Love Language in Hebrew
Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; how blessed are those who long for Him. Isaiah 30:18
Compassion – When you think about compassion, do you imagine a tender and protective love? Do you think about your love for your children and your spouse? Do you picture merciful acts? You might be surprised to know that there is an amazing difference between the biblical idea of compassion and love. If you look deep enough, you will discover something critically important about the way you treat others.
Most of the forty-nine occurrences of the Hebrew word racham (to have compassion) describe God as the actor. Isaiah’s verse is no exception. God longs to show His compassion towards us. Psalm 103:13 and Proverbs 28:13 tell us that God has a special place in His heart for two kinds of people: those who fear Him, and those who confess and forsake their sins. The intensity of this deep emotion is underlined by the fact that this word is also the word for the womb. Nothing draws deeper on human emotion than the helplessness of an unborn child, so it’s not surprising at all that compassion, mercy and intense affection is associated with the womb. What is surprising is that racham is never conjoined with the Hebrew word for love, ahav.
Gerhard Wallis made the observation years ago that ahav never appears in parallel with racham. Wallis concludes that the Hebrew concept of love has an entirely different meaning than we find in the ideas of compassion and affection. Furthermore, as we learned from the exclusive use of agape for ahav, the Hebrew concept of love is also not translated in terms of friendship (phileo) or desire (eros). All of this helps us distinguish what love really means from a Hebrew perspective. What we find is this:
- The concept of love expressed in ahav is focused on community. It is about love for neighbor, stranger, countryman and enemy. The context of understanding what it means to love is found in my treatment of others, not in my feelings or emotions.
- When ahav is used to describe my relationship with God, the focus is on the total commitment of my entire person. In other words, love is a verb of action. It is “strikingly pragmatic.” In fact, love that does not produce benevolent behavior is sin.
- Since love is essentially an inner resolve displayed in outward action, the principal characteristic of biblical love is faithfulness. When it comes to loving God, this means obedience. When it comes to loving another person, this means nurturing fidelity.
- From a biblical point of view, love does not stand on a foundation of emotions but rather on a foundation of ethical responsibility. Love demands specific boundaries for behavior. Love is not about being free. It is about acting within the confines of what it means to be faithful, trustworthy and reliable.
- In community, an act of love is an expression of justice. What is not just, is not loving.
What is love? Try this definition on for size: love is what delights God and blesses others. Both elements seem to be necessary. Attitude and action are married in benevolence, often with personal cost. Ask yourself if you are experiencing and exhibiting biblical love. If you are, then God is smiling and someone else is being blessed, even if you are paying the freight.
And what about compassion? Why is compassion never used in connection with love? Because compassion is rooted in the idea of creating a fence around the chaos in another person’s life, while love is essentially exhibiting the character of God in community. Compassion acts on behalf of another simply because there is a need. Love lifts compassion to a higher dimension because love takes the place of the one in need.
Are you compassionate? Good. Now lift your compassion to the level of love. Take the place of the thief who hangs on a cross.
Topical Index: Love
After I read this post, I still don’t get it. What is the difference between ahav and racham? and why they were never conjoined in the Bible?
Since you are asking about a word study done nearly 7 years ago, I suggest you read more about the two words on other studies on this site. The first difference is about individual bonding vs. community action, but that is only the beginning.
Thank you, a-seed, for reading this post. I haven’t seen this TW. I love this one!
I work with very sick, and often, very lost, people. They require loads of compassion; demand it, in fact. In fact, they are so bad off, that so many times, they are totally dependent on the actions of compassion by others to stay alive one more day. You could call them interminable sink holes for the stuff, in fact. It can get exhausting to be pulled on that hard by another, because compassion is all about one-way service. Someone in a ditch is not in a good place to return love, or to care at all about your life, and what you may need from them; no, someone in a ditch is drowning, and, as much as they need to be saved, their first reaction to anyone who can get close enough to try to do that, it to grab them like a straw, and attempt to get one more breath (from their perspective, anyway), no matter what it is going to cost you. If it cost you everything, in fact, it still may not be enough for them, and, to the extent it is still not enough for a desperate person, they are STILL going to be bitter that it is not. Life, you see, creates its own desire for itself, and to the extent that we are fractured from it, we go blind with rage and despair. We have to have it! No matter what! Compassion. A fence around this chaos Thanks, Skip, that fits!
People need compassion like they need grace; in fact, I think of compassion in the same context as grace, as both are extended without corollary contingencies: both are just there because there is a need for them. Both keep someone alive until they can reach a place where they can try again, and both can reach out and touch someone else while they are still sinners; fractured from God, self, and others, including the one extending that compassion or that grace. Neither of them are there because someone else is making any effort toward love, and neither of them require it.
Love, on the other hand, demands to be loved. Love requires reciprocal action: love is about giving as good or better than one gets. Love is jealous, inexorable, and is not satisfied until the connection works. If compassion is a one-way blind alley to nowhere, love is about exploding universes in all dimensions and directions all at the same time, all the time. Love is going to swallow that time, too, as soon as it can catch it! Forever is not long enough for love.
People in sin do not want to repent of that sin; they do not want to do the actions of connection; of love. They want the results of connection, but they someone else to do it all. What they want is compassion. To someone who is not connected, love is too scary to contemplate. They will close themselves off from it, because they do not trust it. To these people, compassion is the only way to deliver that love without getting blown up or chased off. People need love, after all, to live. Perhaps what they receive in compassion today they will want to return in love tomorrow. Perhaps they will become willing to try again.
Thank you Laurita! What you said really make sense. Just this post quoted Gerhard Wallis seemed saying that ahav love is somewhat impersonal and non-emotional, that confuses me. That is very similar to the compassion you described from persons in need, isn’t it? I bet Dr. Moen had developed and write more thoughts somewhere that clarified it over years! Thank you all for the sharing.
You are asking really interesting questions, a_seed! I am sitting here going back through what Skip wrote, and he would know about what he meant, and the way he understands it, so I hope he could chime back in here, too, if he felt he already hasn’t said it all already, which he may have!
I know that I experience the initial impact of love with my emotions, for sure, and love is never cold, that is also for sure, but I have also found that often the most dependable, faithful people I know are rarely emotional, and also the way they treat me is the same way they treat others, which can be a blow to my pride, which always wants to be ‘special’, ‘different than’, or exclusive. People say “still waters run deep”, however, and I think this may be part of what they are talking about. I can also tell you that if I were to find myself in a situation that puts me in a bad light, or in an awkward, unexplainable place, I absolutely know who in my life I could call, and who would come and do whatever I asked, and would not even need to know why, or what they were going to get out of it. Further, it wouldn’t matter what they experienced, or how they felt about it: I mean, that subject would not even come up. Yes, I know who really, really loves me, and it is most certainly not the most effusive, glad-to-see-me people. They can be turned off as fast as they can be turned on. I also know that the times I need love the most are usually the least likely times that someone else is going to be feeling really great about giving it to me!
I think we naturally equate love with romance, and that love is certainly an excellent demonstration of some of its finest characteristics, but if you look at romance on its surface, you could miss the potential seeds for disaster that can build themselves in, too. Lust can hide there, disguised as delight. We humans can also get ourselves really excited about something we perceive we want, and that excitement can also look like delight in another, when it is actually delight in What’s In It For Me. So many ways Self can hide and lie, and so many ways Need can overlook and believe what it wants to believe, likewise. (The morning after hangover from that particular combo I think we all can testify to, in some way!) True love could care less about what one either feels or is experiencing, because true love is about staying together no matter what, and that no matter what includes what you or I may happen to think or feel about it from time to time.