Where is the Love in the Five Books of Moses?
The Hebrew word for love, from the root aleph-heh-vet, or ahav, is not found in the Book of Numbers. There is no love in the wilderness!
Where love is found in the other four books, its message is often unexpected.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out the concentration of uses of the love in the Book of Deuteronomy.[1]
A closer look at all of the instances where the word love is found in the Torah reveals an interesting pattern and progression.
Love in the Book of Genesis
In the fourteen instances of the word in Genesis, love is used to describe one person’s feeling for another, or for a thing.
In the first case, in the story of the Akeidah, or the binding of Isaac, God describes Isaac as Abraham’s “son, your only one, the one that you love.” We can all identify with that expression. The love of a parent for a child elicits nearly universal understanding and empathy.
Then there are references to Isaac’s love for Rebecca and for Esau. There are three references to Isaac’s love for the special kind of food that Esau makes; three to Jacob’s love for Rachel; and one to Leah’s hope that Jacob will love her.
In the story of the rape of Dinah, the rapist Shechem is said to “love” Dinah.
In the Joseph saga we read that Jacob loved Joseph best, that Joseph’s brothers recognized that love, and that Jacob then had a special love for Benjamin.
Love for a special food expresses a different idea, of course, than love of one person for another, and the use of love in describing Shechem’s lust for Dinah is of a different character altogether.
What we do not find in Genesis, interestingly, is female love.
All of the expressions of love in Genesis are attributed to men. Leah hopes that her actions will cause Jacob to love her, but the word is not used to describe her feelings toward him.
All of the uses of the word love in Genesis are associated with tension, danger, fear, or resentment. These very human stories of love have all the perils of, and have been used as archetypes for, familiar human experience.
Love in the Book of Exodus
In the Book of Exodus there are only two instances of the word love.
It is used first in the Ten Commandments to describe the appropriate attitude of the people toward God. God “will show kindness … to those who love Me …” (Ex 20:6)
It is then found in the laws governing the release of slaves, providing that a slave whose time for release has come may declare his love for his master and his desire to remain with him.
Both of these uses of the word love are transactional and have an implicitly reciprocal nature.
Love in the Book of Leviticus
The two instances of the word love in Leviticus are in Chapter 19, in the section of the bible known as The Holiness Code. They are the foundational statements of Jewish ethics, which were later imported verbatim into Christian scripture.
They are the commandments to love one’s neighbor as oneself and to love the stranger.
The Jewish conversation around these commandments tends to focus on practicality. What, exactly, does love of the sort commanded here look like? In Jewish tradition, answers are typically couched in terms of behavior, not of feelings. Love is as love does.
These two commands have no limits. They do not relate to one person’s love for a specific other. They require one’s love for all who meet a broadly stated criterion: a neighbor or a stranger.
They are not limited by time, number, or specific identity.
They do not depend on the other’s condition, position, or attitude.
Love in the Book Numbers
There are no instances of the word love in the Book of Numbers.
Numbers is the account of the thirty-eight years of wandering in the desert after leaving Sinai and before arriving at Mt. Nebo, where Moses will die. Those were years of strife, of trial, and of death.
The adult men who left Egypt (except Moses, Joshua, and Caleb) all died during that period after showing themselves unworthy of entering the land.
It is one thing to understand that the desert years were trying and difficult. It is another to find that no relationship described in the account warrants use of the word love.
The wilderness was barren of that experience.
Love in the Book of Deuteronomy
Things change in Deuteronomy.
The account begins on the first day of the 11th month of the 40th year after leaving Egypt. Moses will die in a few weeks and Deuteronomy is a series of final addresses by Moses to the people who will shortly cross the Jordan and enter the land.
Love is a major theme of this text.
Eighteen of the twenty-three references to love in Deuteronomy concern love by God for the people or by the people for God.
Here, reciprocity is key, both as a theme and an obligation.
The people are to love God, and in return they are assured of God’s love for them. They are assured of the persistence of the covenant promise that God made to Abraham in Genesis 17:7, “I will give my covenant between Me and you, and your descendants after you for all generations as an eternal covenant …”
The central statement of relationship in Judaism, The Shema, (Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone) found in Deuteronomy 6:4 is not a prayer. It is a declaration, an assertion, followed by a command that the people are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength.”
God’s reciprocal promise—to care, provide for, and protect the people is stated clearly and repeatedly.
Love, as it is expressed in behavior, demands faithfulness. And it is faithfulness that God requires in exchange for His support and protection. Deut 30:16-20 makes the point forcefully. The people have a choice. If they demonstrate the love required, they will thrive,
“ … but if your heart turns away and you give no heed, and are lured into the worship and service of other gods, I declare to you today that you shall certainly perish …”
Several prior references to love are restated in Deuteronomy. Restatement of prior events is one of the principal purposes and characteristics of the text.
But the central theme of love in Deuteronomy is the reciprocal love between God and the people Israel.
The text anticipates the people’s breaking faith with God and the punishment that will ensue. But God’s commitment to love is not conditional. The people might stray, and God will punish, but the God’s love will not be affected. The covenant is eternal.
Some Thoughts
The stories of the patriarchs are human stories demonstrating human weaknesses and failings. The use of the word love in Genesis is conventional and understandable.
The covenantal language in Genesis is the language of reciprocal commitment and obligation, not of love.
At Sinai, God had delivered the people from Egypt – the prerequisite for fulfillment of the covenant of the land – and now, a higher level of commitment from the people is required, which includes demonstration of love.
In The Holiness Code of Leviticus, the requirements of a cohesive society are defined. The ethical imperatives of relationship are stated in language that is as powerful as it is terse. Timeless and resonant today as it was then and has been since.
And then, there was failure. Not only is it true that there is no reference to love in the Book of Numbers; the text is actually completely silent for 38 years of the desert experience.
There are no words at all for that period of dejection, disappointment, and wandering.
But after that long silence, the message of Moses in Deuteronomy is an insistent message of love.
Love as a requirement, to be sure, but love as a promise also. Love that is reciprocal but love that is ultimately not conditional. Love that looks forward. Love that is optimistic. Love that is encouraging and supportive. Love that can be relied upon.
The evolution of love in the Torah, as traced through its textual references, begins at the level of one person loving another in close relation, grows to the ethical imperative of love for humans as humans, and then ultimately to the level of love for and by the Divine.
The trajectory of that evolution is clear when we maintain focus on the use of the word itself. There is a clear line from the horrifying command to Abraham to the endless promise of Moses’s final message.
[1] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Covenant & Conversation: Deuteronomy, Renewal of the Sinai Covenant. Jerusalem: Maggid, 2019.