We were talking about different translations of the Bible in class on Thursday. Originally written in the Hebrew and Greek our English translations sometimes fall short of capturing the full meaning of a verse. Many words do not translate exactly. For example, in English we have one word for love. We love our car, we love our parents, and we love burritos. Surely we do not love a pair of pants in the same way that we would love a spouse. In the Hebrew there are three different words for love that carry very different meanings.
Raya is a picture of companionship. It is the love that flows out of knowing someone deeply. This type of love is the foundation of a relationship. Raya has to be present to experience the Hebrew word Ahava.
Ahava is the choice to love. Ahava bears a commitment. It is more than just "I love you" it is, "I am choosing you forever no matter what." This love is not conditional and is not dependent on emotion. This is a love of the will. In the Hebrew, it is implied that Raya would lead to Ahava and that these two types of love would lead to Dod.
Dod is described as the mingling of souls. It is two souls coming together. This word does not merely describe sex but is the idea of two people coming together fully. These types of "love" are building blocks of intimacy. It seems that if you don't have Raya then Ahava cannot take place and where these first two are not present, Dod is impossible. The word love that we understand in English does not brush the surface of what is being spoken of in the Hebrew text.
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Thank you for sharing this. There is something very beautiful about being able to convey these different types and levels of love in just one word. I think it's one of those defining yet sometimes frustrating aspects of languages where some things just cannot be translated verbatim. Although this adds so much more meaning to that particular language, it also causes many people to miss out true meaning in certain instances.
ReplyDeleteThat's really cool! I never knew that. In Arabic the verb "to love" is ahabba (you can see the connection to ahava) but it's used pretty much the same as we use "love" in English (i.e. for a person or for objects). There's another word, hawa, but it's also used similarly.
ReplyDeleteThere's a word ra'aya which means "to care." For example, a shepherd (ra'i) is one who cares for his flocks. Maybe it comes from the Hebrew raya.
You're probably right. Thanks for the insight. I think it's helpful to know what people were actually trying to say when they wrote.
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