Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, Neither am I her husband; And let her put away her prostitution from her face, And her adulteries from between her breasts;
Adulteries, whoredores - God made the soul for Himself; He betrothed her to Himself through the gift of the Holy Spirit; He united her to Himself. All love, then, out of God, is to take another, instead of God. “whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.” “Adultery” is to become another’s than His, the Only Lord and Husband of the soul. Whoredom is to have many other objects of sinful love. Love is one, for One. The soul which has forsaken the One, is drawn here and there, has manifold objects of desire, which displace one another, because none satisfies. Hence, the prophet speaks of “fornications, adulteries;” because the soul, which will not rest in God, seeks to distract herself from her unrest and unsatisfiedness, by heaping to herself manifold lawless pleasures, out of, and contrary to the will of, God.