The LORD God Almighty is a Jealous GOD
Several years ago, I saw a video clip of a famous talk show host in which she said that, as a teenager, she began being skeptical about the God of the Bible when her church kept speaking of God being a jealous God. Her thought was something like this: “How small and petty God must be that He wants my stuff.” I recall thinking, “She does not know what jealous means.” But, she is not to be blamed for her misunderstanding, for the meaning of jealous is somewhat different from what it was in the days when the KJV was translated. Now we consider jealousy and envy to be very nearly synonymous. But that was not always so. Long ago, jealous and zealous were essentially the same word. Both come from the same Latin background but each entered our vocabulary through different languages. But eventually, jealous became associated with one’s possessions. The idea is that one was fiercely or “zealously” protective of what he had. So, at that time, the distinction between envy and jealou...