“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, ” ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. (Mat 22:36-38)
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“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, ” ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ “This is the great and foremost commandment. (Mat 22:36-38)
Yeshua is quoting the Shema here. Let me explain this while also explaining how Jews communicated in the first century. The chapters and verses were added over a thousand years after the close of scripture. Having a printed bible prior to Gutenberg’s press was out of reach for almost all people. Starting from the return from Babylon, Jewish culture was founded each on man learning the Torah to the point of memorizing it in synagogue school. The intent of this education was to prevent another captivity. And the way they cited passages was to just quote the leading verse of a passage. Yeshua is not just saying this one sentence is the greatest commandment. He is referencing what is called the Shema, which means “hear”, because that’s the first word of the commandment. “Hear oh Israel, Yahweh is our Elohim, Yahweh is echad. You shall love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The entire text is at Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 but is also the entire chapter.
Many of us have adopted the practice of using the Shema as a daily or twice-daily prayer. As we have realized that Christianity started in the synagogues and was meant to be the next step in the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob instead of a replacement for that faith, we have realized that those who accept Yeshua as the Messiah are expected, even required, to keep the commandments. A great reminder of keeping those commandments is to, well, use them and memorize them, like by memorizing the Shema, using it as a prayer, and also doing what it says!
Did you know there is a little controversy with the text of the Shema that the Messiah cites above? Surprise, surprise, surprise, there’s controversy over something that ought to be black and white. The Hebrew Shema is slightly different than the Shema from the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible that was made about 150 years before Yeshua. This was the bible of the synagogues in the first century and the reference of those who wrote the New Testament. I’ll post both and see if you can spot the difference.
Slide 2 “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.” (Deu 6:5-6 NASB Hebrew to English)
“And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and all thy strength. And these words, all that I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart and in thy soul.” (Deu 6:5-6 Brenton Hebrew to Greek to English)
Do you see a difference? Beyond the old time English rendering of the Brenton, there is a difference that some see as significant. That difference is the insertion of the word mind instead of heart in the Hebrew rendering. Thinking from the mind is a Greek concept. The Torah almost always uses the heart when it’s talking about where ideas come from. For an example, you can look at Genesis 6:5 where Yahweh wipes out mankind because all the thoughts of men were evil continually. Those thoughts come from the heart in that verse, not from the mind.
From our 21st century perspective, the difference between the heart and the mind is the juxtaposition of emotion versus logic. Greek thinking is heavily logical and linear while Hebrew is more of an eastern philosophy that’s not so black and white, thus thoughts being intertwined with emotions. So how do we reconcile these concepts? Is the commandment based on emotion or is it based on thought and reason?
Slide 3 One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’ “The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”(Mar 12:28-31)
This incident is recorded in Matthew, Luke, and Mark. And in all three places, Yeshua used both the heart and the mind in his reference of the Shema as the greatest commandment. What do we learn from this? The first is that there’s no way the law has been done away with. Imagine for a moment if that were true. That would mean it would be OK to not love Yahweh. When doctrines are proposed and entertained, we must take them to their logical conclusions. Saying the law is done away with erases the two greatest commandments because they are both from the Torah. Loving your neighbor as yourself is from Leviticus 19:18. When people propose such ludicrous doctrines as the law being done away with, I just don’t think they have thought it through. Because if that’s true, we don’t need to love God or our neighbor. Do you know what that looks like? It looks like now. It looks like violent anarchy. It looks like our news or social media feeds. It looks like the days of Noah and the days of Lot.
But the deeper meaning here is that Yeshua used both mind and heart in his rendering of the Shema. This means both things are true. Loving Yahweh with minds is the logic side of things. The Torah makes sense. The earth was created. Words mean things. Words do not mean other things. Loving Yahweh with our minds is an appeal to our God-given ability to reason. This separates us from the animal kingdom. We have the ability to study and learn anything, but if we love God, we start and finish with His Word, which forms our ability to reason and drives us to make logical decisions that are founded in righteousness. On the other hand, if we emotionally love God will all we’ve got, then we will just do what He says and think about it later. Being so emotionally invested in God enables people to do things that aren’t rational, like change jobs to keep Torah or even become martyrs.
There are a couple practical applications to these concepts. When Satan tempted Eve in the garden, what did he do? He appealed to her emotions. And that nudge drove her over the edge. Had she loved God with all her heart, she would not have loved the fruit more. If she had loved God with all her mind, she would have just not eaten it because God said so. The second example I want to use is the execution of Yeshua. Here we have this wonderful Rabbi that Yahweh works miracles through that nobody has seen before. He harmed nobody. He helped thousands. He knew the Torah better than anyone ever. He was a servant to the extreme. He entered Jerusalem and they cheered and cheered. Just a couple days later, they murdered Him. This makes no sense both from a heart perspective and a mind perspective. They killed the man who could do all those wonderful things and never asked anything in return. That’s illogical to the max. Pontius Pilate was the representative of logic. He said he found no guilt in Him. But they still killed Him. They also showed they did not love Yahweh because of all the commandments they broke to kill Him. They were incited into an emotional rage, where they had the opportunity to be merciful to the innocent, but they chose to murder the innocent and let a guilty man free.
So the explanation is thus: Love Yahweh with your heart and your mind. Love Him so much that it overrides your emotions when needed or your logic when needed. Keep His commandments, speak of them when you lay down and rise up. Teach them to your children. Make them as what you think about, what you love, and what you do. Then you will be following the greatest commandment.