Love

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Read at weddings, written to a congregation that was suing one another, splitting into factions over favourite teachers and humiliating its poorer members at its own suppers. The list is corrective: it names what those readers were failing to do. Marriage is nowhere in view.

Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.

Love thy neighbour as thyself appears first here, in a law code, set between a ban on hating your brother in your heart and a ban on grudges and revenge. It legislates conduct among neighbours in a village rather than describing a feeling.

He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.

God is said to love the stranger by supplying food and clothing, and Israel is told to love the stranger on the grounds that they were strangers in Egypt. The love is defined by what it hands over and grounded in a memory of being on the other side.

And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

God's self-description at Sinai, quoted throughout the Hebrew Bible. The word behind mercy here is chesed, the loyal love a party keeps because of a commitment made rather than because of how it feels. The same passage refuses to say guilt is simply waved away.

O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks unto the God of gods: for his mercy endureth for ever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords: for his mercy endureth for ever. To him who alone doeth great wonders: for his mercy endureth for ever.

Twenty-six verses, every one closing with the same line: his mercy endureth for ever. The word again is chesed. The repetition is the argument, a refrain a congregation says back until the steadiness is in the room rather than merely asserted.

And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.

Boaz names what Ruth has done. A Moabite widow left her homeland and stayed with her husband's mother, who had nothing left to give her. The book treats that as chesed, loyalty kept after the obligation had lapsed and with nobody requiring it.

Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!

Love poetry, frankly physical, in the one biblical book that never mentions God. The two lovers praise each other's bodies by turns. Sister and spouse are terms of endearment in this kind of ancient Near Eastern verse, not statements about family.

And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Asked which commandment ranks first, Jesus quotes two lines already in the Hebrew Bible: Deuteronomy on loving God with everything, and Leviticus on the neighbour. He is selecting a standard rather than inventing one, and he refuses to separate the two.

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

The test this letter proposes is material. Anyone who has goods, sees a brother in need and shuts off compassion is said not to have God's love in him. The thought ends by asking for love in deed and in truth rather than in talk.