Prophetic Name-Calling

I'm reading Frank Viola's From Eternity to Here. He reminds me of a profound truth in Scripture--the Bible begins and ends with a wedding.
In Genesis 1-2, the wedding is between a man and a woman. Revelation 21-22 ends with a new wedding. A bride (the church) comes down from heaven adorned for her husband.
In Genesis, the woman is created out of the side of a man. In the NT, the bride (the church) is created out of the side of Christ.
Forgive me for footnoting Genesis 3 through Revelation 20, but the mission of God throughout Scripture is about restoring a marriage. It is a love-story full of drama, betrayal, intimacy, forgiveness, separation, and sacrifice.

The prophets are aware of this God-intended-harmony. While priests did their work on the sacred places of temples and synagogues, the prophets worked in the margins. They proclaimed in the market places and street corners.
I read through Jeremiah on a vacation a few months ago. Needless to say, it was depressing. But I was struck by his uncanny ability to call a spade a spade. He was fully aware of the relationship that God desired with his people, yet he saw the way they lived.
Catch this language in Jeremiah 3:
If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her? Would not such a land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me?
You have polluted the land with your whoring and wickedness.
You have the forehead of a whore.
She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. Because she took her whoredom so lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree.

This kind of language will get you sent to the Principal's office. I laugh every time I read, "forehead of a whore." You could be sued for such a vocabulary. It is not the lingo used to gain friends. Yet, it is intentional and purposeful.

Here's what Jeremiah is saying:
"You people are getting in bed with everything in this world but God."
"You are becoming intimate with everything but God, who is your maker and lover."
"You are sleeping with trees and stones and worthless idols while neglecting your true love."

I think Paul is borrowing from Jeremiah when he writes this in Colossians, "Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed." In other words, "Quit playing the whore with everything around you."

I begin this day with this prayer, "I am prone to live a life of whoredom. I chase after earthly things for daily pleasure and future security. But something inside of me tells me that this is all a chasing after the wind. I was made for something greater than this. God, just as you delivered the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, deliver me from ungodly intimate encounters with this world. Help me to engage the world around me as one who is living in response to my connection with you. Let the same power that lifted Jesus out of the grave be in me today, and let your love flow through my veins so that I will be full of you."