Jealousy

God's jealousy startles modern readers — "the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Exod 34:14) — because we hear jealousy as petty insecurity. But there is a jealousy that is the proper face of love: a husband who felt nothing at his wife's betrayal would not be more loving but less. God's jealousy is his zeal for the exclusive devotion of the people he has bound himself to — his refusal to share their hearts with idols that can only destroy them.

It is, in other words, love that takes the relationship seriously. God is not insecure; he is committed. His jealousy is fierce precisely because his love is real and our idolatries are genuinely deadly. "You shall have no other gods before me" is not a tyrant's demand but a lover's, protecting us from the counterfeit gods that never keep their promises.