אֵת֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יֶחֱטָ֥א אִישׁ֙ לְרֵעֵ֔הוּ וְנָֽשָׁא־ב֥וֹ אָלָ֖ה לְהַֽאֲלֹת֑וֹ וּבָ֗א אָלָ֛ה לִפְנֵ֥י מִֽזְבַּחֲךָ֖ בַּבַּ֥יִת הַזֶּֽה׃
만일 어떤 사람이 그 이웃에게 범죄함으로 맹세시킴을 받고 저가 와서 이 전에 있는 주의 단 앞에서 맹세하거든
Rabbeinu Bahya
ואהבת את ה' אלו-היך, “You shall love the Lord your G’d.” Seeing that we have no other G’d than Hashem we are bound to love Him. The point of “loving G’d” is to perform His commandments out of a sense of love for Him. If someone serves the Lord out of fear, his service is not of the best variety. The way this love for G’d expresses itself is by our studying the laws of the Torah and by obtaining a better understanding of what G’d expects from us through such study. As a result of such study we will enjoy having gained deeper insights of what the Lord wants from us. To tell us that this is the purpose of loving G’d, the Torah immediately continues with —
והיו הדברים האלה אשר אנכי מצוך היום על לבבך, “these matters which I have commanded you this day will be upon your heart.” The verse is the practical manifestation of the result of your loving the Lord. The Sifri Vaetchanan 33 explains the subject of man loving G’d in a similar manner when the author writes that the key to this is found in the verse והיו הדברים האלה. The words ואהבת את ה' אלו-היך are an instruction to display love vis-a-vis G’d as one would vis-a-vis G’d’s creatures. This is what Avraham did and why G’d referred to him as אברהם אוהבי “Avraham who loves Me” in Isaiah 41, 8.
Our sages, in elaborating on this theme, defined someone as loving G’d if by his conduct he brings people closer to G’d and thereby helps them secure their claim to the hereafter. This is the reason why the sages cited Avraham as their model for such love.
Do not argue that seeing that the emotion described as חשק is perceived to be a stronger emotion than that of אהבה, love, why did the Torah not instruct us to וחשקת את ה' אלו-היך, “to display fondness of the Lord your G’d?” The answer to this question is that אהבה, “love”, is something that comes and goes, an emotion which manifests itself on occasion but does not manifest itself on other occasions. If someone loves a certain kind of food, he will experience this emotion when such food is placed before him and he eats it. He does not however, go around all day long “loving” that dish. When someone is in the grip of the emotion we call חשק an inordinate desire, [such as that of Shechem for Yaakov’s daughter Dinah, Ed.] this emotion is ever-present in his mind even if the object of his desire is out of sight and earshot. He will dream about the object he is so fond of.
Seeing that we have been commanded to love the Lord with both our hearts לבבך, i.e. both the urges within us, (Berachot 62) as well as with all our soul and all our material assets, i.e. we must involve emotions which we cannot suppress in this love of G’d in order to fulfill the commandment properly. The Torah’s point in using this term ואהבת is to make clear that our love for G’d must always win out in a conflict with our other emotions. The other urges cannot be ignored as one cannot live without them. For instance, unless one has an urge to stay alive one will likely become the victim of death in its many forms in short order. Similarly, unless one has an active urge to acquire some material goods one will starve to death not having the wherewithal to pay for one’s food, clothing and shelter. The very relativity of the emotion אהבה then is what enables us to fulfill this commandment. Had the Torah commanded us to relate to G’d with the emotion חשק, this would involve our abandoning all other emotions in order to devote ourselves exclusively to the emotion of being fond of the Lord. We would have had to totally suppress even the emotions without which life on terrestrial earth is impossible. The end-result of relating to G’d in such a manner would effectively have made it impossible to fulfill any of the other commandments in the Torah as they all presuppose the activation of a whole range of human emotions.
The definition of the emotion חשק implies דבקות, an inseparable attachment to the object of one’s חשק such as described in Psalms 91,14 כי בי חשק ואפלטהו. The point made in that psalm is that if only the Jewish people will display sufficient חשק, affinity to G’d, He will personally deliver them instead of only by means of an angel (compare Alshich). When one attains that level of affinity to G‘d one qualifies for what is commonly known as מיתת נשיקה, a death by kiss from G’d, i.e. a demonstration by G’d of His affinity to the person leaving earth.
