In my opinion it's sometimes difficult to see the forest for the trees when reading through accounts of individuals.
I always assumed that Malachi was referring to the progeny of those men, as Jacob/Israel and Esau/Edom are both used interchangeably to refer to each respective individual and progeny. Even when Paul quotes that verse, he is referring to election of peoples and not the individuals. I'm sure we'll see Esau in the next life and give him a whack upside the head.
With regards to royalty there is an important lesson to learn in Scripture I think. "Royalty" in Scripture are only men, which is why the system is so imperfect and why God did not want to give them kings in the first place. One can sit and ponder for a good amount of time on the dynamics of leaders in God's Kingdom. We seem to suffer without strong leaders and yet we suffer with them because they are inevitably flawed.
The law was never written for kings, but rather for the entirety of Israel. Corporate Israel is responsible for keeping the laws and at the end of the day an incompetent ruler is just no excuse. They chose to have kings over them and therefor they are accountable for the leadership of the kings in terms of the law. If a king makes bad decisions and the people follow, it is the fault of the king and the people. It makes sense that everyone would be punished.
Sometimes if there is a strong enough leader, maybe the net effect of their leadership is positive in spite of their flaws and failures. Maybe even though they have sinned, they are still doing better than what anyone in that time could do. If only the individuals were capable of following the law and pleasing their God without a strong leader, but we know by now that this is not likely. Christ will succeed where everyone else failed and therein lies our hope.
In Ahab's case if he repented and changed his ways then it is understandable that God afforded him forgiveness. I don't think that Israel suffered after Ahab's death for Ahab's sins.
I actually gave the situation with David a lot of thought a while back because I felt the same way. Firstly, people tend to forget about the young David who said things like this:
But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine."
David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
Make no mistake, David was a paragon of men who lead Israel to great victories and furthered it immensely. He was a man and he was far from perfect. He definitely made mistakes and corporate Israel suffered as a result, because they are accountable for keeping the law. In the end, the net effect of David's leadership was by far in the positive.
Yes, he acted like a dirt bag when he had another man killed so that he could be with his wife. However in the narrative upon his crime being made known to him and upon realisation of his sin, David is
immediately resentful of his actions. He doesn't make any bones about the fact that he has done wrong. Also consider how quick he was to avenge a man who had lost his sheep; David clearly had a great love for his own people and for justice. It's too bad he had this lapse in judgement.
He had the choice whether to live in his own isolation and persecution or to let Israel suffer for a time. If we ponder this choice it's actually not as simple as one might think. If it were any of us we'd think, "Well I'll obviously send myself into persecution for the sake of my kindred." But we ought to dig a little deeper. We can see in 1 Kings 11 that God withheld His wrath on Solomon for David's sake. Clearly God loved David because of David's devotion to the extent where God withheld his wrath on others. This principle is also clear in Numbers 25 with Phineas. Now it is possible that God in His righteous anger would no longer withhold His wrath against Israel for their sins. Israel, even in that time, was deserving of punishment. They never quite got rid of all the mongrels and idols. Remember that Israel is accountable for its own sin, not David! Yet for the sake of David the wrath of God was withheld until
after Solomon!
Now David must have been aware of the effect of his leadership over Israel and all he had done for Israel. It is not inconceivable that David was petrified of what Israel might get up to without leadership for years. Moses was up on Sinai for a much shorter period and when he returned Israel was already worshiping idols. How much more would they fall into sin without David for seven years?! I think that David made this calculation and thought that the net effect of Israel's suffering would be greater without his own leadership than with them suffering under his leadership. If David was angry at a man being robbed of his sheep, imagine how much more it must grieve David to see his people suffer. I don't think that this was a decision David made lightly and with all this in mind I don't begrudge him that decision at all.
Hillary Clinton is just a rod of chastisement against Israel. She is judging Israel because Israel fails to judge itself. We are not bloodthirsty niggers who demand rape and torture for our enemies. Our point is to serve God and to love our people. In order to achieve that our enemies need to die. That is all they deserve. Nothing more and nothing less. She will not "pay" for those she has murdered because there is no covenant with her or her misbegotten kind. The fate of her entire satanic race is death, to the extent where it will be as if they have never existed. The fate of Israel, in spite of these supposed injustices, is everlasting life and to reign with God! A White child who hangs out with a nigger at school and suffers as a result is chastised for their own sin, but he will still sit at his father's table. Why should we care about the fate of the nigger, except that it dies?
I've written this out all rather quickly and haven't reread it because I need to hit the sack, so please excuse any errors.
