GOD IS NOT JEALOUS

In the beginning the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let’s think about the god who is jealous.

I have been reflecting on 1 Corinthians 13. My starting point is the assertion that God is love. In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul explained what love is by listing propositions about love.

Thus, I am assuming the following two propositions to be true:  God is love. Love is not jealous. Therefore, God is not jealous.

The title of my post today may surprise us all. We have been taught that Yahweh is a jealous god, and certainly the sky god Yahweh is very jealous. He demands devotion from his people with the threat of extinction or severe pain backing up his demand.

Of course, Hebrews eventually became Jews over time. They expanded their tribal notion of their god so that he resembled the one whom Jesus called, “Abba” or “Daddy.”

A dogmatic scholar might argue that the Greek word for “jealousy” in Greek carries not the same meaning as the Hebrew word translated “jealous” in Hebrew. I’ll defer to their superior knowledge on that point.

Nonetheless, if God is love, and love is not jealous, there is a certain dynamic of jealousy meant here that we would never find in God.

The Greek word used in the passage is zeloo. It is an onomatopoetic word pronounced to sound like boiling water. Dzay-l0’-o is the phonetic pronunciation according to Bible apps.com.

The word includes all the following meanings:

To boil over because of being so hot

To burn with zeal

To be completely committed to something, with the implication of accompanying desire

To be earnest

To set one’s heart on

To be completely intent on.

In Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, he uses the Latin word aemulatur to translate the Greek word.  That word means “rival.”  So, God has not the jealousy that one might feel towards a rival?

The King James Version translates zeloo as “envieth not.”  I can see how a translator, wanting to preserve the action of the verb might use envy since coveting must certainly be at the heart of this kind of jealously.

There is a good kind of passion, for instance, the passion to help others without being obnoxious. The passion for altruism comes to mind here.

But this is not that. This is the kind of passion we might find in a stalker or in one who murders in a jealous rage.

Our God of love does not murder in fits of rage or in premeditated nuclear options. Our God of love is patient and kind. We do not have to fear extinction or pain from our God of love for any reason.

 Blessings…