“Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”—What It Really Means

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It is one of the fundamental commandments of the Torah (the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses). It is exemplary of Jewish morality, and it very early characterized the Christian faith as well. For 2,000 years, however, it has been misinterpreted.

The commandment appears in Leviticus. Moses is speaking, reciting a long series of laws. You shall not hate your brother, he tells them (Leviticus 19:17), nor take vengeance nor bear a grudge against the sons of your own people (Leviticus 19:18):

“But you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:18).

In the Gospels, Jesus is asked which is the first commandment (Mark), the greatest commandment (Matthew), the law that will bring eternal life (Luke). The question varies slightly in the three Synoptic Gospels, but Jesus’ answer is the same in all three (Matthew 22:37–40; Mark 12:29–31; Luke 10:27). He quotes two passages from the Hebrew Bible: “You shall love the Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:5) and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

The venerable Rabbi Akivah (first century C.E.^a) declared this “a great principle in the Torah” (Genesis Rabbah 24, 7).

It is therefore hardly surprising that this short passage—three words in Hebrew (òwOmK; ò[}rbel] j{;b]h’a;wÒ)—has evoked a virtual torrent of commentary and exegesis.

Most of the debate has focused on the meaning of the Hebrew elements translated “neighbor” and “like yourself.” The Hebrew vocable r‘ ([r) has been variously understood not only as a neighbor, but as an upright person, a friend, a fellow Israelite or simply a fellow human being, regardless of nationality.

The word kmvh (òwOmK;)—“like yourself”—has also been explained in several different ways. For example, it is one “who resembles you,” because it refers to a person who, like yourself, has been created in the image of God.

However, relatively little attention has been given to the first of the three words (j{;b]h’a;w]). It has been taken simply and unquestioningly at face value to mean “but (or and) you shall love.”

The question I would like to raise here is whether the translation “love” best conveys the meaning of the Hebrew. Or, to put the matter slightly differently, what is the semantic range of the verb ahavta, commonly translated “you shall love”? In short, I will suggest a meaning that differs from the accepted interpretation.

It is true that the root AHV frequently means what we would translate as love. However, most of the time it is used to describe, not interpersonal relationships between a man and his fellow, but rather a person’s relationship with God, a man’s relationship with a woman or parents’ relationships with their children.

Moreover, there is a clue in the Hebrew that this usage is not what is intended in our passage, something that tells us that ahav here has a nuance different from its customary meaning. Usually ahav takes an object (an accusative); it is a transitive verb. In Hebrew the object is preceded by the indicator et. Thus we have, for example, “Jacob loved Rachel” (Genesis 29:18), where Rachel is preceded by et.

Not so, however, in “Love your neighbor as yourself.” There the Hebrew construction is different. The verb ahav is used intransitively there. It is followed not by an object, but by an indirect object, introduced by the particle l– (l), usually translated “to.”

The combination ahav l– (-l bha) appears in the Hebrew Bible in three other places.

It occurs later in the same chapter 051of Leviticus as “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” in a verse closely related to the one we are discussing. In Leviticus 19:34, we read: “The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.” The usage here does not help us much to interpret the earlier verse in Leviticus 19, because the problem in both cases is the same.

In a passage introducing the section of 1 Kings in which Hiram, king of Tyre, helps Solomon to build the Temple on a site previously purchased by Solomon’s father David, we are told that “Hiram always loved David” ( 1 Kings 5:1 in English; 5:15 in Hebrew). Here too ahav is intransitive, and the particle l– precedes “David.”

A final instance of this usage comes from Chronicles. Here a prophet accuses Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, of assisting the Syrians in a battle in which the king of Israel was mortally wounded (2 Chronicles 18:28–19:2). The prophet says to Jehoshaphat, king of Judah: “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord? Because of this, wrath has gone out against you from the Lord” (2 Chronicles 19:2). Again, the particle l– precedes “those who hate the Lord.”

