Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar;

Isaiah 54:5-6 “For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name…For the Lord has called you like a forsake wife, (who) is grieved in spirit, like a wife  of youth who is forsaken.”

Hosea 2:16-19: “Therefore, behold, I will lure her and bring her to the wilderness, and speak to her heart….And in that day, says the Lord, you will call me ‘My husband’ and you shall no more call me ‘ba’ali’ (my master).

In Matthew 5 we have the record of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.  For centuries Christians have interpreted this parable as Jesus being the bridegroom and His coming for his bride is the second coming. The bride is the church  and the wise and foolish virgins are, well, I don’t know what they are.  You can’t say the virgins are the church because they are the bride, right?  And the wedding feast, of course, is our feast in heaven after the rapture. I  have one problem with that interpretation, it indicates that we have to wait for the rapture to become the bride of Christ.  Frankly, Jesus is my mate now and I am not waiting for any rapture to enter that love relationship with Him.

Let me mention just one thing here.  The audience listening to Jesus tell this story is a Jewish audience and such an interpretation would not auger well with  a Jewish population.  For one thing, the church didn’t even exist at this time.

In ancient times a woman was not allowed to roam the streets at night without a lamp. That would be illegal and a sign that she was a “woman of the night.”  In this wedding picture the ten virgins as the brides attendants, have an invitation to the wedding reception, but even as a friend and attendant to the bride she would not be admitted to the reception if she were breaking the law and wandering the streets without a light.

So, in the Jewish, Hebrew mind what were they thinking when Jesus told this story?  As shown in the verses above the Jews would be very familiar with the idea of Israel as the bride of God.  They would have seen the 10 virgins as non-Jews who are fully prepared to assist Israel in her calling to be Jehovah’s bride and to enter the heavenly banquet chamber.  Of course the problem with this is that few Christians are theologically prepared to humble themselves by considering themselves as servants to Israel, the bride of God. Yet Paul says in Romans 15:8-9: “Christ became a servant to the Jewish people in the cause of God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs…”

Now how did I get off on that.   What I wanted to stress is that the picture of a loving relationship between a husband and wife was a familiar illustration of the relationship between God and his people.  God as the long suffering husband with an unfaithful wife who is already ready to forgive and to try to bring her back.  Yes, he could force his unfaithful wife back, make her a slave under threat of execution for her unfaithfulness.  Force her to do the things he wants her to do.  But Hosea makes it clear that he does not want his wife to call him “ba’ali” (my master) but “ishi” my husband.  For her to do things he wants her to do because she loves him not because she is afraid of the consequences if she doesn’t.

Why does a man and woman desire to become husband and wife. God created woman from a man, so as the Talmud teaches, “A man is not complete until he is married, then he is finished” (I have got to fine tune that translation).  Until a man is joined as one with a woman, and a woman with a man, the human creature will always feel incomplete. Man and woman are designed to love, but love can not be complete until it is given out, received and returned.   So too with God.  God created us in His image.  That means that the longings we have to complete our natural desire for love is the same longings that God has. God is therefore pictured as a husband who longs to take his beloved to a trysting place, where he can speak lovingly to her, tell her how beautiful she is, show off a little, make her proud of him. Gently caress her cheek, look into her eyes and delight to see the love in her eyes.  Offer her the world if she would stay by His side. He wants to feel her presence, to sit quietly with her and just feel the satisfaction that He is one with her. Even just sit in the park and watch the bird, the little animals and think that maybe your Heavenly Husband/Wife is trying to show off to you? To impress you.  Someone recently mentioned that to me and I had never thought of it until then. That saint really has the right idea of a relationship with God.

Yeah, the enemy sure wants to pervert that relationship. He has even turned the intimacy between a man and woman into: “Does he or she satisfy me?  If not find someone else.”  He wants to spread pornography so he can pervert one’s thinking about what intimacy really is meant to be.  What a disaster for the enemy if a man and woman should truly have a relationship like God intended.  Then they would know what God really desires from us.  The enemy would much rather make us view God as “ba’al” a master rather than an “ishi” a husband.   Cause us to utter praise (I praise you, thank you, praise, praise, praise etc.) like a robot rather than just silently whisper in God’s ear, three words: “I love you.”

For you students of Hebrew, always, always remember one thing when reading the Old Testament.  First interpret everything in light of relationships. Always, remember David’s motif of a lover and his beloved when reading the Psalms. Always remember that the Jews had the idea of being a bride to God centuries before the church ever arrived on the scene.  Judeo-Christian religion is the only religion in the world where our God is our mate and not our master.