One of the ways in Scripture that God defines Himself, the way He describes Himself, is that He is a jealous God.

Now for us as sinful human beings, we tend to think of jealousy in sinful terms, that I was jealous of this person because they had something that I can't have, or this person was jealous of me because I have something that they don't have. And that tends to be a sinful idea. But when God speaks of Himself as a jealous God, He's talking about, primarily in the Old Testament, about the nation of Israel. That Israel was his love.

Deuteronomy 7 says that God chose Israel in love. And when she walks away from God to follow after other gods, this is spiritual adultery. And so God is jealous in the sense that something that truly belongs to him, which is Israel, has walked away from him. And so in that sense, his jealousy drives him toward his redemptive plan to bring them back home.