Wife or Harlot?
“If a man divorces his wife
and she leaves him and marries another man,
should he return to her again?
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 up to the barren heights and see.
Is there any place where 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. Have you not just called to me:
‘My Father, my friend from my youth,
will you always be angry?
Will your wrath continue forever?’
This is how you talk,
but you do all the evil you can.” (Jer. 3:1-3)
I miss my wife. Her absence from my life has left a huge hole that at times seems unfillable. So this experience of grief at the loss of my spouse helps me understand in a small way what the LORD Himself must experience when His “wife”, His chosen people, forsakes Him to go after the gods of other nations. The metaphor of prostitution is a very powerful one. Jeremiah, along with the other prophets of the Old Testament, uses it often.
I suppose of the two tragedies, the death of a wife is to be preferred over the unfaithfulness of a wife. To her dying day, Susan would look deeply into my eyes with that incredible loving gaze and say, “I love you more than life itself.” That she should be unfaithful to me would be incomprehensible. Never her!
Yet it happens. Even to Christian husbands with Christian wives. The pain to the husband must be overpowering. I cannot conceive of it. As Jeremiah puts it, it is inconceivable that a man should return to the wife that he divorced and who married another. Even the LORD asks, “would you now return to me?” That’s apparently what the people of Israel wanted. They have called to the Father and begged Him to stop being angry with them (after He withheld the spring rains), yet they continue to do all the evil that they can.
Although it’s risky to make historical parallels to the events of Scripture where an inspired prophet gives his own interpretation, it seems to this writer that our culture made a fateful choice of similar import to Israel when in the 1960’s it embarked on the journey of sex independent of marriage. Recreational sex, live-ins, domestic partners–these have become the norm in our day. The institution of heterosexual marriage has come under attack, particularly in light of the recent court decisions.
So why is it that the God-ordained institution of marriage should become devalued in favor of “shacking up”, and on the other hand God-opposed same-sex relationships should be encouraged even to the point of calling them “marriage” by the cultural elite? I wonder if it all goes back to that great God-instilled human trait of desiring to love and to be loved. We are encouraged to look for it in all the wrong places. Counterfeits are accepted in place of love for God, love for spouse, love for family, love for friend and love for neighbor.
I know the pain of losing the love of my life. I understand a bit more in the emptiness of my soul why the motivation to be loved and to love is such a driving motivation given the fact that her spot now stands vacant. The one who occupied my love is now but a whisper in my mind. I desperately want to fill it. I could be tempted to do something rash to ease my pain. So, our culture–rejecting its former love for God–succumbs to that same temptation to find fulfillment of its love desire in the harlotry so prolifically provided by the false gods. Yet, as Augustine observed so many centuries ago: “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” Our next entry will explore how the LORD Himself guides even his unfaithful “wife” towards that rest.