Does God have a wife?

There can be no question that the relationship of husband and wife is used in many passages of the Old Testament figuratively to express the grace of Jehovah to the remnant of His ancient people. Nothing can be more touching than the variety of the forms in which He seeks in this way to win their hearts for Himself and to express the place they have in His heart, and His unchangeable faithfulness to promise and purpose for them, however sad their course has been. He can even recall the love of their "Espousals when thou wentest after me in the wilderness" (Jer. 2), plead with them to return to Him for I am "married" unto you — "thy maker is thy husband" (Isa. 54:5), and He can call her as "a wife of youth." (Isa. 54) You have recalled Hosea 2:7: but with what endearing terms He seeks to allure her to do so; "I will betroth thee unto me for ever," and so on. (Vers. 19, 20.) And the passages can be multiplied almost indefinitely. The Canticles is based upon the figure of such relationship, at least in the desire for it, if not in the rest and peaceful satisfaction that the actually formed relationship, as we know it, carries with it. But when all is told out in such wonderful grace on the part of the Lord by the use of the figure of earth's nearest and dearest relationship, no thought of union with Him is therein expressed. It would be impossible to conceive it without revelation. That saints on earth should be actually united to Christ in Glory was yet the Mystery "hid in God," of which not a word had been breathed in the Old Testament. That it should be possible, He had to become man, and the corn of wheat had to fall into the ground and die, or otherwise be alone for ever in His glory as man, for it is only to Christ risen and glorified, and by the Spirit come from that glory that any could be united to Him (1 Cor. 6, 1 Cor. 12). No hint of union is then implied by all the passages in which in the Old Testament the comparison or figure of husband and wife is used.

It is true, that, as to the Body of Christ, the Old Testament, as far as we are aware, has no hint of it; while with regard to the Bride there are types from the very beginning. But not only so, the figure of marriage is used again and again with reference to the relation between Jehovah and Israel, as a people brought into intimate and unique attachment to Himself; and this both in the history of the past, and in the prophecy of the future. This was, therefore, no mystery hid in God,—no secret to be brought out at an after time,—and cannot refer to the Church which is Christ’s Body. Thus in Jeremiah (31:31–34) God speaks of the covenant made with their fathers, when He took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, as of a marriage contract: “which my covenant they brake, although I was a husband to them, saith the Lord.” And in Hosea (chap. 2) God judges them for their wanderings from Him as adultery, while He prophesies the return of the nation to her “first husband” as the result of His dealings with her in the time to come: “I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them, and decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and went after her lovers, and forgat Me, saith the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor as a door of hope; and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.”

The Jewish body was so married, "for I am married unto you, saith Jehovah." (Jer. 3:14; Isa. 54:4-6.) "Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more: for thy Maker is thy husband; for Jehovah hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth when thou wast refused, saith thy God." And we shall find this remarkably maintained throughout. Thus the Jewish body is ever called an adulteress, as in Hosea 3; the Church as corrupt, but not breaking covenant. "Thou hast judged the great whore," and fornication is the sin of the Church.

But the city is the "Bride, the Lamb's wife." In the Old Testament, the figure of marriage is used in a similar way. Israel was thus Jehovah's "married wife" (Isa. 54:1; Jer. 31:32), now divorced indeed for her unfaithfulness, but yet to return (Hosea 2), and be received and reinstated. Her Maker will then be once more her husband, and more than the old blessing be restored. In the forty-fifth psalm, Israel's King, Messiah, is the Bridegroom; the Song of Solomon is the mystic song of His espousals. Jerusalem thus bears His name: "This is the name whereby she shall be called: Jehovah our Righteousness" (Jer. 33:16, comp. Jer. 23:6). The land, too, shall be "married" (Isa. 62:4).

