HEBREW WORD STUDY – LOVE THE LORD – ‘AHAVATH  ETH  YAHVAH אהבת   את  יהוה  

Deuteronomy 6:5: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.”

Mt 22:37: “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (38) This is the first and great commandment.”

I was meditating on this greatest commandment in the Hebrew and I noticed a slight grammatical shift in Deuteronomy 6:5. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God…” love is rendered as a command or imperative. Yet, to be imperative there needs to be a seghol beneath the Aleph but instead, there is a qames hatuph preceded by a Vav conversive which really puts that verb into a Qal preterite form that is it makes it a Qal Wayyitqtol. A preterite is an action that is complete but with the Vav conversive makes it an imperfect or incompleted action. Thus as an imperfect, we render this as: we will love the Lord. But as a Qal Wayyiqtol we have already loved God.  Hence the translation: “Thou shalt love the Lord…” is absolutely correct only it is meant as a continuing action for a completed action. 

Buried deep in our spirit there is a love for God. Every human being ever created has a deep-seated need to believe in God.  Even an atheist has to have a god, he may just call it science or something else. But we are all created to love God and there is a basic love for God hidden deep in our hearts. 

This is why the command is to love God with all bekal our hearts. Bekal means all, every part of our heart. Everyone wants to go to heaven but not everyone wants to love God with all their hearts. Yet, loving God and heaven are a unit, heaven is God loving us and the more we love Him the more He is able to express heaven or His love for us. Heaven is not streets of gold, pearly gates and mansions, it is something as wonderful as valuable as streets of gold, pearly gates and mansions, it is a fulness of the love of God. Streets of gold, pearly gates and mansion are the only way we can comprehend the wonder and value of a completed love in God. You see God only wants to love us but until we love Him in return His love for us is incomplete.  That is why this is in a preterite form, that spark of love for God that He put within our spirits must be nourished, fanned and given the chance to grow from a glowing ember to a bonfire. If we neglect that little spark then when we die it will be extinguished and in some cases where God has given man over to his reprobate mind Romans 1:28 that little ember may die before the body dies.

The heart, the source of all our passions is very important in our relationship with God. eleventh-century rabbi known as Jacob Ben Asher remarked that the two letters for the word “heart” (Lamed, Beth) are the only two letters in the Hebrew alphabet that can be combined with all the letters of God’s name to make meaningful words.  God’s name is spelled Yod, Hei, Vav, Hei.   The first letter in the word “heart” is Lamed.  You put the Lamed before the Yod  and you have Li “to me.”  The Lamed before the Hei gives you Lah “to her” and the  Lamed before the Vav gives you Lo “to him.”   The next letter in the word heart is Beth.  The Beth before the Yod is Bi ‘in me.”   The Beth before the Hei is Bah “in her” and the Beth before the Vav is Bo “in him.”   No other letters in the Hebrew alphabet has this feature.  The significance of this is that the heart or the source of our passion is the point at which our connection with God is made.   

The Torah or the first five books of the Bible started with the Beth and ends with the Lamed. The Lamed Beth spells the word for heart.  Of course, the letters are in reverse order which the sages teach is to show us that we must read through entire Torah and then review it for the Word of God to make a connection with our heart. 

The proper order of the word heart is Lamed, Beth. However, if you reverse that order you have Beth, Lamed which means “not,” “no” or “negative.” If our relationship with God depends upon our heart and our hearts are in proper order (Lamed, Beth) it can bring us to a completion with God.  However, if our hearts are out of order (Beth, Lamed) it can bring us into lack and negative feelings. 

We all love God but the important thing is that we are continually loving God, letting that little ember of love in our hearts grow and grow until it completely inflames our entire bakal heart.