A Jealous God?
A ONE Church Devotional on the Ten Commandments
ONE Church Devo friends, we’re walking this July through the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20. Today’s 2nd commandment calls us to an absolute allegiance to the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer who is our triune God. Let’s listen to Exodus 20 again. Enjoy!
And God said, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt…You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…” (Exodus 20.1, 4-5)
[Moses said to the people,] “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6.4-5)
Have you ever been proud of being jealous? Can you imagine keeping a straight face if a friend announced, “I’ve been working hard on it, and I think I’ve just about perfected my jealousy.” I can’t. The usual connotation of the word often includes some sort of resentment — as in “bitter jealousy” — and we don’t generally admire either resentment or bitterness. They seem petty.
So how does it land with you when the God who speaks the Ten Commandments to Moses adds to the second one, “for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God”? We’ve talked before about anger and how that emotion can sometimes be righteous, as happens when God responds angrily to Israel’s inattention to the poor and needy of their land (Isaiah 58). In fact, you may have experienced anger that felt righteous, and may actually have been righteous. We can imagine righteous anger, but could there be such a thing as righteous jealousy?
Nonetheless, there God is the voice of God booming from Sinai, using this adjective to describe a divine trait. And as if to amplify the claim, the prophet Hosea spends chapters picturing God’s people Israel as an unfaithful wife, who incites the divine jealousy by whoring with idols.
It may help to remember again the scene that’s been set at Sinai. The people Israel have served 400 years as slaves in Egypt, God hears their cries, and calls Moses to liberate them. God backs up Moses’s attempts with a series of miraculous interventions. Then, when Pharaoh won’t relent, God opens the Red Sea for his people to pass safely through and closes it again to keep them safe from a persuing army. God then feeds the people daily bread called manna as they pass through the wilderness. Now, at Sinai, he intends to supply them with a better way to live their life together than the one they’ve known in Egypt; so he carves the Ten Commandments on two tablets. The preamble reminds them that he has done all these things for their sake, then introduces their way forward to thriving.
What Moses doesn’t know (but surely God does know) that precisely as God carves the tablets and speaks the commands to Moses — perhaps at that very moment that God is carving and speaking this morning’s commandment against graven images — the people have already crafted a golden calf to worship.
The commandment carving ran a bit long, it seems, and they couldn’t wait to worship something.
When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.
To add insult to injury, Moses’s brother Aaron got in on the idolatrous action.
Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. (Exodus 32.1-3)
Aaron collected the gold the Israelites had plundered from the Egyptians as they escaped, and he made a graven image out of it. The people’s reply to the newly fashioned image makes it clear that they have already forgotten who has been their benefactor.
Then the people said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” (Exodus 32.4)
Jealous lovers concoct vision and orbit around memories that establish their superiority over their rival suitors. But Israel’s God has actually done everything for Israel. Egyptian emblems have done nothing for them. When Aaron builds an altar, though, they’re ready to kneel before the crafted calf. It’s no wonder Moses throws the tablets down when he sees all this. And how would you feel if you were God?
Whenever we speak of God, we can only approximate the divine with words and pictures that help us know the unseen God in terms and images we can fathom. Sometimes as we do this, we get too cozy and make Jesus our buddy and domesticate God. But the word jealousy in Exodus 20.4 doesn’t bother me. God deserves our worship. God deserves to have the stage of our hearts all to himself. If you don’t believe me, spend a little time today recalling all the good God has done and been in your life — all the lands of Egypt that God has brought you out of. The list will be long, I assure you. And we who don’t review the list risk bowing to the golden calves that surround us.
Muse on this, and have a thoughtful Tuesday!
Prayer — God, giver of good gifts, you care for us as your children, but we wander as Israel wandered. Help us to direct our devotion and fix our affections on you, in Jesus. Amen.