One thing I have noticed, as I have been reading the prophets especially, is that God’s relationship with Israel is most often described in the terms of a marriage. God is the Husband, who is faithful, and Israel is portrayed either as an adulterous wife, or as a whore. In these terms, faithfulness becomes the central religious issue. Faithfulness, specifically, to the exclusive relationship with God.
We (or, I) Sometimes think of “relationship with God” as primarily a New Testament idea, but it seems not to be. I must point out, though, that in the prophets its never an individual’s relationship with God, but the Community’s. (I don’t think that changes much as we move into the New Testament) It’s easy for us, those of us who grew up as humans or as Christians in America sometime during the 19th or 20th century, to read “relationship” exclusively in individual terms; such a reading seems foreign to the language of the Old testament, however.
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