You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and
with all your mind. You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
(Deut 6:4-5; Lev 19:18)
1. Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our
God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might.
2. You shall not take vengeance or
bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as
yourself: I am the Lord.
Love God:
·
with
all your heart - In the Hebrew Bible lēv/lēvāv covers cognition,
planning, moral reasoning, and emotion—functions later languages separate into
“mind” and “heart.” Loving YHWH “with all the heart” therefore entails
undivided intellectual and volitional allegiance, not merely sentimental
affection.
·
with
all your soul - Ne feš at base
means the animating life-breath; by metonymy it can stand for one’s very
life or self. The phrase can imply willingness to stake one’s life or direct
every life-sustaining activity toward loyalty to YHWH. In later Jewish legal
texts (m.Sanh. 74a) it underlies the principle of martyrdom in defense of
covenant loyalty.
·
with
all your might - Məʾōd literally “muchness,
abundance.” When turned into a possessive (“your məʾōd”), it means “all that is
very‐much-you”: strength, capacities, property, opportunities. Second-Temple
interpreters rendered it δυναμίς / ἰσχύς (“power, might”) in the Septuagint and
ממון (“wealth”) in the Aramaic Targum, showing both readings—physical vigor and
material resources—were current.
The three aspects:
1. Internal
faculty (heart/mind)
2. Living
being (life-breath/personhood)
3. External
capacities (strength, wealth, influence)
The command to love God requires from every person comprehensive
commitment—everything one thinks, is, and has. There is no area of life not
touched by this command.
Love your neighbour:
Lev
19:34 The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among
you; you shall love the alien as yourself. (Mat 7:12) In everything do to
others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.
·
Hebrew – “Neighbour” רֵעַ rēaʿ
most often meant a fellow Israelite or resident alien living among them.
§
The Greek – “Neighbour” πλησίον plēsíon primarily an adverb
meaning “near, close by.”
Lexical
summary:
1. Spatial
proximity – “the one nearby.”
2. Social-legal
proximity – “fellow member of the community” (LXX).
3. Ethical
object – “the person toward whom I can act with love/justice” (NT).
רֵעַ (rēaʿ) —
literal, non-theological sense
§
Companion / associate / fellow—someone with whom
one stands in regular social relation
§
Root & cognates – From the Semitic root
r-ʿ-ʿ “to associate, befriend” (cf. Arabic raʿī “companion,” Ugaritic rʿ
“friend”)
Defining πλησίον
for today (keeping the biblical trajectory)
Any person whose
welfare comes within the reach of your ability to act. The term is no longer
bound to ethnicity, religion, citizenship, or literal distance; it is activated
whenever need and capacity intersect.
The limits of “as
yourself”
Measure, not mirror. The Hebrew kamo kha (“as yourself”)
functions as a yard‑stick: wish for the other the that you genuinely wish for
yourself, no more and no less. It does not command literal equality of
outcomes, only parity of concern. Classical Jewish commentators already call
the phrase “hyperbolic”—because one cannot be ordered to feel identical
affection for everyone. (Sefaria)
Because the command singles out “your neighbour”— people
who enter your orbit — it implicitly narrows your field of responsibility eases
the anxiety that comes from trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders. “…as
we have opportunity, let us do good to all, and especially to those of the
household of faith” (Gal 6 : 10). This is your circle of influence principle
the requirement to focus on what depends
on you. Loving your neighbour means you do what you can for those with whom you
come in contact and leave the rest of the world in God’s hands rather than in
your mind.
God’s love:
God loves rich and poor, vulgar, and refined, young, and
old, peaceful and warmongers. God loves everyone in the world without
exception. God’s love is not for sale; it cannot be earned. God sends rain on
the just and unjust, every good thing and every perfect gift comes from God.
God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. God is not capricious or petty.
God does not force his love on anyone; people must enter a relationship with God.
The apostle John wrote:
God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life.
Paul wrote:
I am
convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The synthesis of the two loves:
The first command to love God with your entirety is
accomplished in the second command by loving your neighbour.
