Study Focus: Ps. 103:13; Isa. 49:15; Hos. 11:1–4, 8, 9; Matt. 9:36; 1 Cor. 13:4.
Introduction: God is moved physically and emotionally with profound compassion for His people.
Lesson Themes: This week’s lesson highlights three basic points.
Our passionate and compassionate God is vividly presented in Scripture with parenting imagery. God’s love has strong emotional and affective aspects, similar to parental love. The metaphor of divine love as maternal love conveys the notion of God’s remembering and having compassion over His people. Maternal imagery is, to some degree, the best illustration of God’s compassion, loving care, and attention to the needs of His people. Scripture also illustrates God’s compassion using the image of a loving and compassionate father.
Our passionate and compassionate God is strikingly portrayed in Scripture with visceral language. In many Bible passages, visceral language is used to express God’s affection, as He is moved physically and emotionally with profound compassion for people. The Hebrew word for compassion depicts a womb-like maternal love, emphasizing a mother’s compassion toward her child. Similarly, God shows tender affection and compassion for His people.
Our passionate and compassionate God is jealous in a good and righteous way. God seeks an intimate and exclusive covenantal relationship with us and requires faithfulness from His people. In this sense, God is described in Scripture as zealous and jealous. Instead of the negative connotation of being capricious, this language conveys the idea that God acts in our best interests to protect us from self-harm and broken promises.
Life Application: In His passionate and compassionate love, God invites us to be like Him. In our compassion toward others, we need to be considerate of the people around us and be purposeful as a church about actively caring for others.
Part II: Commentary
1. Our Passionate and Compassionate God Is Vividly Presented, With Parenting Imagery, in Scripture.
One of the most vivid pictures of God in Scripture is delineated by the parenting language of mother and father, who are ideally special figures of love and compassion in human relationships.
In the dialogue between God and Zion in Isaiah 49:14–23, which is located in the larger message for the consolation of Israel, in Isaiah 49:14–26, Zion initially complains, “ ‘The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me’ ” (Isa. 49:14, ESV). In His answer, the Lord highlights that He always remembers His people; this affirmation is poetically shaped by the image of a mother. “ ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you’ ” (Isa. 49:15, NKJV). The image of a mother is connected here with the ideas of remembering and having compassion. By contrast, the idea of forgetting, in this context, describes a lack of compassion.
The overall assumption is that the mother never forgets her nursing child. At least, this level of devotion is what everyone expects from her. Therefore, the image of a mother is probably the best example to illustrate God’s compassion and attention to the needs of His people. Still, not all mothers fulfill this high expectation. While many people may describe their mothers as the most caring and compassionate human beings in the world, others unfortunately might not have good memories of their mothers. Even though Isaiah 49:15 seems to set the mother imagery as the pinnacle of human awareness and compassion, this passage also may account for the negative experiences wrought by a forgetful and merciless mother.
Thus, while such experiences are considered atypical, at the same time, the comparison in this passage acknowledges that some mothers may deviate from that norm and still forget. Unfortunately, this experience is a sad reality in the lives of some people. However, even if this experience lamentably happens, God will never forget His people, as He will always be compassionate toward them. In short, the comparison in this passage of God with a mother provides a beautiful picture of a passionate and compassionate God, both to those who have a caring mother (God is somehow like them) and to those who have, or had, a detrimental experience with an unloving mother (God is definitely different than they are).
Likewise, the scriptural description of God’s compassion employs the comparative language of a father. Psalm 103 praises the Lord for His mercies. “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities” (Ps. 103:8–10, NKJV). Following this description, the psalm compares God with a father: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him” (Ps. 103:13, NIV).
2. Our Passionate and Compassionate God Is Strikingly Portrayed, With Visceral Language, in Scripture.
Compassion in the Bible is portrayed with visceral language. This language makes the descriptions of compassion in Scripture, especially the references to divine compassion, emotionally and physically expressive. For instance, “the Hebrew word for compassion,” which is raḥamim, “is etymologically related to reḥem (womb)” (Shmuel Himelstein, “Compassion,” The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Adele Berlin [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011]). This idea reinforces the comparison of God’s compassion with the compassion of a mother toward the child that came from her womb. To be sure, this strong bodily language should not be taken literally for God. But such a powerful portrayal is probably the ultimate image we can employ in order to truly express, in the limitations of human concepts and language, the profoundness of God’s loving compassion.
In Hosea 11, the Lord expresses His deep love for Israel. He states that “ ‘when Israel was a child, I loved him’ ” (Hosea 11:1, NKJV) and that “ ‘I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms’ ” (Hosea 11:3, NKJV). However, the Lord points out that His “ ‘people are bent on backsliding from Me’ ” (Hosea 11:7, NKJV). Still, He declares His love by saying, “ ‘How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?’ ” (Hosea 11:8, NKJV). Using visceral language to depict His compassion, more precisely “a change of heart” (NET; see also NIV, Tanakh), the Lord tells His people, “ ‘My heart churns [verb hp̲k̲] within Me; My sympathy is stirred’ ” (Hosea 11:8, NKJV).
