiah. The focus of Obadiah is on Edom/Esau. And the reason God hated Esau is stated clearly here:
Pride of heart, v. 3
Because of the violence against Jacob, v. 10
For not intervening on behalf of Jacob when that people was under attack, v. 11
For looking down on his brother in the day of his misfortune, v. 12
For entering the destroyed city and participating in the ransacking, v. 13
For ambushing their fugitives, v. 14
But wait, this is no longer talking about two brothers, but about the two nations that came from them!
And this is precisely what Malachi is also referring to: look at the first five verses of the book say:
An oracle: The word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.
“I have loved you,” says the Lord.
“But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’
“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” the Lord says, “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
Edom may say, “Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.”
But this is what the Lord Almighty says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the Lord. You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord – even beyond the borders of Israel!”
“They….” The entire people that came from Esau are being spoken of as being hated. Whether or not Esau personally was is not even being discussed here, but the people as a group are.
Thus, when Paul quotes Malachi in Romans 9, he is referring to what happened to the people, not to the individual sons. And in Obadiah the reasons for this hatred from God are clearly delineated. In other words, there is no evidence biblically for the Calvinist position where Esau is concerned. There is no evidence at all that he was somehow hated by God from before birth. We do not even know about the man personally, as even a surface examination of the Scriptures involved indicate that it is not the individuals God is indicating hate for, but one of the nations that came from the two of them.
Going back into the old legends, there seems to be an incredible depth to the history of the two brothers that we are missing. However, all that aside, the Bible does give us everything we need to know about them as pictures of man’s relationship with God, which is what the Bible is about. We do know that Esau accepted a good part of the results of the patriarchal blessing from Jacob with the gift of the livestock. We know that he helped bury their father, which indicates that the two brothers worked together in at least some things in later life.
Did God hate Esau personally? He very well may have, and the despising of the birthright is used in Hebrews as evidence of his godlessness. This godlessness, and his marriage to pagan wives, would have affected not only his children, but their children and the children after them as well, in agreement with what we read in Exodus 20:5 –
”Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them [idols], nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me…”
The quote from Malachi 1, “Jacob I have loved but Esau I have hated” has nothing to do with the two brothers themselves but, as a reading will show and Obadiah explains quite clearly, has to do with the nations that came from the brothers. And since the reasons are given for God’s hate of Esau, we cannot then accept the use this man as an example of predestination in the Calvinist argument.