These are the only constructions where ahav is followed by an indirect object that I have found in the Hebrew Bible.

I believe, however, that this peculiar turn of expression, in which ahav is followed by l-, has significance in determining an expanded range of meaning of the verb ahav, although it is usually translated “to love.”

In the passage from 2 Chronicles where the prophet rebukes Jehoshaphat, the verse contains two parallel half-verses (stychoi is the technical term for the half-verses): “Should you [1] help the wicked and [2] ahav [love?] those who hate the Lord?” By creating the parallelism, the writer intends to reinforce an essentially synonymous meaning: “Help” and ahav are synonymous parallels as are the “wicked” and “those who hate the Lord.” This suggests that here ahav means not what we would call “love,” but rather “to be of use to,” “to be beneficial to,” “to assist or help.”

This suggests that in the famous passage from Leviticus that is the subject of our attention here, ahav may also mean to be useful or beneficial or helpful: “You should be beneficial or helpful to your neighbor as you would be to yourself.” The passage thus rendered may not sound as poetic, and it is certainly jarring because it renders unfamiliar something we all know so well, yet it may be truer to the meaning of the passage than the traditional translation.

This interpretation also has the advantage of eliminating the abstract aspect of ahav, giving it a more concrete and pragmatic context. Such a concrete meaning better suits the conceptual world of the Bible. In short, the Bible is not commanding us to feel something—love—but to do something—to be useful or beneficial to help your neighbor.

This understanding also eliminates from the passage what some have considered an inappropriate adoration of self-love (narcissism, to use the Freudian terminology). The self-love reflected in the traditional interpretation is sometimes seen as an aberration of Biblical thought. (Some exegetes who have been uncomfortable with these implications of the traditional translation suggest that we understand the passage as meaning, “You shall treat kindly, lovingly, your neighbor, for he is a human being like yourself.”)

If my suggestion as to the meaning of ahav in this verse—to be helpful or beneficial to—is accepted, the question arises as to whether the other verses containing the unusual combination ahav l– may also be explained anew as referring to being beneficial or helpful or providing services to the opposite party. I believe the answer is yes. Thus Leviticus 19:34, usually translated “You shall love him [the stranger in your land] as yourself,” should be understood to mean you shall be useful to him.

When we are told that Hiram loved David (1 Kings 5:1 in English; 5:15 in Hebrew), we should understand it to mean that Hiram always helped and benefited David. The passage concerning Jehoshaphat, as we have already discussed, has the same meaning.

Having unlocked this usage of ahav, we can now say it sometimes carries this meaning even when it is not followed by the dative particle l-. For example, in describing the good works of Uzziah, king of Judah, we are told:

“And he built towers in the wilderness, and hewed out many cisterns, for he had large herds, both in the Shephelah and in the plain, and he had farmers and vinedressers in the hills and in the fertile lands, for he loved the soil” (2 Chronicles 26:10).

In Hebrew the expression “love the soil” is ahav adamah (hmda bha). Most exegetes simply pass over this surprising expression, accepting it as a romantic turn of phrase, as if it was written at the end of the 19th century in England. To find such an expression in the Bible, however, would be anachronistic. It is more reasonable to understand the term as referring to someone who has invested his efforts in cultivating and fertilizing the land. It is these activities to which the expression ahav adamah refers, and this cannot be described merely as “love.”

In short, in many Biblical passages, as in Leviticus 19:18, ahav has a more concrete meaning than mere abstract love. It denotes the act of being useful and beneficial to its object.

(This article has been adapted from Professor Malamat’s contribution to the forthcoming Festschrift Rolf Rentdorff, edited by E. Blum (Neukirchen-Vleryu), which contains full scholarly apparatus.)

It is one of the fundamental commandments of the Torah (the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses). It is exemplary of Jewish morality, and it very early characterized the Christian faith as well. For 2,000 years, however, it has been misinterpreted.