Reading Deuteronomy in light of ancient Near Eastern treaties, we learn that the commandment to love God entails both action and affection. We further learn about the nature of God’s love for Israel, described also in the prophets and in the rabbinic reading of Song of Songs.
This rare ketubbah celebrates the symbolic union between God, the bridegroom, and the People of Israel, the bride. This spiritual wedding takes place on the holiday of Shavuot, and the witnesses are the Heavens and the Earth. Italy, 17th-18th century. thejewishmuseum.org
Published: August 14, 2016
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
Author’s note: I have dealt with the subject of this article more fully in my recent book, The Love of God: Divine Gift, Human Gratitude, and Mutual Faithfulness in Judaism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), from which I have drawn in this article. For an OnScript podcast interview about the book, please click here.
[2] See m. Berachot 1:1-3.
All translations are taken from Tanakh: The Hebrew Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985), the new Jewish Publication Society translation (abbreviated NJPS).
The question already bothered the rabbis and medieval commentators. See, for example,Sifrei Devarim 33 (on Deut 6:6), which discusses the problem of the non-specific nature of love as a commandment, and Maimonides’ Sefer Hamitzvot (3rd positive commandment), which discusses the general problem of how people can be commanded to love God.
William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” in That Most Magic Word, ed. Ronald S. Hendel; Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 35 (Washington: Catholic Biblical Society of America, 2002), 170–81, here p. 171. The article is reprinted from Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963): 77–87.
Moran, “The Ancient,” in That Most, 173.
On the formal features of covenant, see, for example, my earlier discussion in Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (New York: HarperCollins, 1987), 23–36.
In the Hebrew Bible, too, we find a non-covenantal account of the uniqueness of the national God of Israel. Here I am referring to the richly attested notion that, by winning a stupendous victory, the LORD humiliated the other gods, demonstrated his utter incomparability, and thus called into doubt their right to be called “gods” at all and even their very existence outside the icons used in their worship and the minds of their misguided votaries. (This model of monotheism, too, has antecedents and parallels in other ancient Near Eastern literature.) Note that sometimes the stupendous victory is presented as occurring in the future. I have dealt with these two biblical modes of monotheism in Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (2nd ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 131–39.
Robert Emmons, “Gratitude,” in Shane J. Lopez, ed., Encyclopedia of Positive Psychology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 442–47, here p. 443.
See Jacqueline E. Lapsley, “Feeling our Way: Love for God in Deuteronomy,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 65 (2003): 350–69, and Bill T. Arnold, “The Love-Fear Antinomy in Deuteronomy 5–11,” Vetus Testamentum 61 (2011): 551–69.
See discussion in Carl Ehrlich’s TABS essay, “Loving God Erotically.”
Phyllis Bird, “‘To Play the Harlot’: An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor,” in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy L. Day (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 75–94, here 89.
In v. 21 and v. 22, I have substituted “betroth” for “espouse” (NJPS) partly for stylistic reasons and partly to convey the legal background of the act (compare the use of the verb in Deut 20:7 and 28:30). I have changed “be devoted to” in v. 22 to “know” to reflect the covenantal resonance of the Hebrew verb yada‘.
On the continuities, see Larry L. Lyke, I Will Espouse You Forever: The Song of Songs and the Theology of Love in the Hebrew Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007).
Marvin Pope, Song of Songs, Anchor Bible 7c (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), 17.
Daniel Boyarin, “‘This We Know to Be the Carnal Israel’: Circumcision and the Erotic Life of God and Israel,” Critical Inquiry 18 (1992): 474–505, here p. 496.
This, the alternative translation suggested in the NJPS notes, is more accurate grammatically and appropriate to the context of the midrash in question.
Song of Songs Rabbah 1:2.3.
This is not to deny that there is an analogical leap from the passion of the physical lovers to that of the bodiless God and his idealized lover, keneset yiśra’el, the Jewish people in their complete faithfulness and devotion to their divine lover. But whether that leap involves a loss or a gain is a question that the study of culture, history, and language alone can never resolve. Lying outside the domain of historical study, it is a question that depends on the more encompassing issue of the theological and philosophical framework within which interpretation takes place. I have tried to address some of these issues of the relationship of traditional and modern modes of study in The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), especially chapters 3 and 5.
For a recent example, see Michael Fishbane, Song of Songs (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 2015/5775), which proceeds according to the medieval notion of a four-fold sense of scripture, of which the plain and midrashic senses are only two.
[21] The philosophical challenge is to identify the control on this interpretive pluralism that distinguishes it from interpretive relativism.
