Mark 12:30-31, “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.  And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”

There is a little play on words here that Jesus was using, a very subtle change of words.  Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is and he answers that you should love the Lord God with all your heart.  Jesus was quoting the a verse that was quoted every day by every orthodox Jew in his morning prayer which is Deuteronomy 6:5.  In Deuteronomy 6:5 the word love is ahav. Ahav is pretty much your standard word for love in Hebrew. Then Jesus quotes Leviticus 19:18 where we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Again the Hebrew text uses the word ahav. 

Here is the kicker, Jesus was not speaking Hebrew, He was speaking a Northern dialect of Aramaic.  The Aramaic, although a sister language of the Hebrew, is still a different language.  It is a more comprehensive language.   Classical Hebrew has only about 7,500 words, Aramaic has many more words, hence one word in Hebrew can have a very broad range of meanings and when you render such a word in Aramaic, you have a variety of choices.  Even the Greek does not offer as many choices for love as the Aramaic; you are stuck with just four Greek words which can be rendered as love.  In both cases the Greek text uses the word agape (unconditional love) for loving God and loving your neighbor. This creates some difficulty in understanding the subtle truth that Jesus was trying to convey. In the Aramaic text, the Pershitta the language that Jesus spoke, He uses two different words for love.  Jesus was taking advantage of the broader language of Aramaic to express the ancient classical Hebrew word ahav (love).  Jesus did not misquote the Old Testament commandments; he only used the broader Aramaic language to give a greater depth to its meanings.  I mean this was really clever what Jesus did.

You see the scribes were really dealing with an age old question. If you ahav (love) God with all you heart, soul and mind, then how can you have the same love ahav for others.  Logically, you must love others less than God if you give God such priority in you love. You cannot love God and man equally.  In other words, is a man to love his wife and children more than God, equally as God or less than He loves God?

When Jesus answered their question, speaking Aramaic, I could just see the Scribes faces light up like a light bulb (or torch in those days).  Jesus used two different Aramaic words which both are equivalent to the Hebrew word ahav but give a better understanding of ahav.  If you translated these Aramaic words into Hebrew, you would most likely use the single Hebrew word ahav.  In reference to loving God with all your heart, Jesus used the word rechem which is to love someone as much as they love you.  This is a love that is returned and is equal to the love that is given.  We are to love God as much as He loves us.  That fits the Hebrew word ahav. In regards to loving your neighbor Jesus used the Aramaic word chav which is very similar to the Hebrew word ahav except you use a Chet rather than a Hei. A little play on words that a scribe would quickly pick up on.  Chav is spelled Chet, Beth which is a Semitic root word found in most of your ancient Semitic languages.  It has its origins in a stick burning in a fire.  Chav has been used for a stick and/or for kindling.  In other words chav is a kindling love.  Any good Boy Scout will tell you that kindling is used to start a fire.

When I was a city breed camp director I used to try to start a camp fire with my city breed counselors.  We would pile up a bunch of thick logs, douse it with a gallon of gasoline, stand a block away while one brave volunteer tosses a torch into the pile and then we would run for our lives.  The fire would blaze beautifully until all the gasoline burned off and then it would die out. The next summer the camp owners gave me a nature expert, a guy who was an Eagle Scout.  I gratefully assigned him the task of building our camp fire.  I told him where we stored the logs, gasoline and torches, but he said, “I will lite it with one match without using any of your supplies.”   He took a group of campers (we called them residents) on a field trip to the forest where they gather a supply of little twigs and dead tree branches in increasing sizes.  He then put these branches and twigs into a pile with the smallest twigs in an opening at the bottom of the pile which he called kindling.  With one match he lit the small, barely noticeable twigs or his kindling and as the kindling burned it heated the branches of the next size up long enough so they would catch fire heating up the next largest branches until you had a roaring camp fire that lasted almost through the night. All started from some little chav (twigs, kindling).  There is a new movie out called Catching Fire which is a very appropriate title as it concerns one young girl (small twig) who through her sacrificial love (chav) starts a fire of rebellion  and (spoiler alert) revolution against an oppressive government.

You see to love God is easy, because He already loves us; we just need to return that love. Ah, but to love your neighbor, that is not so easy.  They often do not love you to begin with and that is why Jesus uses the word chav and not rechem with your neighbor.  You need to love your neighbor when they do not love you.  If you persist in loving your neighbor, even when they resist your love, you will be like those little twigs that keep warming up that bigger branch, even to the point where they are totally exhausted.  Yet, those twigs will warm up those bigger branches to the point where they will catch fire and begin warming up larger branches.  Where there is no love among your neighbors, God has called you to be the chav the kindling to start a bonfire of  love in your neighborhood.

In John 13:35 Jesus says that they will know we are Christians by our love. I have heard Christians say, “The proof that we are the true church is that we get together and love one another. Oh come see how much we just love each other. Why we all join hands and sing They Will Know We are Christians by our Love. How we just love each other,  love, love, love, love.”  Well, I’ve got news for you; Hindus, Muslims and Buddhist get together and love each other.  Even atheists get together and love each other for crying out loud, so what is the difference between them and Christians?  The difference is that Jesus used the Aramaic word chav.  They will know that we are Christians because we will be the kindling to start love, we will love those who do not love us even to the point like those little twigs (chav)where we have exhausted all that we can give.  We will give our lives, even for those who do not love us.