That isn’t a doctrine it’s an opinion concerning whether God was using a common term to show His relationship to this particular chosen people.
I don't understand what it is you think a doctrine is other than "an opinion concerning whether God [fill in the blank]".
In any case, it is what I was referring to.
Yes, we have many of God’s own verbatim words.
We have I am the Way….what? The way to San Jose”?
Eat my body and drink my blood.
I have already conceded and readily so that it is a metaphor. It is a metaphor that God Himself uses to communicate something about what He has done in regard to His relationship with Ephraim. That is not in question and it is not the point.
The point is that you are unwilling to use the same metaphor that God Himself used in the same way that He used it. You, in effect, accuse God of false teaching because I am not the one who Jeremiah was quoting in the third chapter of his book, it was God Himself.
From the beginning when God created man and woman.
Speaking Of Moses, Jesus says here in Mark’s Gospel.
Mark 10: 5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept.
6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.
7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;
8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.
9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Genesis 3:20
20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
Yep they were married!
Were they? Was there a marriage ceremony? Marriage is a legal proceeding where two people's status before the law is altered. Was there a court filing procedure for this marriage?
Do you see the point I'm making, there? I, of course, understand the Eve was Adam's wife but it would have meant something a bit different then. It seems intuitive that it would have been different for their children as well who would have had to take their siblings as spouses.
Earlier you implied that Israel was married to another based on their having committed idolatry (forgetting about John 4:18, I'd say). The point being to ask just what it is that you think it means for someone to be married? A person who commits adultery is not married to their lover or else it wouldn't be adultery. Fornication was a crime in the Mosaic law, the punishment for which was for the lovers to be married and to prohibit their being divorced. And so marriage has to do with a lot more than having sex with someone.
Correct, you didn’t write them, but you keep insisting we take them for their literal meaning.
No, I don't. I insist we take them to mean what they seem to mean.
That, by the way, is an important distinction that I don't think is made clear often enough. It is not that such passages are not a metaphor but merely that the concept being communicated is accurate.
Talking about God in terms of "Father" is also a metaphor. To use the form of your argument, "Fathers" are men. Right? Does that mean then that God isn't really our Father? Does the fact that it's a figure of speech mean that it doesn't mean what it seems to mean when you say it? NO! It absolutely does mean what it seems to mean. It does NOT mean that God impregnated someone who birthed us into existence like a human father does his children. In that sense it is indeed a figure of speech but the point is that NO ONE thinks it means that when they use the figure. What they mean is that God is our source, He is our protector, He is our provider, He is everything to us that a good father is to his own children.
When a figure of speech is used, it's as if the words used in the figure of speech are a seperate word. When you say, for example, "Let's hit the road.", its as if those several words have become a single word, (in this case meaning, "leave"), and in that sense you have said what you meant and meant what you said. In other words, you weren't being sarcastic or sending any sort of vailed message or anything else like that. What you said wasn't "literal" but it was intended to be taken "plainly". This is what is being talked about when I and others talk about "the plain reading of scripture". We aren't talking about taking everything in a woodenly literal sense but rather taking it as it seems to be intended when you simply read it.
Otherwise you wouldn’t keep insisting God’s covenant relationship is a marriage.
It absolutely is a marriage - of sorts. It isn't identical to the covenant of marriage between a man and woman but it is similar in many important ways. Similar enough that God uses the metaphor over and over and over again throughout the bible.
A marriage is between a man and a woman. Otherwise it’s a contract. It sure does get people’s attention, though, doesn’t it? Look at us arguing over God calling Himself a husband who married an idolatrous people? Why don’t we argue about God being a faithful husband to His people of promise? We know the story, it’s the terminology we waste time on?
It's God's own terminology, glorydaz! You are not disputing with me but with God! I am not the one who likened God's relationship to Israel in terms of marriage AND divorce, God is! What's more is that He did so A LOT! God did it in the Old Testament, Jesus did it, Paul did it, John prophesied about a marriage feast, etc. I mean, it is imagery that is literally used throughout God's word.
That’s because I know that God wasn’t actually married to anyone. He disciplined them, threatened them, sent them off in exile, but He ALWAYS took them back.
Based on God's own words, God was, in fact, married and divorced and will return to Israel and He will remarry her.
Revelations 19:6 And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings, saying, “Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! 7 Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.” 8 And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
9 Then he said to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb!’ ” And he said to me, “These are the true sayings of God.”
That sounds like a marriage to me, glorydaz.
Who is the Lamb of God marrying in that passage if not Israel?
God divorced Ephraim and God is also divorced, or at the very least estranged from Judah as well and thus the whole of Israel has been "put away" and cut off until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in. But there will come a time, a time rapidly aproaching, God willing, when Israel will make herself ready and God will return to His beloved Israel and there will be a feast like never before seen in Jerusalem.
Yes, God is the one who made up the metaphor. I have no problem with His usage of it. He isn’t claiming the metaphor is reality. In other words, God did not actually marry anyone. He uses divorce as an analogy of His relationship with His chosen people, Israel.
I keep repeating this same point over and over again....
The fact that it is a metaphor does not help you because, whether you want to call it a divorce or not, it doesn't alter the fact that the status of God's relationship with Israel was changed by God in response to their being unfaithful to Him.
You are making excuses for why God might divorce PART of Israel…according to tribe. That’s too bad because the promise was made to Jacob and his name was changed to Israel. All who are descended from Jacob qualify as Israel. Too many promises for you to try and rip into two.
Sorry, glorydaz! I am not Jeremiah reincarnated. I didn't write one single syllable of the bible and it is God Himself that distinguished Ephraim for Judah, NOT ME!
I cannot figure out why you cannot accept the use of this metaphor to the same extent that numerous biblical authors and God Himself used it. If God is not scared to say that He gave Ephraim a certificate of divorce, why are you scared of it?
This much is certain....
The degree to which you recoil at the notion of God marrying, divorcing and then remarrying Israel is the degree to which you fail to understand the meaning of the metaphor's usage because God uses it to a degree unlike almost any other metaphor in the whole bible. God likens Himself to a shepherd and Israel his flock of sheep more fequently, but I can't think of any others that are so consistently used throughout God's word. It's just everywhere.
