Jealousy

Posted on Sep 13, 2014

Track 2  by Rabbi Paul Falk.

Yahweh uses jealousy, Yahweh is a jealous God. And I started going is jealousy like coveting, cause you want something, you want it and your upset because someone else has it. And so I started going through that process and well he is a jealous God, and what does that mean? And this is not today, but, Yahweh uses jealousy a lot….a lot.   He loves to use jealousy and it is one of his major tools throughout scripture and it is a strange tool to use. So let’s just delve in. The question I want to get to today is, to some degree what does it mean that Yahweh is a jealous God, and how does that affect us.

The one verse that I wanted to put, where it says Jealousy is his name, Deuteronomy, somewhere around 34, had brackets around it, which means it is not in the original manuscript, so I didn’t even touch that one. It wasn’t important anyway, but just so you realize. So what does it mean to be jealous. Well to me, it means the reality that I have a really strong desire for something and whether that is in someone else’s hands, I want what they have. Or in some regards, I want to protect what I already have, I’m afraid of losing it. Well that doesn’t help you…what I think. What does the scripture mean? So the word in scripture is Ka-na. It’s specifically almost set that is only used in regard to Yahweh. It means to have no rival. No one else. It’s from the base word, Kana, to be envious to excite to jealous anger, but here is the positive end, it means to be what? Zealous. Zealous to the point where you are willing to give everything up for it. This is the positive side of jealousy. It means so much to me that I am willing to give everything else in my life up for this one thing. So we are going to start with Exodus 20 versus 2 thru 4. It’s a good place to start because Yahweh is introducing Himself in regard to the covenant.

“I am Yahweh your Elohim who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, you shall have no other Elohims before me, you shall not make for yourselves a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them, for I Yahweh your Elohim am a jealous El, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, and showing mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commands.”

So basic lessons, (Continued in audio)