H3824

• {"n":"Deuteronomy 6:5","s":"Love God with all your heart. In Hebrew that is an instruction about thinking, not feeling.","u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/#id=deuteronomy-6-5","r":"Deuteronomy 6:5","b":[{"l":"How modern translations read it","t":"Every English version reads heart, because there is no better word. The problem is not the translation. It is what English readers hear."},{"l":"First, in plain English","t":"**I know it in my gut.** You do not mean your stomach. Every language parks thinking and feeling in body parts, and no two languages park them in the same place. English put thinking in the head and feeling in the heart. Hebrew put thinking in the heart and did not ask your permission."},{"l":"What you are seeing","t":"Levav is the seat of thought, will and decision in Hebrew anthropology. When the Hebrew Bible wants the seat of emotion it more often reaches for the bowels or the kidneys. The verse is not asking for a feeling. It is asking for the direction of your mind."},{"l":"Why translators split","t":"Every language maps interior life onto body parts, and no two languages map it the same way. Heart is the right English word for levav and it carries four hundred years of English sentiment that the Hebrew never had."},{"l":"The rule to carry away","t":"Body-part words are almost never safe to read straight across. When a verse tells you to do something with an organ, find out what that organ was thought to do in that culture before you decide what is being asked of you."},{"l":"Choosing between them","t":"No translator has a better option. This is a case where the English is correct and the reader still ends up somewhere the Hebrew was not going, which is why the entry exists."},{"l":"The word","t":"\u05dc\u05b5\u05d1\u05b8\u05d1 levav \u00b7 H3824"}],"src":["Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, on leb\/levav as the seat of intellect and will","Mark 12:30 adds dianoia, mind, when quoting this verse in Greek, which suggests the first century already read it that way"]}