We find that even in His relationship to the entire Jewish people G’d speaks of such חשק, such an intense feeling of fondness for the Jewish people, when He says in Deut. 7,7 לא מרבכם מכל העמים חשק ה' בכם, “not because you are the most numerous of all the nations did the Lord entertain such a strong fondness for you.“ This verse clearly spelled out that G’d’s closeness, affinity to us, surpasses His affinity to any other nation. Our sages derived from there also that wherever the Jewish people are exiled, G’d, in the form of part of the Shechinah, is also present (Megillah 29).
והיו הדברים האלה אשר אנכי מצוך היום על לבבך, “these matters which I have commanded you this day will be upon your heart.” The verse is the practical manifestation of the result of your loving the Lord. The Sifri Vaetchanan 33 explains the subject of man loving G’d in a similar manner when the author writes that the key to this is found in the verse והיו הדברים האלה. The words ואהבת את ה' אלו-היך are an instruction to display love vis-a-vis G’d as one would vis-a-vis G’d’s creatures. This is what Avraham did and why G’d referred to him as אברהם אוהבי “Avraham who loves Me” in Isaiah 41, 8.
Our sages, in elaborating on this theme, defined someone as loving G’d if by his conduct he brings people closer to G’d and thereby helps them secure their claim to the hereafter. This is the reason why the sages cited Avraham as their model for such love.
Do not argue that seeing that the emotion described as חשק is perceived to be a stronger emotion than that of אהבה, love, why did the Torah not instruct us to וחשקת את ה' אלו-היך, “to display fondness of the Lord your G’d?” The answer to this question is that אהבה, “love”, is something that comes and goes, an emotion which manifests itself on occasion but does not manifest itself on other occasions. If someone loves a certain kind of food, he will experience this emotion when such food is placed before him and he eats it. He does not however, go around all day long “loving” that dish. When someone is in the grip of the emotion we call חשק an inordinate desire, [such as that of Shechem for Yaakov’s daughter Dinah, Ed.] this emotion is ever-present in his mind even if the object of his desire is out of sight and earshot. He will dream about the object he is so fond of.
Seeing that we have been commanded to love the Lord with both our hearts לבבך, i.e. both the urges within us, (Berachot 62) as well as with all our soul and all our material assets, i.e. we must involve emotions which we cannot suppress in this love of G’d in order to fulfill the commandment properly. The Torah’s point in using this term ואהבת is to make clear that our love for G’d must always win out in a conflict with our other emotions. The other urges cannot be ignored as one cannot live without them. For instance, unless one has an urge to stay alive one will likely become the victim of death in its many forms in short order. Similarly, unless one has an active urge to acquire some material goods one will starve to death not having the wherewithal to pay for one’s food, clothing and shelter. The very relativity of the emotion אהבה then is what enables us to fulfill this commandment. Had the Torah commanded us to relate to G’d with the emotion חשק, this would involve our abandoning all other emotions in order to devote ourselves exclusively to the emotion of being fond of the Lord. We would have had to totally suppress even the emotions without which life on terrestrial earth is impossible. The end-result of relating to G’d in such a manner would effectively have made it impossible to fulfill any of the other commandments in the Torah as they all presuppose the activation of a whole range of human emotions.
The definition of the emotion חשק implies דבקות, an inseparable attachment to the object of one’s חשק such as described in Psalms 91,14 כי בי חשק ואפלטהו. The point made in that psalm is that if only the Jewish people will display sufficient חשק, affinity to G’d, He will personally deliver them instead of only by means of an angel (compare Alshich). When one attains that level of affinity to G‘d one qualifies for what is commonly known as מיתת נשיקה, a death by kiss from G’d, i.e. a demonstration by G’d of His affinity to the person leaving earth.
We find that even in His relationship to the entire Jewish people G’d speaks of such חשק, such an intense feeling of fondness for the Jewish people, when He says in Deut. 7,7 לא מרבכם מכל העמים חשק ה' בכם, “not because you are the most numerous of all the nations did the Lord entertain such a strong fondness for you.“ This verse clearly spelled out that G’d’s closeness, affinity to us, surpasses His affinity to any other nation. Our sages derived from there also that wherever the Jewish people are exiled, G’d, in the form of part of the Shechinah, is also present (Megillah 29).
Sforno
לא תשא, invoking the name of G’d when swearing an oath. The word נשא is used in this sense in Kings I 8,31 ונשא בו אלה לאלותו, “when someone utters a curse against another in retaliation, using the curse to make his adversary swear an oath,”