Finally, Israel’s disloyalty reached a tipping point. And it was then that God sent His prophet Hosea to teach a lesson to the nation. He wanted them to see that even through their faithlessness, He remained loyal and loving. When God says forever, He means it. When He says love, He lives it. The nation that God took as a bride had played the harlot. The people had prostituted themselves, literally and spiritually, in their pursuit of pleasure. But God continued to pursue them. His love never quit.

In his prophecy, Hosea likens the nation of Israel to an adulterous wife: “The spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray, and they have played the harlot against their God” (Hosea 4:12).

Is there anything more hurtful to a spouse than disloyalty? When couples marry, they stand before God and witnesses and vow to be faithful and loyal to each other. When someone says “I do” and then breaches that promise, the violated partner experiences one of the deepest hurts a human can feel.

One prominent person of recent times who endured the heartbreak of marital infidelity was Elizabeth Edwards, who died in December 2010 of cancer. She was the wife of vice presidential candidate Senator John Edwards, who disgraced himself, his family, and especially his wife by having an affair and fathering a child by another woman. Elizabeth describes the agony she experienced when she learned of her husband’s infidelities:

After I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up. And the next day John and I spoke. He wasn’t coy, but it turned out he wasn’t forthright either… I felt that the ground underneath me had been pulled away.

I spent months learning to live with a single incidence of infidelity. And I would like to say that a single incidence is easy to overcome, but it is not. I am who I am. I am imperfect in a million ways, but I always thought I was the kind of woman, the kind of wife to whom a husband would be faithful. I had asked for fidelity, begged for it, really, when we married. I never need flowers or jewelry, I don’t care about vacations or a nice car. But I need you to be faithful. Leave me, if you must, but be faithful to me if you are with me.4

Infidelity like that committed against Elizabeth Edwards causes such pain and heartbreak because it pierces the very heart of the marriage relationship. Loyalty is the cornerstone of all relationships. It is at the heart of the biblical idea of covenant. It matters not whether the covenant is between God and man or man and woman—loyalty is the indispensable foundation.