Malachi 1:2

“I have loved you, saith the Lord, etc.] Which appeared of old, by choosing them, above all people upon the face of the earth, to be his special and peculiar people; by bestowing peculiar favours and blessings upon them, both temporal and spiritual; by continuing them a people, through a variety of changes and revolutions; and by lately bringing them out of the Babylonish captivity, restoring their land unto them, and the pure worship of God among them: Yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? the Targum renders it, “and if ye should say”; and so Kimchi and Ben Melech; which intimates, that though they might not have expressed themselves in so many words, yet they seemed disposed to say so;…”

“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 dishonor to Me. This which is to be supplied is left unexpressed, sorrow as it were breaking off the sentence [MENOCHIUS], (Deu 7:8; Hos 11:1). 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 prosperity taken from them, they imply they have no tokens of God's love; they look at what God had taken, not at what God had left. God's love is often…”

“I have loved you, saith the Lord - What a volume of God’s relations to us in two simple words, “I-have-loved you” . So would not God speak, unless He still loved. “I have loved and do love you,” is the force of the words. When? And since when? In all eternity God loved; in all our past, God loved. Tokens of His love, past or present, in good or seeming ill, are but an effluence of that everlasting love. He, the Unchangeable, ever loved, as the apostle of love says 1 John 4:19, “we love Him, because He first loved us.” The deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, the making them His Romans 9:4, “special people, the adoption, the covenant, the giving of the Law, the service of God and His…”

“Loved you - Both personally considered and relatively, in progenitors. Us - Who have been captives, and groaned under it all our days 'till of late. Was not Esau - Did not one father beget them, and one mother bear them? I loved Jacob - I preferred him to the birthright, and this of free love. I loved his person, and his posterity. Malachi 1:3”

“1:2-5 Malachi’s sermons are literary disputations—a format that calls to mind the setting of a courtroom and establishes the tone of a trial for the prophet’s message. This first disputation presents the truth that God loves Israel (1:2). The prophet then debates this thesis with his audience in the five messages that follow. 1:2 loved: In portraying a relationship between the Lord and Israel, love has covenant implications. The term may be equated with God’s choice, or election, of Israel as his people. Malachi’s message indicates that the other dimensions of God’s unconditional covenant love for Israel (such as his patient mercy; see 3:6, 17) are also still operative. See also Rom 9:13.”

“I have: The prophet shows in Mal 1:2-5 how much Jacob and the Israelites were favoured by Jehovah, more than Esau and the Edomites. Through every period of the history of Jacob's posterity, they could not deny that God had remarkably appeared on their behalf; but he had rendered the heritage of Esau's descendants, by wars and various other means, barren and waste forever. Deu 7:6-8, Deu 10:15, Deu 32:8-14; Isa 41:8, Isa 41:9, Isa 43:4; Jer 31:3; Rom 11:28, Rom 11:29 Wherein: Mal 1:6, Mal 1:7, Mal 2:17, Mal 3:7, Mal 3:8, Mal 3:13, Mal 3:14; Jer 2:5, Jer 2:31; Luk 10:29 yet I: Gen 25:23, Gen 27:27-30, Gen 27:33, Gen 28:3, Gen 28:4, Gen 28:13, Gen 28:14, Gen 32:28-30, Gen 48:4; Rom 9:10-13…”