Dius and Menander, Tyrian historians, mention an Eithobalus of Ahab's time, who was priest of Ashtoreth (female consort of Baal), who having murdered Pheles, became king of Tyre. See Josephus, c. apion, i. 18. This was, in all probability, Jezebel's father. Her zeal for the spread and maintenance of the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth, or Astarte, is therefore easily accounted for; hence, also, her inveterate hatred of the holy worship of Jehovah, and her murderous designs against His prophets. Her name means chaste — Satan's counterfeit or ridicule, as it were, of purity. Was it the hope of strengthening his kingdom, or her seductions, with the attractions of her painted face, that led Ahab into this alliance? Behind it all, we may be sure, Satan was seeking by this new move to utterly corrupt and destroy God's people and His truth from the earth. "And Ahab made a grove" — Asherah — an image, or pavilion, to Astarte" and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him.

Verses 16-20. The Lord told the prophet that no prayer of intercession would be answered. "I will not hear thee." What a word this is, coming from Him, who had told Israel to cry unto Him and He would answer. They had provoked Him by making cakes to the queen of heaven. They had fallen in with the worship of a female idol, so prevalent among the idolatrous nations which surrounded them, like the Phoenicians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Babylonians. The Babylonian Venus, Ishtar, was called by them the queen of heaven. The Assyrian called her Beltis, the female form of Baal; they placed in the sculpture a star over her head and called her "the mistress of the heavens." The Phoenicians worshipped this "queen of heaven" under the name of Ashtoreth or Astarte. This wicked worship, with which all kinds of immoral ceremonies were connected, had been adopted by the Jews. The women made cakes to present to this goddess. Jewish tradition tells us that the image of the idol was stamped on each cake. This worship of "the queen of heaven" is perpetuated in the mystical Babylon, Rome, the great whore and mother of harlots (Rev. 17). Mary is called by Romanists "the queen of heaven" and "mistress of the heavens." It can be proven that Mariolatry is but the continuation of the Babylonish worship of the goddess they called "queen of heaven." If the Lord was provoked to anger because the women of Israel brought cakes to this queen of heaven, how much more is He provoked to anger with the idolatries of papal Rome?

"God is a spirit." He is the Being Who is spirit in essence. It is not merely that this is His character, as would be expressed if the phrase were "God is spirit." But God is a spirit. It refers to His being, to the Person. He has no bodily shape. He is not circumscribed like ourselves, and He is an omnipresent spirit, and therefore though in heaven, He is here, and we being spirit are in His presence.

God is Spirit. The Son—the second Person (in mention) of the Trinity—is Spirit. Where the Scriptures refer to the Spirit of God, it invariably means the Holy Spirit; for example, “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2) and “The Lord GOD and His Spirit hath sent Me” (Isa. 48:16). So apart from this, we should not speak of a Divine Person having a spirit, as it might appear to indicate that the Divine Spirit is only a part of the essence of His eternal Person. His inscrutable, eternal Person is essentially Spirit. In the Incarnation the Son took manhood into His Person—true manhood consisting of a human body, a human soul and a human spirit.

Wisdom Personified as a Female.

P. 45. "I do not think that Proverbs 8 can be understood consistently with the whole truth, except by seeing that it is the voice of wisdom abstractly viewed, but personified as a female who can speak, love, bestow favours and have delights. It has pleased God to so present it, and it is for us to seek understanding as to it. It must be admitted by all that the thought of Son is simply not to be found there, Wisdom being personified as a woman. Proverbs 8 does not call her a Divine Person, and some of the language used precludes this thought of her."

Wisdom is personified in these verses, and perhaps strangely, as "she." In fact, 1 Corinthians 1:24 speaks of "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”, and Christ is not female. But the answer to this is provided in 1 Corinthians 1:30, "Of Him (God) you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God." This is the truth of "Christ in you the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). Thus, "in Christ" believers have wisdom from God, but this is wisdom subjectively, which accounts for the female gender being used. Christ Himself is wisdom objectively, but He uses believers to declare His truth, For instance, in Proverbs 8 the first 11 verses are the female voice, that is, Christ in believers declaring the truth, but the rest of Chapter 8 (vv. 12-36) is very clearly the voice of the Lord Jesus himself as (objectively) the wisdom of God.