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CHAPTER 9

DIVINE Jealousy

and Human Understanding

The Hebrew term used in Exodus 20:5 in the statement that God is a jealous God has, we find in Harris, Archer and Waitke's Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, has a range of meanings, from jealousy to zeal, and of  applications, from zest for serving God whatever the cost, (Psalm 69:9) to the zeal with which the Lord will stir up His protection to  deliver Israel when such times come, as they very often have come, do come and will  come (Zechariah 12-13).

The term represents a very strong emotion, one which Christ had, as foretold in the Psalm 69, to such a degree,  as ZEAL for the glory of God and His will and way, that it had "eaten Me up." In parallel, "the reproaches of those who reproached You have fallen on Me." Hence represented here by this term is a self-sacrificial zeal in the performance of protection, salvation and the weal of those concerned, just as in place, it can become a flaming quest for purity which is never satisfied with the loathsome, the pretentious, the bumptious, the presumptuous and the uncaring (cf. Isaiah 29:13, Isaiah 1).

To be sure, there are many images in the Bible, as in much that concerns one's love for a wife, country, vocation and so on, in literature more generally. Since there are ultimates in value, meaning and power for life involved, this is the natural tendency, to do some more justice to the strength and significance of the attitudes, outcomes and intentions involved.

The Bible often uses the figure of marriage (as in Ephesians 5, Hosea 1-3, Jeremiah 3:1, Ezekiel 23:19) to signify a quality in the relationship either between the theocratic nation Israel and its Lord, or between Christ and the Church or Christian individual as implied in I Corinthians 6:15, where the call being to each and every soul, distinctively,  in that sense is and can only be to individuals in terms of the imagery. Just so, there is the phenomenon of 'jealousy' associated with that imagery. It is quite the same with Amos 3:7-8,in another piece of imagery. Here there is a lion roaring. The lion represents the Lord giving His word out to mankind, and there is an associated 'roar'; but one would never imagine that this means that there is some vast sound to intimidate, but rather the equivalent in a divesting of the imagery: namely,  a sovereign, assured, vastly significant announcement that it would be folly to imagine to lack power and majesty.

Let us return to our current term. The jealousy is not to be understood to mean a mean, base, loathsome,  self-centred, narrow-minded and selfishly abhorrent emotion, such as may at times be found in some aroused males who have a conceited conception of their dominion over some female or females, and may come to sartorial expression in some who insist that their wives or even women more generally be so covered that people may not even see their normal and relevant functional features, such as face or legs, at all. Such harassment MAY be connected with jealousy, but this appears in itself more pathological than pure, since if sin of heart in others is to be stopped by so wrapping people up, then where should it stop, until the one in question becomes so swathed in restrictions as to be virtually dehumanised, and a subject of male tyranny.

Even a jealousy which is neither outlandish nor unreasonable in the scope of its purvey on the one in view, can become abhorrent, if it represents an incitation to needless conflict, contest and trickery, treacheries and physical violence, based on roused emotion and not on rational reality.

The term is often used in such a way as to be not normally attractive, therefore, though in the SENSE of ZEAL, ZEST, QUEST for purity as often used in the Bible (cf. Ephesians 5:26-27), it is both loveable and lovely. Even in imagery, the baser forms of the emotion are not to be assumed, since after all the word has both noble and base possible meanings, and the actual one in view needs to be determined by the context, both overall as in a legal document, and in particular. In the Bible, there are a number of underlying meanings for the term. As just noted, one is for the purity, development, beautiful maturation, deliverance from marring of the object of admiration and love; with this, goes as a negative but appropriate side, the barring or effort to avoid for the loved one, what soils, spoils, ruins, depraves, deprives of due development. In particular, biblically, it concerns the intent, the matter being spiritual altogether, of preserving from spiritual profusion: which here would involve other 'husbands', that is other gods, sources of controlling ideas and ideals.

