Ahav Is the Same

When Yeshua was asked which commandment is the greatest, He did not answer with a Greek word. He quoted the Torah, and the Torah was written in Hebrew. So if anyone hopes to find a word for love that is holy in itself, the place to look is the Hebrew of the Old Testament, beginning with the Shema.

Deuteronomy 6:5 And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh) and with all your might.

This is the highest devotion a human being can give. The verb is ahav (אָהַב), the word that does most of the work for love in the Hebrew Bible. If any word for love should stay clean, it is this one.

The Same Verb in a Dark Chapter

The same verb stands in one of the darkest chapters in the history of David’s house.

2 Samuel 13:1 And it came to pass after this, that to Absalom son of David was a beautiful sister, and her name was Tamar; and Amnon son of David loved her.

“And Amnon son of David loved her.” The verb is ahav, the very word of the Shema, and a few verses later this same love led him to force his half-sister.

2 Samuel 13:14-15 And he was not willing to listen to her voice; and he was stronger than she, and violated her, and lay with her. And Amnon hated her with a very great hatred, for greater was the hatred with which he hated her than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, "Arise, go."

“Greater was the hatred with which he hated her than the love with which he had loved her.” Here are the noun ahavah and the verb ahav together, in one sentence, and within the same chapter Amnon’s ahav has become a hatred greater than the love had ever been.

So the word in “you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart” and the word in “Amnon son of David loved her” are one and the same. If you set out to prove from the Bible that ahav is a holy word, the Bible would not let you. It uses that word for the holiest love there is and for one of the most shameful.

An Ordinary Word for Every Kind of Love

Amnon is not an exception. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures ahav is an everyday word, used for whatever a person’s heart reaches toward. In Genesis it is the word for a father’s love when God says to Abraham, “Take now your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac” (Genesis 22:2). It is also the word for a taste in food.

Genesis 25:28 And Isaac loved Esau, because game was in his mouth; but Rebekah loved Jacob.

Genesis 27:4 and make for me savory food, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, in order that my soul (nephesh) may bless you before I die."

Isaac “loved Esau, because game was in his mouth,” and he asked for “savory food, such as I love.” The same verb that names Abraham’s love for his only son names an old man’s liking for a good meal. A few chapters later it names a husband’s preference between two wives: Jacob “loved also Rachel more than Leah” (Genesis 29:30).

The prophets and the wisdom books use it for loves that God condemns. Isaiah says of the rulers of Jerusalem, “every one loves a bribe” (Isaiah 1:23). Hosea says to Israel, “you have loved a harlot’s wage upon every threshing floor of grain” (Hosea 9:1). A psalm says that the LORD’s soul hates “the wicked and the one who loves violence” (Psalm 11:5). Proverbs warns, “Do not love sleep, lest you be dispossessed” (Proverbs 20:13).

And the same word is used for loves that God commands and delights in.

Leviticus 19:18 You shall not avenge, and you shall not bear a grudge against the sons of your people, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.

Psalm 119:97 How I love your Torah! All the day it is my meditation.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” is ahav. So is the command to love the sojourner, “and you shall love him as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34). And so is the psalmist’s cry, “How I love your Torah!” Further on in the same psalm he says it again: “Therefore I love your commandments (mitzvot מִצוָה mits-vaw') more than gold, and more than fine gold” (Psalm 119:127).

A bribe and a harlot’s wage, violence and sleep, a son, a meal and a wife, a neighbor and a stranger, the Torah and the commandments of God: the Hebrew Bible pours one verb into all of them. The verb does not decide whether the love is holy. What it is poured out on decides.

The Noun and a Stronger Word

The noun ahavah, love, follows the same pattern. It is Amnon’s love in 2 Samuel 13:15. It is the love “strong as death” in the Song (Song of Songs 8:6). And it is God’s own love for His people, in the verse that says why He brought them out of Egypt.

Deuteronomy 7:8 but because of the LORD's love for you, and because He kept the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD brought you out with a strong hand, and redeemed you from the house of slaves, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

“Because of the LORD’s love for you” is ahavah. One noun names Amnon’s passing desire, the bride’s love that floods cannot drown, and the love of God that redeemed a nation from slavery.

There is also a stronger Hebrew word, chashaq (חָשַׁק), to be attached to, to desire, to set one’s love upon. It stands in the verse just before.

Deuteronomy 7:7 Not because you were more than all the peoples did the LORD set His love upon you and choose you — for you were the fewest of all the peoples —

“Did the LORD set His love upon you” is chashaq. It is a word of strong attachment, and here God Himself is its subject. Yet the same word appears in Genesis for a man who had already done great wrong.

Genesis 34:2-3 And Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the land, saw her; and he took her, and lay with her, and humbled her. And his soul (nephesh) clung to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob; and he loved the young woman (na'arah), and spoke to the heart of the young woman (na'arah).

Genesis 34:8 And Hamor spoke with them, saying, "Shechem my son — his soul (nephesh) longs for your daughter; give her, I pray, to him for a wife (ishah אִשָּׁה ish-shaw').

Shechem took Dinah, lay with her, and humbled her. Then the text says that “he loved the young woman,” with the verb ahav, and his father reports that his soul “longs for your daughter,” with the verb chashaq. Both of the Hebrew words that describe God’s love for Israel in Deuteronomy 7 also describe Shechem’s desire after he had violated a young woman.

The point is plain. The Hebrew Bible, like the Greek New Testament, has no word for love that is holy in itself.

What the Shema Joins to Love

So the Hebrew offers no word that is holy in itself, and what is true of the Greek is true here as well: ahav, ahavah and chashaq behave exactly as agapao ἀγαπάω ag-ap-ah'-o and agape ἀγάπη ag-ah'-pay behave in the New Testament. Each is a container, and the same container holds the love of God and the love of a bribe. The word for love does not save anyone. A person may say, “I love with agape,” or “I love with ahav,” and the text answers with two questions: what are you loving, and how is that love shown?

Yet the Shema itself does not leave love undefined. The verse that follows the command to love the LORD says what that love carries.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 And these words, which I am commanding you (tzivvah צָוָה tsaw-vaw') this day, shall be upon your heart; And you shall teach them diligently to your sons, and you shall speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk in the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.

The love of Deuteronomy 6:5 is joined at once to “these words, which I am commanding you (tzivvah) this day.” They are to be upon the heart, taught to the children, and spoken of at home and on the road. The command to love God is followed, in the very next breath, by His commanded words. Long before John wrote his letters, the Torah had already tied love to keeping, and the New Testament later puts the same truth in a sentence that reads like a definition.