LEV734 THE GOLDEN COMMANDMENT AND THE GOLDEN RULE. No other moral principle is so direct and powerful as the golden rule. In the first century B.C.E., the sage Hillel stated the rule in its negative form, “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto thy neighbor.” (B. Shabbat 31a) A few decades later, Jesus gave it a positive formulation, “Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.” (Matthew 7:12) The Golden Commandment. A sentence found in verse eighteen of the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus is the source, for Jews and Christians, of the golden rule. J.H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, Soncino, p.502. The entire verse reads: “Thou shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord.” This short Hebrew sentence,וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמֹ֑וךָ “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” is the source of the golden rule, and I call it the golden commandment. It dates back to at least the sixth century B.C.E. Pfeiffer, Introduction to the Old Testament, Harper and Brothers, pp. 239 ff. What does the phrase “as thyself” in the golden commandment mean? Does it mean loving as much as you love yourself? Or does it mean loving as a person like yourself? A careful translation of the Hebrew text clarifies the issue. The word in question is כָּמֹ֑וךָ (kamokha). Leo Baeck pointed out that כָּמֹ֑וךָ (kamokha) despite the fact that it is usually translated “as thyself close” is not, as we might think, reflective. Baeck translated the phrase, “he is as thou.” Baeck, “The Interrelation of Judaism and Ethics,” Dr. Samuel Schulman Lectures at the Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati: 1949, p. 20. Sheldon Blank, Professor of Bible at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, makes the same judgment. He understands כָּמֹ֑וךָ (kamokha) to be in a sort of appositive relationship with רעך (re’akha) your neighbor, a person like you. (Letter to Norman Hirsh, April 8, 1972). The comparable uses in the Bible of this prepositional form strongly favored the interpretations of Baeck and Blank. The recently published New English Bible also concurs. It translates the clause in question, “You shall love your neighbor as a man like yourself.” The New English Bible, The Old Testament, Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 156. In agreement with Baeck, Blank and the New English Bible, I would translate the golden commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as a person like yourself.” The golden rule with its assumption of humanity similarly thus follows directly from the golden commandment. Hillel and the Golden Rule. It is now clear what Hillel did when he formulated the golden rule: “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto thy neighbor.” Hillel’s rule leaves unsaid what is stated in the golden commandment. Hillel's golden rule does not express the command to love thy neighbor; nor does it state the conviction that the neighbor is a person like yourself. While these assertions remain part of the golden rule, they are unspoken. On the other hand, Hillel made explicit what was implicit in the golden commandment. For if we are commanded to love the neighbor, and, if the neighbor is a person similar to ourselves, then it follows that what is hateful to us will be hateful to him; and we should refrain from doing it. By restating the golden commandments so as to make its consequences explicit, Hillel made it more directly usable in the world of action.
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