One of the things that is always the hardest for me to grasp about the jealousy of God is that I’ve never been properly jealous. More accurately, I’ve experienced envy, which is the a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck. It’s not a pleasant emotion, and nothing good comes of it.

Unfortunately, jealousy is often painted with the same brush. In the immortal words of Mark Twain:

…among human beings, jealousy ranks distinctly as a weakness; a property of all small minds, yet a property which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.

Letters from the Earth

However, I don’t think that is an accurate description of God’s jealous nature. I much prefer an earlier writer:

Jealousy is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the person whom he entirely loves.

Joseph Addison

Unlike envy’s longing for what we do not own, jealousy is a pain of someone else claiming what is ours. In this, God is completely justified because everything is his, yet we routinely offer ourselves to other things. This pains him, and that pain is a perfectly justified pain, not human envy.