Language Studies

Difficult Sayings

Love the lord your God with all of your what?
Deuteronomy 6:5

"You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." (Deuteronomy 6:5, NKJV)

This is a very important biblical passage. It is part of the Jewish Shema, the credal declaration of faith that is of paramount importance to every Jewish believer and indeed to Jesus (Mark 12:29) and the early church. It states that God is one, that we should love him with all our being, and teach this to the next generation. Both the rabbis and Jesus combined this statement with Leviticus 19:18 "and you shall love your neighbour as yourself", both verses beginning with the identical phrase, "And you shall love", v^e'âhabh'tâ.

According to Deuteronomy 6:5, with what are we to love God? The passage appears to divide man up into "heart, soul and might", which perhaps has an echo of the apparent trichotomy of man, often justified by verses suggesting a three-fold distinction in man's nature, for example: "body, soul and spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:23). But in Deuteronomy 6:5 we have "heart, soul and strength/might", not "body, soul and spirit". Clearly, both passages use soul, and perhaps heart and spirit are synonymous, leaving body to be compared to strength.

Some have seen the three terms as distinct, others as overlapping or concentric, others as synonymous. The Septuagint (Greek Old Testament, translated before our gospels) had problems with this passage and some versions rendered it "heart (kardia), soul (psuchê) and power (dunamis)", others "mind (dianoia), soul and power". Our gospels had the same problems as specific New Testament quotations of this verse struggle to reconcile the three Hebrew words with a definite set of Greek terms.

"heart, soul and mind (dianoia)" (Matthew 22:37)
"heart, soul, mind and strength (ischus)" (Mark 12:30)
"heart, soul, strength and mind" (Luke 10:27)

Matthew, keeping the three-fold phrase intact, turns the Hebrew "strength"/Greek "power" into one of the Greek words for "mind", whilst Mark and Luke realise that in Greek it will take at least a four-fold terminology to convey the same meaning and hence opt for "mind" and "strength".

The Hebrew word they all struggle with is מְעד m^e'ôdh which essentially means "very" and is used 300 times in the Old Testament as such, e.g., "and behold [it was] very good" in Genesis 1:31. Since it may be translated by "effort, excess, muchness, abundance or force of strength" it basically includes all of man's effort and all the force and abundance at his disposal. Thus it may even include all of man's estate: possessions, health and household. Nothing is left outside of the realm of loving God with your "all".

The early mediaeval Jewish commentator Rashi interpreted "loving God with all the heart" as "with thy heart not divided about God, a heart not divided between God and the creature"; "all thy might" he interprets of mammon or substance. Similarly, Aben Ezra understands "the heart" as "knowledge" and the "soul" as the spirit of man that is in his body and "might" as perfect love in the heart.

Elsewhere Deuteronomy speaks of only "heart and soul" (10:12; 30:6). So no fixed trichotomy can be derived here, especially if Deuteronomy can summarise it as dichotomy (2-part) and Mark and Luke can interpret it as tetrachotomy (4-fold). Indeed the Hebrew terms in Deuteronomy 6:5 carry a fairly wide breadth of meaning, the important thing is not distinction of the various parts but their unity, interdependence and integration.

Rather than distinction or a tripartite psychology, then, the emphasis is on loving and obeying with "everything you've got". 2 Kings 23 is a good practical example of Josiah doing just this:

"Now before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses" (2 Kings 23:25).

Certainly, then we are to love God with all of our being, including our supposedly "less spiritual" soul and strength. Hebraically "heart" stood for "mind" more than "spirit" as it was the seat of knowledge. How "spirit" fits in to the nature of man we will examine in another column.

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