Skip to main content

What is the Greatest Commandment in the Bible?


This is one of the most Jewish – and most famous – teachings of Jesus. It begins with a Pharisee, who is also a lawyer, asking Jesus a question to test him.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Torah?”

Jesus said to him:
“’You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like it:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

On these two commandments hang all the Torah and the Prophets.”
Matthew 22:35-40

Look at the graphic above and you will see that the Hebrew letters are hanging from the line above them. When we write English words, we set the English letters on a line. In both languages, the line serves the same purpose – it supports the words hanging from it or setting on it.

“The Torah and the Prophets” are the names of the first two sections of the Jewish Bible today. They were two different groups of scrolls in the first century. The point Jesus made was this:

These Two Commandments are the Line
That God hung all of the words of the Scriptures on:
Without “loving God with all of your heart
and loving your neighbor as yourself,”
the words of the sacred scriptures collapse.

Jesus simply repeated the Creator’s Vision & Values for Humanity we saw in Genesis 1, but he did it in his own words:

Protect and preserve your life and your neighbor’s life,
make your life and your neighbor’s life more functional
and increase the quality of your life and your neighbor’s life!

Obviously, if just people that value the words of their Bibles did this:

A lot of people would not be destroying and threatening each other’s lives,
making each other’s lives less functional, decreasing each other’s quality of life
and creating chaos instead of order in the world!

I would like to know how many of the people creating the chaos we are witnessing today "believe in the God in Genesis" or "believe in the Jesus of Matthew, Mark and Luke?" 

Thank you for reading this. Please share and discuss it with others.

May your life be blessed with an abundance of TOV,
Jim Myers

☼ Help fund future emails like this one! Click Here to Donate.

☼ Subscribe to this Mail List so you won’t miss future emails. It is FREE! Click Here.

☼ Let people know what we do by “Liking” us on Facebook. Click Here.


☼ Visit the BHC website and you will find much more! Click Here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It’s a Yod -- NOT a Jot and Tittle!

Not only did Yeshua read and speak Hebrew, so did his followers and disciples! Two very well known, but not accurately understood words in the Gospel of Matthew prove it – jot and tittle . For some reason jot and tittle stick in the minds of Christian Bible readers. But when you ask them what jot or tittle mean, you get a lot of conflicting and some really weird answers. Today, you are going to get the facts about what Yeshua originally said and how they ended up in English translations of the Bible as jot and tittle . Let’s begin by reading Matthew 5:18 from the King James translation: For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. If you have not read the article “ From Yeshua to Jesus ” in Yeshua’s Kingdom Handbook please take a moment to read it online by clicking here before you continue. In it you will see how we began with the name “ Jesus ” and traced it through Lati
Post a Comment
Read more

Do Not Say RAQA! - Yeshua on Anger (Part 2)

In the last blog, we covered the first part of Yeshua’s lesson on Anger -- An Angry Person Should be Tried in Court like a Murderer – keep in mind that “anger” is the focus of Yeshua’s lesson. “Whoever says to a brother, ‘ RAKA ,’ shall be answerable to the Sanhedrin.” [i] Yeshua reveals that the seriousness of the offense has become greater by elevating the crime to the next highest court – the Sanhedrin . It is the highest court in the nation and would be the equivalent of our Supreme Court. What makes this offense more serious than murder, to keep things in the context established by Yeshua? It is because of what the angry person said out of anger – “ RAKA !” RAKA is the English transliteration of the Greek word found in the ancient manuscripts of Matthew. Interestingly, the Greek word is also a transliteration of a Hebrew word into Greek. Keep in mind that when a translator working on a translation of a Greek manuscript transliterates a Greek word, he only finds the
Post a Comment
Read more

The Prayer Yeshua Prayed Twice Every Day

One of Jesus’s earliest memories was no doubt watching and listening to his family when they gathered to pray the Shema at sunrise before the day’s work began and after the working work day was over at sunset . He also heard and participated in praying the Shema at their synagogue. He was surrounded by neighbors who also prayed the same prayer in their homes every day. The Hebrew word for prayer is tefilah . It is derived from the root Pe-Lamed-Lamed and the word l'hitpalel, meaning “ to judge oneself .” This surprising word origin provides insight into the purpose of Jewish prayer. The most important part of any Jewish prayer, whether it be a prayer of petition, of thanksgiving, of praise of God, or of confession, is the introspection it provides, the moment that we spend looking inside ourselves, seeing our role in the universe and our relationship to God. [1] Most of Jewish prayers are expressed in the first person plural, "us" instead of "me," an
Post a Comment
Read more