Malachi, nearly a century later, when the people in the land had become a prosperous nation, and when, in consequence, the majority was rapidly falling into a state of religious formality and godlessness, addresses them as "Israel" or "Jacob," which surely includes all his descendants, in contrast to Esau and his descendants (Mal. i. 1–3).
THE TESTIMONY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT THAT THE "JEWS" ARE REPRESENTATIVE OF "ALL ISRAEL."
In the last words of the last of the post-Exilic prophets we have the expression "all Israel" addressed to the people in the land; and then the long period of silence sets in, lasting about four centuries, during parts of which Jewish national history is lost somewhat in obscurity. When the threads of that history are taken up again in the New Testament, what do we find? Is there one hint or reference in the whole book to an Israel apart from "that nation" of the "Jews," to whom, and of whom, the Lord and His apostles speak? There is, indeed, reference and mention of the Diaspora, "the dispersed among the Gentiles" (John vii. 35), forming, as we have seen, the greater part of the nation, and
the brotherhood among Judah and among Israel"—that is to say, among the entire nation. The consequence of it would be the fulfilment of the threat in the 9th verse: "Let them which are left eat every one the flesh of another"—solemn and awful words, which had their first literal fulfilment in the party feuds and mutualy destructive strife, and in the terrible "dissolution of every bond of brotherhood and of our common nature, which made the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans a proverb for horror, and precipitated its destruction."
