Your Maker is your husband, and Lord of Hosts is His name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth He is called. --Isaiah 54:5
In the church in which I grew up, many of the older Christians loved the old hymn called "Beulah Land." Here are the lyrics:
I'm kind of homesick for a country
To which I've never been before.
No sad goodbyes will there be spoken
For time won't matter anymore.
Beulah Land (Beulah Land) I'm longing for you (I'm longing for you)
And some day (And some day) on thee I'll stand (Someday we will stand)
There my home (There my home) shall be eternal (Eternal)
Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land
I'm looking now, just across the river
To where my faith, shall end in sight (Shall end in sight)
There's just a few more days to labor.
Then I will take my heavenly flight.
Beulah Land (Beulah Land) I'm longing for you (I'm longing for you)
And some day (And some day) on thee I'll stand (Someday we will stand)
There my home (There my home) shall be eternal
Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land
Beulah Land, oh it's Beulah Land
Oh Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land
The hymn appears to be a reference to a passage in the Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. In that story, Beulah Land is a place of peace near the end of the Christian life, on the border of the Celestial City. The River of Death separates Beulah from the New Jerusalem, the city on a hill.
Now I saw in my dream, that by this time the pilgrims were got over the Enchanted Ground, and entering into the country of Beulah, whose air was very sweet and pleasant, the way lying directly through it, they solaced themselves there for a season. Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth, and heard the voice of the turtle [dove] in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day: wherefore this was beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and also out of the reach of Giant Despair; neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting Castle. Here they were within sight of the city they were going to.
The word Beulah means "Married" in Hebrew. The word is found 16 times in the Old Testament, but only once is it associated with a land. Isaiah 62:4-5 says, "You shall no more be termed Forsaken [Hebrew Azubah], and your land shall no more be termed Desolate [Hebrew Shemamah], but you shall be called My Delight Is In Her [Hebrew Hephzibah], and your land Married [Hebrew Beulah]; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you."
The land which the verse refers to is clearly Israel. In the Old Testament, the terms used for the people of Israel and for the land of Israel were used interchangeably. Got had promised the land of Israel to the people of Israel from the time of Abraham. In later Christian literature, the Promised Land took on the meaning of Heaven, as it is where the saints of God dwell after death. For the purposes of this essay, then, we will be looking at Beulah not as the promised land of heaven, or even the promised land of Israel, but with the original Hebrew meaning of "married."
Allegorically, the relationship God has with His people is many times compared to a Father/son relationship. Scripture also uses the metaphor of God as a Bridegroom, and His people as a bride. Isaiah 61:10 says, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." God is compared to a High Priest who is dressed in wedding attire. In Jeremiah 3:14 we see this theme as well. "Return, O backsliding children, says the Lord, for I am married (lit. beulah) to you. I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion." (NKJV) See also Jeremiah 31:32: "Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband (lit. beaulah), declares the Lord."
God is faithful, but unfortunately His people are not. Jeremiah 3:20 says, "Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband, so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel, declares the Lord." Jeremiah 3:7-8a says, "And I thought, 'After she has done all this she will return to Me,' but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce." When Israel was exiled to foreign lands, it must have felt like God had divorced or separated Himself from them. A closer look, however, reveals that it was the people of Israel, the nation that God had betrothed to Himself, that had forsaken Him, not the other way around. God is holy, and cannot abide sin. When the nation of Israel engaged in habitual sin, especially idolatry (which God compared to the sin of fornication), they removed themselves from God's plan and protection. God, however, remains faithful. Deuteronomy 31:8 says, "It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not leave or forsake (lit. Hebrew Azubah--see Isa. 62:4, cited above) you. Do not fear or be dismayed."
So how does the Church today fit in with this allegory? Are we not included in this special, intimate relationship that God had with His people, the Jews? Are we to be treated as red-headed step-children, cast out from the family? By no means! Jeremiah 31:31-32 says, "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord." This foreshadowed the relationship that the Son of God has with the Church.
Ephesians 5:23 says, "For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, as is Himself its Savior." Paul goes on to write in Ephesians 5:25-27, "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." It is in these verses that we see the concept of the Church as the bride of Christ. Revelation 21:9 says, "Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, 'Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb'."
I want to point out that this marriage relationship, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, is a corporate relationship, not an individual one. God does not have many wives; He is not adulterous or polygamous. Each of us individually have a relationship with God as our Father, and with Jesus as a joint-heir to glory. God was spoken of as the husband of the nation of Israel, just as Jesus is spoken of as the bridegroom of the church.
Is it any coincidence that Jesus' first miracle was at a wedding? I don't think so. In fact, I would like to point out that when Jesus first taught in a synagogue, He cited a prophecy in Isaiah, saying that in Him the scripture was fulfilled. Let's read Luke 4:18-21:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And He rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
The scroll from which Jesus read was from Isaiah, chapter 65. The devout Jews who heard Jesus read this could recite the entire chapter from memory. They had been taught the scripture from their youth, and they knew that it started with verses one and two, which Jesus read, but also went on to verse 10, which we have already cited: "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks Himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels."
The concept of God's people being compared to His bride was not new to the people who heard Him there. It should be no great leap to extend that metaphor to include the Church (Christians, followers of Christ) to be likened to the Bride of Christ. It has a foundation in the Old Testament, and is found throughout Scripture.
There is a story of a young man who was about to be married seeking counsel from and older man, one who had been married for decades. The young man asked, "What is marriage like? Is it heaven?" The old man smiled. "It depends," he said, "on who you are married to." We who are Christians, who are identified as the Body of Christ, are corporately in a marriage relationship with the Son of God. He is holy, He is faithful, and He is merciful to us every day. We must not divorce ourselves from Him, forsaking Him in any way, until He returns to take us home with Him to Heaven, our Promised Land. When we get there, God Himself will throw a party called the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, the likes of which we have never seen. I, for one, can't wait.
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