The People of God: God's Wife--II

The Bible compares God's people being unfaithful to God by going after "other lovers," like foreign gods, wealth, material things, earthly political, social, institutional, recreational, or religious power, human alliances and coalitions, and the like, instead of depending totally and completely on God, with a wife being unfaithful to her husband by going after other men. Hosea 2:5, 13 uses this language to describe North Israel's apostasy from Yahweh in the eighth century B. C.:

"Their mother [North Israel] has been unfaithful
and has conceived them in disgrace.
She said, 'I WILL GO AFTER MY LOVERS,
who give me my food and my water,
my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.' . . .
I [Yahweh] will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
AND WENT AFTER HER LOVERS,
BUT ME SHE FORGOT,' declares the Lord."

Similarly, Jeremiah 3:1-3 says concerning Judah in the late seventh century B. C.:

"'If a man divorces his wife
and she leaves him and marries another man,
should he return to her again? [The answer is NO! as Deuteronomy 24:1-4 shows]
Would not the land be completely defiled?
BUT YOU HAVE LIVED AS A PROSTITUTE WITH MANY LOVERS--
would you now return to me?' declares the Lord.
'Look upon the bare heights and see.
Is there any place that you have not been ravished?
BY THE ROADSIDE YOU SAT WAITING FOR LOVERS,
sat like a nomad in the desert.
You have defiled the land
with your prostitution and wickedness.
Therefore the showers have been withheld,
and no spring rains have fallen.
YET YOU HAVE THE BRAZEN LOOK OF A PROSTITUTE;
you refuse to blush with shame.'"

Paul uses the same husband-wife metaphor to describe the apostasy of the church from Christ in 2 Corinthians 11:2-3:

"I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to ONE HUSBAND, to Christ, so that I might present you as A PURE VIRGIN to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, YOUR MINDS MAY SOMEHOW BE LED ASTRAY FROM YOUR SINCERE AND PURE DEVOTION TO CHRIST."

When God's people are unfaithful, the great tragedy is not that they have violated some divine rule or commandment, or that they have deliberately or unintentionally thought, spoken, or acted against the religious and moral standards their ancestors have taught them, but that they have behaved unlovingly with ingratitude in response to a PERSON (God) who constantly and persistently loves them under all circumstances and cares for and provides for them far more than they deserve.

John Willis