Isaiah 62:5a “For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry Thee:

 

The word for marry here is baal, yeah the same word that is used for a false god.  What could the sages be thinking when they used the same word for marriage that is used for a pagan god.   Meditate on that a little.  Actually, in its Semitic root the word baal means possessor or owner. Basically in a Near Eastern marriage the husband literally owns his wife.  However in the Hebrew culture baal, when used for marriage, carried the idea of two people owning each other.  The wife owns her husband and the husband owns his wife.  That is an odd arrangement.  The thing owned owes the owner.  Of course, I know someone who owns an antique car.  After listening to him talk all the time about his car, the money he spends on his car, the way he protects his car, the way he works on his car, and the time he spends with his car, I realized that the car also owns him.

 

What is so beautiful about this expression of being married to God is that God not only owns us, but we also own Him.  “I am His and He is mine.”   That could get a little dangerous as a person can get really hurt, but not when His banner over us is love.”  Song of Solomon 2:4.  But if our banner over God is not  love that get’s a little risky for God.  He pours his love out on us and when we are unfaith in this marriage, and God has made us in His image, then God must feel the same hurt and rejection as anyone would feel upon learning their mate has been unfaithful.

 

What is strange about this passage in Isaiah 62:5 is that the picture here is that Israel, the church or us are not the bride and God is the husband but God is the bride (virgin) and we are the husband.  Is not this a little backward, should it not be that we are the bride and God is the husband?  At least that is what we are always hearing in church.  Yet here we are the ones who marry a virgin God.

 

Note the word virgin is bethulah, this is not a just a young woman. That word would be  alamah yet many modern translations will translate it as if it is the word alamah to avoid the implications of calling God a virgin. But clearly the Hebrew word used, bethulah, is there to imply a virgin or one who has never been intimate with a man.  Think about it.  We are married to God as if He were a virgin, as if He were never intimate with anyone else but us.  How is that possible?  God does not live in time, but we do.  We each have our own timeline.  When we invite Jesus into our hearts, we are asking Him to join in our timeline where he can spend our time here on earth every moment and second of each day 24/7.  We our time on earth ends and we leave this timeline and enter eternity, God simply passes through time and joins another person who has invited Him into their personal timeline where he is literally a virgin God, one who has not been intimate with anyone else in that specific timeline.

 

One of the hardest things to face for someone who has had a mate that has been unfaithful is that this person would be haunted by the thought: “I was not good enough.”  Get this?  When we marry ourselves to God we are marrying a virgin God, as if he has not be intimate with anyone else.  We never have to worry about God saying: “Well, you’re certainly not like my lover the Apostle Paul” or “Why can’t you be more like my lover David.”   In God’s eyes they never existed in our personal timeline, only we and we alone live in our personal timeline that God shares with us.

 

But soft, how many times have you said: “So, Lord, you prefer maybe Billy Graham?” What devastation it is if you love your mate dearly and then your mate accuses you of preferring someone else.  We look around at other Christians and say to ourselves: “Wow, I wish I could be as dedicated as that Christian, or study the Word as that Christian, God surely will honor and love that person more than me.”  Yet, Isaiah is telling us that God is our virgin bride, He is totally focused on us, no one else.  He may have billions of other lovers but He is the God of the Universe who does not live in time or the natural world, He can spend every moment, second, 24/7 with us personally, intimately, not giving thought to another person as He is not bound by their timeline.  He just moves back and forth through time like we walk through air and when our time on earth is over after He has spent every moment and second with us, God just simply moves back through time and picks up with another lover in another timeline with whom He spends every moment and second 24/7.

 

Not only does Isaiah 62:5 jar our attention to the fact that we are God’s one and only lover in our personal timeline  but that living in our own personal timeline with Him means we can deeply wound His heart we think He would prefer someone else over us, that we are not good enough for him.  When He died on a cross He died within our time line, for us alone and no one else for no one else lives in our personal timeline, only God has the ability to invade our personal timeline and if we invite Him to live within our personal timeline and then tell him we are not good enough for Him, He will spend our life time, our timeline, grieving and longing to be intimate with us.  If we are not intimate with Him then He will remain a virgin God for our entire life time in our timeline.  What a waste of time.

 

 

Subscribe to our free Daily Hebrew Word Study for in-depth commentary using Biblical Hebrew!

* indicates required