The Hebrew verb hp̲k̲ also appears in connection with the heart, now to depict human distress, in Lamentations. Once again, bodily visceral language is used: “ ‘Look, O Lord, for I am in distress; my stomach churns; my heart is wrung [verb hp̲k̲] within me’ ” (Lam. 1:20, ESV). Therefore, visceral language, referring to a human heart in Lamentations, and to the divine heart in Hosea, emotionally describes the depths of God’s passion and compassion for His people.
Similarly, the Greek verb splanchnizomai is used in the New Testament, particularly in the Synoptic Gospels, to depict Jesus having compassion on the people (see Matt. 9:36, Matt. 14:14, Matt. 15:32, Matt. 20:34, Mark 1:41, Mark 6:34, Mark 8:2, Luke 7:13; see also this language in Matt. 18:27, Mark 9:22, Luke 10:33, Luke 15:20). It is noteworthy that the related noun splanchon, which conveys the idea of affection or compassion in many New Testament passages (see Luke 1:78, Phil. 1:8, Phil. 2:1, Col. 3:12), literally refers to “the inward parts of a body,” especially “the viscera . . . entrails” (Frederick W. Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000], p. 938). As Craig Bloomberg emphasizes in his remarks on Matthew 9:36, Jesus’ “emotions reflect a deep, gut-level ‘compassion’ (a reasonable, idiomatic English equivalent for a term [from Greek splanchnos] that could refer to bowels and kidneys)” (Matthew: The New American Commentary [Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992], vol. 22, p. 166). Hence, the New Testament emotionally depicts Jesus’ compassion by employing the visceral language of internal body parts being moved. To put a finer point on it, He is being physically and emotionally moved with profound loving compassion for the people. This is compatible with the Old Testament description of God’s deep compassion for His people.
3. Our Passionate and Compassionate God Is Jealous in a Good and Righteous Way.
As part of the Old Testament picture of our passionate and compassionate God, the Lord is described as jealous/zealous (see Exod. 20:5; Exod. 34:14; Deut. 4:24; Deut. 5:9; Deut. 6:15; Deut. 32:16, 21; Josh. 24:19; 1 Kings 14:22; Ps. 78:58; Ezek. 39:25; Nah. 1:2; Joel 2:18; Zech. 1:14; Zech. 8:2). This description appears in the second commandment, which builds upon the first one (“ ‘You shall have no other gods before Me’ ” [Exod. 20:3, NKJV]) and prohibits making any “ ‘carved image’ ” (Exod. 20:4, NKJV). The commandment adds, “ ‘you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God’ ” (Exod. 20:5, NKJV). As in a marriage relationship, God requires exclusivity and faithfulness from His people. Taking into account this covenant relationship, when God’s people break His commandment by making idols and worshiping/serving them, the people move God, or provoke Him, to jealousy and wrath, according to the biblical language (Deut. 32:16, 21; Josh. 24:19; 1 Kings 14:22, 23; Ps. 78:58; Nah. 1:2, 14). As a holy God (Josh. 24:19, Ezek. 39:25) who is zealous for the relationship with His people (Joel 2:18, Zech. 1:14, Zech. 8:2), His jealous reaction is actually a holy response to the unfaithfulness and idolatry of His people.
This Old Testament picture of God’s jealousy is obviously different from Paul’s warning against jealousy among church members in the New Testament (see 1 Cor. 13:4, 2 Cor. 12:20, Gal. 5:20). Paul speaks positively of “godly jealousy,” emphasizing, in 2 Corinthians 11:2, that he is jealous for the church. This distinction between a negative jealousy to be avoided and God’s positive jealousy may be discerned in the Greek language, but via the two possible definitions of jealousy in the New Testament: (1) “be positively and intensely interested” (zeal); and (2) “to have intense negative feelings over another’s achievements” (envy) (Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, p. 427).
Part III: Life Application
God actively shows compassion and passionate love for His people and invites us to do the same. Taking this idea into account, discuss the following questions:
As we compare God’s compassion with that of a caring mother, how do remembering and forgetting play a role in the practice, or the lack, of compassion? Give examples.
In what ways can you be jealous, in a positive manner, in your relationships in the church, as God is jealous in His relationships with His people?
How can we be purposeful as a church about caring for others and about incorporating the cause of others into our own spiritual goals?
Adjust My Preferences
Welcome! Please set your reading preferences below.
You can access this panel later by clicking the
preference icon
in the top right of the page.
