The Desire: Divine Union

There are two main themes that run throughout the Old Testament and are fulfilled in the New: the quest for a child (a son, to be specific) and the quest for the Promised Land. These two quests are distinct but are often intertwined. They are the desires for land and a home together with the desires for children, a family, and fruitfulness. Another quest that is related to the quest for a child is the quest for a bride; sometimes it goes hand-in-hand with the quest for a son and other times they are completely separate.

Abraham’s quest was primarily for a son and secondarily for the land; the wife quest was only present in his life insofar as he “lost” his wife twice when he told two other guys she was his sister (she was his half sister). Isaac began with a quest for a wife, and he ended with a quest for a son. He was forty when he married Rebekah, but she was barren. He prayed for her to be fruitful, but almost twenty years went by before she conceived. When Isaac was sixty, Rebekah gave birth to twins: Esau and Jacob.

Jacob gets the blessing from Isaac and then flees for his life from his irate brother Esau. His quest begins with seeking a wife, and he ends up with two: Leah and Rachel. Rachel is barren and Leah has four sons one after the other. In the baby race, Rachel gives Jacob her maid who conceives two sons. Then Leah gives Jacob her maid who also has two sons. Leah herself has two more sons, and finally Rachel conceives Joseph and much later, Benjamin. Although Jacob had so many sons, his quest for a son was for his first-love and “true” wife, Rachel, to have a baby. She did have one only after a very long time of being barren. Jacob treated Joseph in some ways as his only son, and that is why his ten older half-brothers hated him so and devised a plan to kill him. Jacob eventually makes his way back to the Promised Land. Hence, Jacob had all three quests in his life, and after the Joseph story in Egypt, Jacob and his entire family leaves the Promised Land again and sets up camp down in Egypt.

400 years later, Moses had a mini quest for a wife and an even smaller one for a son; his main quest was for the Promised Land. He, of course, led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to make it to the Promised Land. Moses got close enough to see the Promised Land in the distance, but he himself did not bring the people in, Joshua did.

There are many other instances of the people of God seeking one or a combination of these three quests. There was Manoah and his wife who were barren, and God gave them Samson. Elkanah and Hannah were barren, and God eventually sent them the great priest and prophet, Samuel. In the New Testament we have Elizabeth and Zechariah who were of old age and barren, and God sent them John the Baptist. These three were all primarily seeking a son. Another instance of someone seeking a wife is Tobias, son of Tobit, who was given Sarah, and God protected Tobias from the demon who had killed all of Sarah’s previous husbands. Almost all of the faithful people of God were seeking to continue to live in the Promised Land, live in the Promised Land in freedom, or they were seeking to get back to it. The quest for the land is perhaps the most universal and constant.

How does this relate to the first man and woman? I say that God gave the woman to the man as wife, but He put them through a test saying be fruitful and multiply but do not have relations. They were to live as brother and sister like Joseph and Mary did, but they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they had relations and conceived Cain. So Adam was on a quest first of all for a child, and to get that child, he sought a wife in a way that God had forbidden him. In this respect, he was seeking both a son and a wife. He was seeking to preserve his life, and in so doing, he received emptiness, nakedness and death.

Did Adam and Eve have a quest for the land? It is commonly understood that they were expelled from the Garden of Eden. I say that the Garden of Eden as the Garden of Delight refers more to the man and the woman themselves. God gave planted many “trees” in their garden/bodies, especially the tree of life/the heart and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil/the generative powers. As God’s garden of delight, they were united to God. The Garden of Eden is a symbol of the Promised Land which is a symbol of heaven. Heaven is union with God. After they fell and lost sanctifying grace, the life of God in their souls, they lost that union with God, and so, in that sense, they were kicked out of the garden. They were created as temples of the Holy Spirit, and they ended up as empty vessels of clay. From that point forward, all humanity seeks that original unity with God our first parents had. That union with God that we all seek, whether we know we are seeking for that or not, that union with Him is symbolized in the quest for the land. In the land we have a home, and that home is for God.

All of our desires as humans can be reduced down, at the core, to this desire for union with God. Everyone, deep down, wants an unending, complete and total communion with the divine being. That is how God created us when He made us in His image and likeness, and that is what we are all looking for. Most of us think something else will make us happy, such as money, pleasure or power, but that is a fleeting shallow happiness. The quest for a spouse is tied up with this desire for union with God. God is meant to be our primary spouse, and in heaven we will all be married to Him forever; we will no longer have a human spouse. The quest for a son is tied up with these other two quests. True love is meant to be fruitful, and in our love for God, we want to bear fruit. Mary loved God so much and trusted in Him completely, and she bore the Son of God. You and I bear fruit for God when we love, trust and obey Him with the good deeds that flow out of our heart.

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