Jealous = God = Not Jealous?

Doug really snagged my attention with his “Violation of the Transitive Property?” post. This looks like a great seminary or ordination exam question, not to mention something out of one of my graduate school social choice courses. I’ll stick my neck out ready to be chopped off by you seminary folks with the following observations:

1 ) It is axiomatic that the Lord is a jealous God. Perform a “jealous God” search on Bible Gateway to see what I mean. But this jealously is essentially unidimensional. God is not jealous when we also love our family or flowers or puppies or Mustang convertibles, as long as we do not worship them. What He does demand is that we have no other gods before him. Yes, it is true that the prophets tell of a failure of justice in the kingdoms; but first and foremost the prophets’ story is of a people who began worshipping other gods.

2 ) But what does it mean for the Lord to be “jealous?” The words for jealously seem to have to different meanings in different contexts: the Lord’s jealousy versus earthly envy. Many bibles (especially more traditional texts) use “envy” for the Paul quotes, indicating a covetous desire to possess someone or something belonging to someone else. Love is not “envious”. To reinforce this point, my Bible (ESV) actually quotes Paul as saying, in II Corinthians 11:2, “I am jealous for you with a Godly jealousy.” Wanting to flesh this out, I went to my dictionary. It distinguishes between jealousy as envy and jealousy as a sovereign carefully guarding his rights. In this sense, the Lord being a jealous God does not mean that “the Lord is resentfully envious”, it means “you belong to God and God is zealous and careful and watchful in making sure that you honor no one else.” I am envious if my neighbor buys a Jaguar and I eat my insides up wishing I had one. The Jaguar belongs to my neighbor and I covet it. On the other hand, we belong to the Lord, and He jealously guards that relationship. Envy doesn’t enter into it.

3 ) One could also look at the “God is Love” verses, but to do so would require a discussion of what the meaning of the word “is” is, and I just don’t think I want to go there.