Key Text: Isaiah 49:15
Study Focus: Ps. 103:13; Isa. 49:15; Hos. 11:1–4, 8, 9; Matt. 9:36; 1 Cor. 13:4.
Introduction: God is moved physically and emotionally with profound compassion for His people.
Lesson Themes: This week’s lesson highlights three basic points.
Our passionate and compassionate God is vividly presented in Scripture with parenting imagery. God’s love has strong emotional and affective aspects, similar to parental love. The metaphor of divine love as maternal love conveys the notion of God’s remembering and having compassion over His people. Maternal imagery is, to some degree, the best illustration of God’s compassion, loving care, and attention to the needs of His people. Scripture also illustrates God’s compassion using the image of a loving and compassionate father.
Our passionate and compassionate God is strikingly portrayed in Scripture with visceral language. In many Bible passages, visceral language is used to express God’s affection, as He is moved physically and emotionally with profound compassion for people. The Hebrew word for compassion depicts a womb-like maternal love, emphasizing a mother’s compassion toward her child. Similarly, God shows tender affection and compassion for His people.
Our passionate and compassionate God is jealous in a good and righteous way. God seeks an intimate and exclusive covenantal relationship with us and requires faithfulness from His people. In this sense, God is described in Scripture as zealous and jealous. Instead of the negative connotation of being capricious, this language conveys the idea that God acts in our best interests to protect us from self-harm and broken promises.
Life Application: In His passionate and compassionate love, God invites us to be like Him. In our compassion toward others, we need to be considerate of the people around us and be purposeful as a church about actively caring for others.
Part II: Commentary
1. Our Passionate and Compassionate God Is Vividly Presented, With Parenting Imagery, in Scripture.
One of the most vivid pictures of God in Scripture is delineated by the parenting language of mother and father, who are ideally special figures of love and compassion in human relationships.
In the dialogue between God and Zion in Isaiah 49:14–23, which is located in the larger message for the consolation of Israel, in Isaiah 49:14–26, Zion initially complains, “ ‘The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me’ ” (Isa. 49:14, ESV). In His answer, the Lord highlights that He always remembers His people; this affirmation is poetically shaped by the image of a mother. “ ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child, and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you’ ” (Isa. 49:15, NKJV). The image of a mother is connected here with the ideas of remembering and having compassion. By contrast, the idea of forgetting, in this context, describes a lack of compassion.
The overall assumption is that the mother never forgets her nursing child. At least, this level of devotion is what everyone expects from her. Therefore, the image of a mother is probably the best example to illustrate God’s compassion and attention to the needs of His people. Still, not all mothers fulfill this high expectation. While many people may describe their mothers as the most caring and compassionate human beings in the world, others unfortunately might not have good memories of their mothers. Even though Isaiah 49:15 seems to set the mother imagery as the pinnacle of human awareness and compassion, this passage also may account for the negative experiences wrought by a forgetful and merciless mother.
Thus, while such experiences are considered atypical, at the same time, the comparison in this passage acknowledges that some mothers may deviate from that norm and still forget. Unfortunately, this experience is a sad reality in the lives of some people. However, even if this experience lamentably happens, God will never forget His people, as He will always be compassionate toward them. In short, the comparison in this passage of God with a mother provides a beautiful picture of a passionate and compassionate God, both to those who have a caring mother (God is somehow like them) and to those who have, or had, a detrimental experience with an unloving mother (God is definitely different than they are).
Likewise, the scriptural description of God’s compassion employs the comparative language of a father. Psalm 103 praises the Lord for His mercies. “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities” (Ps. 103:8–10, NKJV). Following this description, the psalm compares God with a father: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him” (Ps. 103:13, NIV).
2. Our Passionate and Compassionate God Is Strikingly Portrayed, With Visceral Language, in Scripture.
Compassion in the Bible is portrayed with visceral language. This language makes the descriptions of compassion in Scripture, especially the references to divine compassion, emotionally and physically expressive. For instance, “the Hebrew word for compassion,” which is raḥamim, “is etymologically related to reḥem (womb)” (Shmuel Himelstein, “Compassion,” The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, 2nd ed., ed. Adele Berlin [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011]). This idea reinforces the comparison of God’s compassion with the compassion of a mother toward the child that came from her womb. To be sure, this strong bodily language should not be taken literally for God. But such a powerful portrayal is probably the ultimate image we can employ in order to truly express, in the limitations of human concepts and language, the profoundness of God’s loving compassion.
