Leviticus 19:18: “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I [am] the LORD.”
John 13:34: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”
This commandment tells us we are not to seek revenge nor are we to bear a grudge. The word revenge in Hebrew is naqam which means to seek to punish someone for a wrong that was committed against you. The word grudge is natar which means to keep or maintain anger. Both revenge and grudge seem to be closely related. The Talmud in Yoma 23a makes this distinction.
“What is revenge and what is bearing a grudge? If a person said to his fellow, “Lend me your sickle,” and he replied “No”, and on the following day the second person comes to the first and says, “Lend me your ax,” and he replies: “I will not lend it to you, just as you would not lend me your sickle”–that is revenge.
And what is bearing a grudge? If one person says to his fellow, “Lend me your ax,” and he replies, “No”, and on the morrow the second asks, “Lend me your garment,” and the first answers: “Here it is. I am not like you who would not lend me”–that is bearing a grudge.”
This command to not seek revenge or bear a grudge is followed by the command to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus expanded on this by saying that we are to love our neighbors as Jesus had loved us. Is He changing the law? He said he did not come to abolish the law, but it sounds like He is abolishing an old law and replacing it with a new one. I don’t think that is the case.
Every modern English translation of the Bible does not translate Leviticus 19:18 the way it really reads in the Hebrew with the exception of the Young’s Literal Translation. The word for neighbor is lere’eka. This word has the preposition Lamed before it. It literally reads: “Thou shalt love to your neighbor.” Of course we will not translate it that way because it is awkward in the English. Yet it is also awkward in the Hebrew but they keep the preposition in there. Jewish literature explains this preposition and its necessity in this command as an indication that it should really read, “Do (acts of) love to your neighbor.
In Luke 10:27 Jesus repeats this but this time quotes directly from Leviticus by saying, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Although in the Greek that preposition is not there nor is it there in the Aramaic. A Pharisee followed this up with a question as to who is your neighbor. This is really a fair question because the Jews had a hot debate going as to whether one’s neighbor meant only the Jews or did it mean all mankind. In the Talmud Shabbat 31a there is the story of a gentile who came before Shammai and said to him, “I wish to convert to Judaism. Shammai drove him away. When he came before Hillel, Hillel said to him: “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor. This is the entire Torah; the rest is the commentary–go and learn it.” These two schools of thought, the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel were hotly debated. Shammai taught you only are commanded to love those in the Jewish community where Hillel taught that your neighbor meant all mankind.
So Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan to show that this love extended to all mankind and not just within one’s own community. Even though Jesus did not include that preposition his parable illustrated it by the fact that this Samaritan did not just love his neighbor, but performed acts of love toward him.
Rabbi Lubavitch put another spin on this by asking the question, “Why should we love only as much as ourselves.” There are many people who do not love themselves and thus if we take this command literally then we would have chaos as those who do not love themselves would treat their fellow man with the same scorn and hate they have for themselves. Thus Rabbi Lubavitch renders this command as “Thou shalt love they neighbor and thyself.”
The first century Jews really struggled with the dynamics of this command and there was much debate that issue as well. Are we to love others only as far as we love ourselves which means if we hate ourselves we are free to hate others?
This is why Jesus gave a new command. The word new in Greek is kainos which means a novelty or new in the sense of a new innovation or opportunity. Augustine rendered kainos as to be renewed. Augustine may have been relying on the Aramaic where the word that is used is chadeth which means to renew or to restore or repair. Jesus was either renewing the command or giving the command an additional quality to it. He was not abolishing the old command. Thus, he was just explaining the correct way to interpret this command and by that he was siding with the school of Hillel that this love applies to all mankind and gave the parable of the Good Samaritan to show this.
He also resolved the issue of whether or not we are to love others according the degree of love we have for ourselves by adding a slight innovation, not to change the law but to explain it better and that is the we are love others as Christ loved us. His love for us is perfect, so you cannot play that game of “I don’t love this about myself therefore I don’t have to love that person who expresses the same trait that I hate about myself.”
Jesus even took it further in Matthew 5:44: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;”
Even today we end up doing what the Pharisees did and we try to hedge their bets and analyze the law. The Pharisees would say: “Yes, we must love our neighbor as ourselves, but who is our neighbor and what if I don’t love myself.” We do pretty much the same today, “Well, I know I am supposed to love that person, but…” Jesus is saying that there are no buts. It is one of the toughest commands and yet as Jesus said if we are successful in that we will be successful in keeping all the other commands. The second commandment is the biggie, we are to love as He loves and that means our enemies, those who spit on us, whip us, say false things about us, and crucify us. We are to be like Jesus and look at them while suffering the torture they inflict on us and say: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” There are no buts.
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