“I have loved you,” says the Lord.

But you ask: “How have You loved us?”

“Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?” This is the Lord’s declaration. “Even so, I loved Jacob,

but I hated Esau. I turned his mountains into a wasteland, and gave his inheritance to the desert jackals.”

Though Edom says: “We have been devastated, but we will rebuild the ruins,” the Lord of Hosts says this: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called a wicked country and the people the Lord has cursed forever.

“A son honors his father, and a servant his master. But if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is your fear of Me? says Yahweh of Hosts to you priests, who despise My name.”

Yet you ask: “How have we despised Your name?”

But you are profaning it when you say: “The Lord’s table is defiled, and its product, its food, is contemptible.”

“The deceiver is cursed who has an acceptable male in his flock and makes a vow but sacrifices a defective animal to the Lord. For I am a great King,” says Yahweh of Hosts, “and My name will be feared among the nations.

“So I in turn have made you despised and humiliated before all the people because you are not keeping My ways but are showing partiality in your instruction.”

But who can endure the day of His coming? And who will be able to stand when He appears? For He will be like a refiner’s fire and like cleansing lye.

“Since the days of your fathers, you have turned from My statutes; you have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of Hosts.

But you ask: “How can we return?”

But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go out and playfully jump like calves from the stall.