In Hosea 11, the Lord expresses His deep love for Israel. He states that “ ‘when Israel was a child, I loved him’ ” (Hosea 11:1, NKJV) and that “ ‘I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms’ ” (Hosea 11:3, NKJV). However, the Lord points out that His “ ‘people are bent on backsliding from Me’ ” (Hosea 11:7, NKJV). Still, He declares His love by saying, “ ‘How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?’ ” (Hosea 11:8, NKJV). Using visceral language to depict His compassion, more precisely “a change of heart” (NET; see also NIV, Tanakh), the Lord tells His people, “ ‘My heart churns [verb hp̲k̲] within Me; My sympathy is stirred’ ” (Hosea 11:8, NKJV).
The Hebrew verb hp̲k̲ also appears in connection with the heart, now to depict human distress, in Lamentations. Once again, bodily visceral language is used: “ ‘Look, O Lord, for I am in distress; my stomach churns; my heart is wrung [verb hp̲k̲] within me’ ” (Lam. 1:20, ESV). Therefore, visceral language, referring to a human heart in Lamentations, and to the divine heart in Hosea, emotionally describes the depths of God’s passion and compassion for His people.
Similarly, the Greek verb splanchnizomai is used in the New Testament, particularly in the Synoptic Gospels, to depict Jesus having compassion on the people (see Matt. 9:36, Matt. 14:14, Matt. 15:32, Matt. 20:34, Mark 1:41, Mark 6:34, Mark 8:2, Luke 7:13; see also this language in Matt. 18:27, Mark 9:22, Luke 10:33, Luke 15:20). It is noteworthy that the related noun splanchon, which conveys the idea of affection or compassion in many New Testament passages (see Luke 1:78, Phil. 1:8, Phil. 2:1, Col. 3:12), literally refers to “the inward parts of a body,” especially “the viscera . . . entrails” (Frederick W. Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000], p. 938). As Craig Bloomberg emphasizes in his remarks on Matthew 9:36, Jesus’ “emotions reflect a deep, gut-level ‘compassion’ (a reasonable, idiomatic English equivalent for a term [from Greek splanchnos] that could refer to bowels and kidneys)” (Matthew: The New American Commentary [Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992], vol. 22, p. 166). Hence, the New Testament emotionally depicts Jesus’ compassion by employing the visceral language of internal body parts being moved. To put a finer point on it, He is being physically and emotionally moved with profound loving compassion for the people. This is compatible with the Old Testament description of God’s deep compassion for His people.
3. Our Passionate and Compassionate God Is Jealous in a Good and Righteous Way.
As part of the Old Testament picture of our passionate and compassionate God, the Lord is described as jealous/zealous (see Exod. 20:5; Exod. 34:14; Deut. 4:24; Deut. 5:9; Deut. 6:15; Deut. 32:16, 21; Josh. 24:19; 1 Kings 14:22; Ps. 78:58; Ezek. 39:25; Nah. 1:2; Joel 2:18; Zech. 1:14; Zech. 8:2). This description appears in the second commandment, which builds upon the first one (“ ‘You shall have no other gods before Me’ ” [Exod. 20:3, NKJV]) and prohibits making any “ ‘carved image’ ” (Exod. 20:4, NKJV). The commandment adds, “ ‘you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God’ ” (Exod. 20:5, NKJV). As in a marriage relationship, God requires exclusivity and faithfulness from His people. Taking into account this covenant relationship, when God’s people break His commandment by making idols and worshiping/serving them, the people move God, or provoke Him, to jealousy and wrath, according to the biblical language (Deut. 32:16, 21; Josh. 24:19; 1 Kings 14:22, 23; Ps. 78:58; Nah. 1:2, 14). As a holy God (Josh. 24:19, Ezek. 39:25) who is zealous for the relationship with His people (Joel 2:18, Zech. 1:14, Zech. 8:2), His jealous reaction is actually a holy response to the unfaithfulness and idolatry of His people.
This Old Testament picture of God’s jealousy is obviously different from Paul’s warning against jealousy among church members in the New Testament (see 1 Cor. 13:4, 2 Cor. 12:20, Gal. 5:20). Paul speaks positively of “godly jealousy,” emphasizing, in 2 Corinthians 11:2, that he is jealous for the church. This distinction between a negative jealousy to be avoided and God’s positive jealousy may be discerned in the Greek language, but via the two possible definitions of jealousy in the New Testament: (1) “be positively and intensely interested” (zeal); and (2) “to have intense negative feelings over another’s achievements” (envy) (Danker et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, p. 427).
Part III: Life Application
God actively shows compassion and passionate love for His people and invites us to do the same. Taking this idea into account, discuss the following questions:
As we compare God’s compassion with that of a caring mother, how do remembering and forgetting play a role in the practice, or the lack, of compassion? Give examples.
In what ways can you be jealous, in a positive manner, in your relationships in the church, as God is jealous in His relationships with His people?
How can we be purposeful as a church about caring for others and about incorporating the cause of others into our own spiritual goals?