The Good Kind of Jealousy

The Good Kind of Jealousy

Exd 20:4-6 NIV - [4] "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. [5] You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, [6] but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Many people struggle with this concept of God being “jealous.” Surely, we think, if God calls us not to be jealous, He Himself cannot be jealous? But I want to talk about a different kind of jealousy: righteous jealousy. This is the sort of jealousy which we must recognize God has, and we ourselves must learn to possess it.

Almost every time you see the word “jealous” connected to God in the Old Testament, you see some sort of wrath or anger being poured out on the unrighteous. That wrath all stems back to this original usage here in Exodus 20. God sternly warns His children that “the Lord your God [is] a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate [Him].” Notice the connection of jealousy to the object in the first two sentence before this. God is commanding the Israelites to “not make for [themselves] an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” The Israelites “shall not bow down to them or worship them.” So we see a link between jealousy and idolatry. This is significant in defining righteous jealousy. When most of us think of jealousy, we are really thinking of envy—a form of jealousy, though not the context in Exodus 20:5. If we lookup the word used in Hebrew, qanna, we see it is a form of another word qinah. Quinah can refer to envy, ardor, zeal, or jealousy(http://strongsnumbers.com/hebrew/7068.htm). The Hebrew language had a very limited vocabulary spanning only a few thousand words(compared to a few million words in English). Thus, we must look at the context to see why God is not being envious. I think a more proper context here would be ardor or zeal. Zeal is defined as “fervor for a person, cause, or object; eager desire or endeavor; enthusiastic diligence; ardor.” Similarly, ardor means “great warmth of feeling; fervor; passion” (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zeal; http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ardor).

Isn’t that interesting? It appears that all the fire and brimstone God warns against the doers of unrighteousness is really rooted in something that has to do with love. This reflects the critical constant of God: God is love(1 John 4.8). God’s anger against the unrighteous is also coupled with a desire, a zeal, for us. By demonstrating His anger among the Israelites, He turned the people back to God.

The only way I can think to relate this to a human event is to consider the love of a husband to an unfaithful wife. We already see this analogy in the book of Hosea, where God symbolizes His faithfulness to an unfaithful Israel through Hosea’s marriage to the unfaithful prostitute Gomer. But let us consider now that this wife goes and commits unfaithfulness night after night with the rough men at the rough parts of the city. Does not the husband have an anger burning inside of him at the men and at his wife? There are few who would say this sort of “jealousy” is unrighteous, for we are really not talking about the English version of jealousy(envy), but of zeal. The man has a right to His wife, and she has a duty to be faithful to him. The man is just in going in rage and taking back his wife, scolding her, and then loving her. This is almost exactly the same point that God is trying to make with His righteous jealousy. God’s anger burns against the unrighteous in order to show his people who they should truly be worshipping. Does not the wife, seeing her husband’s love for her, return to her husband and repent of her ways? In the same way, God’s zeal, His passion for His people burns in both anger and passion to restore us to Him.

Stop and consider the implications of this. God is jealous of you. How you spend your time, who you spend it with, the actions you take. He is watching you, desiring for you to do right and worship Him. And when you fall, He is there to pick you up. He is there to correct you, to discipline you back into His love and faithfulness.

I pray you will recognize that love and faithfulness today. If you have not been living faithful to God or to someone or something else, you need the jealousy of God to overcome you. Allow Him to pick you up and lead you back into His straight and narrow path. It is the path of hardship, but it is also the path of love. Amen.

With love in Christ,



Austin Aldrich