The use of the figure of amorous love for this purpose has many advantages; for here lies a sense of strength, passion linked to desire for purity,  willingness to act, zest. The casting of other gods as other husbands, or paramours, thus brings out the spiritual sense that there IS, as a matter of fact, precisely ONE God, and HENCE as in marriage (where there is but one husband at least ostensibly), there is an absolute embargo on mixed 'blessings', that is multiple ménages of gods or ideals, as improper, inappropriate, yes, but far more. They are unreal in themselves as in Deuteronomy 32, things literally of ''nothing'. Such 'gods' exist only in the mind of man, of their deception base, and worship of them is more ludicrous than ever, since it represents not only a straying mind, but a benighted thrust of thought and a besotted heart, not merely as it were, with emotion, but with stark and plain irrationality. As such, THEY are not even there! The gods of the heathen are idols (Psalm 96)

Such entities may be devils (mere imitations of a god allied with lying), delusions (pathological sediments in the mind of mischievous man), enticements (means of becoming wicked in one's life, as a sort of quasi-divine cheer-squad or encouragement): but they have nothing worthy of worship, being in all cases pathological in conception, incapable except for destruction involving the work of macabre passion, however much it may bless itself with unsavoury illusion.

To deliver from such is the very due and proper work of the spiritual 'husband' who wishes to protect and perfect the life of the loved one, here the Christian or the nation in various contexts. In this actual sense, there IS no other husband available; for God is one. The rest is imitation and self-elevation. The divine zeal therefore involves rescue from illusion, delusion and peril, form weakness that may for a time shout its own strength (as with Hitler and Sennacherib - Isaiah 36ff.), but in the end is simply ludicrous, like a dog posing as a bull, a bull as an army, or an army as God.

It is THIS zeal which, with God as the husband, in Christ as the Saviour, has "eaten Me up," so that His entire strength as in healing and exposing and raising the dead, but especially in bearing with and later in bearing the sin of the ones sought and besought, becomes an explosive current, like a dam bursting and releasing its waters into a valley; and it accomplishes its task, draped in the divinely chosen format of weakness of flesh (Romans 8, Hebrews 2), following the incarnation, itself therefore a further expression of the actual tenderness of heart and willingness to sacrifice for the entirely necessary, natural and blessed fulfilment of the thing made. It is LIKE jealousy, LIKE zeal and LIKE zest, but ONLY (as in any parable or image) in the respects shown relevant by the context and the association of relevant terms, jealousy. It is limited and delimited by the substance which it represents.

What then is in view, it is like jealousy in being filled with desire, singular and singularising hope and expectation, devoted love, and hence the term can be used; but that stops at the concept of wicked distortions and passionate pollutions which stoop to inept and merely self-bound desires, that have no relationship to reality, but only to a feverish heart. God is never represented like that; though He MAY indeed be shown to have after long patience, a readiness to visit on those who pollute, deceive, bring into bondage and evil what He loves, when the time comes as in Deuteronomy 32, Isaiah 66, 59.

The use of this word of multiple meaning in ways contrary to context and merely foisted onto the imagery without verbal discretion is thus merely one more trap and trick of the devil. It means zeal in essence in the format of the figure invoked; and  when in imagery it means jealousy, it must as in all imagery, be divested of the inappropriate and given the apt phases of its meanings: that is, those where the OTHER and LITERAL meanings show the actual inten. Thus it is to be used with discretion as must all imagery and parable! You do not make a comparison in order to make an identity, but to make a likeness that reveals, reinforces, makes graphic, vital, that invades a slow mind or activates further a strong one, penetrating with mission and message. Distortion is purely the work of ill-will in such cases, and may rightly be despised like all other propaganda and superficial snarls.

Revolt loves to incite against the purity of what it wishes to dismiss; delusion loves to enhance this; but redemption is the ultimate in mind, where the zeal is so deep that the very life of the divine Lover, instead of in lordly fashion curbing the life by overflowing desire, as its passion dictates, allows the passion to be deployed on His own Person. Thus,  it is Himself who is 'devoured' in the binding of guilt upon Himself, taken from the sinner, scarcely alluring but still loved, to enable liberation and fulfilment of what it was, from the first, created to be (Romans 5:1-11, Galatians 3). That this divine action through faith and repentance involves becoming a child of God, the ultimate in parenthood not just in historical institution but in eternal life in the beauties of holiness, is its incomparable but matching achievement.