ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – NO GREATER LOVE – CHAVA DARAV LITH

חבא דרב לית Cheth Beth Aleph Daleth Resh Beth Lamed Yod Taw

John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

This verse may sound contradictory to the title of this book as I am declaring racham to be a love greater than love. Yet, this verse is telling us that there is no greater love and it uses the word chav. Are we to say that there is no greater love than chav?

Actually, this only confirms my title that racham is beyond the word love. Love is not really the proper word for racham. Racham encompasses everything about ‘ahav/chav. “Ahav/chav can be just as intense as racham. However, there are differences. There are various degrees to “ahav/chav love. This is why Jesus used the word chav rather than racham. You cannot say greater racham love for racham love is has no degrees. There is no lessor or greater racham. Racham is static, unchangeable. Racham is really in a class by itself and is not really meant to be compared to ‘ahav/chav in terms of our English word love. We only make a comparison because we have no English word for racham. The best word in English love. Also, racham love is a love that has not been offended or wounded. Husbands have laid down their lives for their wives. Their marriages may not have been perfect, they may have offended each other at times, irritated each other or even broke each other’s hearts, but they continued to love to ‘ahav and when the moment came to lay down their lives for their wives, they did so without hesitation. They overcame the irritations, wounding’s and heartbreak. The same can be said for parents to their children, for even friends to friends. There is a college in Chicago named after two medals of honor winners who laid down their lives to save the lives of their buddies. One threw himself on a grenade knowing he would not survive. Obviously, these friends had their moments when they got irritated with each other, said or did hurtful things but they overcame that and continued to love but that love was ‘ahav not racham.

The poet Rod McKuen wrote a poem entitled “I’ll Catch the Sun.” In this poem, he speaks about an emotion or feeling that has no English word so he uses the sun as a motif. In this poem, he offers to give hope, friendship, and even love to anyone who needs it but he will not share his sun whatever that means. Is there any more than you can give someone other than hope, friendship, and love? Rod McKuen believed so. In fact, he said he would not share it with anyone, but he might “in time” share his sun with someone that he gave hope, friendship, and love. What is that part of you that even if you love someone you will still hesitate to share it.

Do we really have a word for this motif of the sun? Is it his heart that he will not share or is it a willingness to make himself vulnerable. Yet, is not the very nature of lovemaking yourself vulnerable? Can one share love without making yourself vulnerable? Sharing something of yourself that a person can use to deeply hurt you. The point is that Rod McKuen did not want to share a part of himself for fear of being hurt. He felt he could love without taking the risk of being deeply hurt. Maybe he was touching on something beyond love. The greatest ‘ahav/chav is to lay down your life for another. Maybe there is something beyond that, the willingness to give someone the ability to hurt you very deeply, to wound or break your heart. Once it does wound you then you lost it. Perhaps he has touched on racham.

I recall a woman lecturing one love. She shared about the time she spent in a concentration camp during World War II. She told how that after the war she fell deeply in love with a man they got married. After a few years, that man betrayed her and divorced her to marry another woman. This woman said that the pain of the divorce and betray was far worse than pain or torture she suffered in the concentration camp. The greatest act of ‘ahav/chav would be to lay down your life for another. But maybe it is an act of racham to share your heart and make yourself vulnerable to another person.

Going back to the very first chapter in this book, racham is an ability that God has passed on to us but we lose it the moment we pass it on to another human being and that person betrays us in some small way. If it happens enough times we then just bury it inside of us and love with ‘ahav/chav. For we may have the ability to racham, a child, a mate, a friend but all will in some way one day let us down, will betray our racham and hurt us such that we replace racham with ‘ahav/chav, a love that is still very deep, a love that we will be willing to die for, but it will not be racham for once we share racham, we will quickly lose it when that person disappoints us, hurts us or breaks our hearts. A parent loses racham for their child when the child rebels. The parent does not love any less, but that love has been wounded. A bride and groom may at one time felt racham in that relationship, but it quickly passed to “ahav/chav when one’s heart was wounded. Oh, they overcame that wounding, they forgave, restored their love, but the love that was restored was “ahav/chav, a deep love, one that a person would be willing to give up their life but not racham. Once racham has been wounded it ceases to be racham and become ‘ahav/chav.

God has passed the capacity to racham on to us for that is the nature of His love. Yet, we quickly betray it, abuse it and break His heart and He can only love us with ‘ahav/chav until we embrace Proverbs 28:13: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh [them] shall have mercy (racham).” We confess our transgressions and forsake them and then God does what is impossible for us in our corruptible bodies to do and that is to forget, to take love back to the womb and emerge as if we never wounded His heart.

God for his part will never betray us, never break our hearts. If we do feel He let us down or broke our hearts, we will one day realize it is us and our selfish expectations that broke our hearts not God betraying us.

It is sort of like the formation of the Abrahamic covenant. Genesis 15:1-15 explains how God made the covenant with Abraham by cutting animals in half (except the birds) and laying them side by side with the blood sprinkled between the two halves. This was the format for a blood covenant. After the sacrifices were laid out the two individuals making this covenant joined hands and walked between the sacrifices on the sprinkled blood up to the front where a priest stood and the terms of the covenant were given and both parties agreed to them. In a blood covenant if one party broke the terms of the covenant he was to be put to death. Death was the only way to break the covenant. God knew that the people of Israel would not keep the terms of the covenant so he put Abraham into a deep sleep and God in a fire passed through the sacrifices alone. That way only God was bound to keep His part of the covenant and face the death penalty if He failed. Abraham and his generations were also bound to keep the terms of the covenant but since Abraham did not pass through the blood sacrifices he nor his generations would suffer the death penalty for failure to keep the terms of the covenant.

This is also a picture of racham. God loves us with racham and he is able to keep the terms of racham, that is not transgressing us. However, God knew that in the flesh and our struggle with the flesh that we would not be able to keep the terms of racham so he has given us ‘ahav/chav which has all the benefits of racham love only we will not lose those benefits if we transgress that breaks someone’s heart. There will always be reconciliation and a return to ‘ahav/chav if both parties desire but only God can restore the purity of racham through a rebirth.