Hebrews 12:14

New Testament

12 Therefore, strengthen your listless hands and your weak knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but be healed. 14 Pursue peace with everyone, and holiness, for without it no one will see the Lord. 15 See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God, that no one be like a bitter root springing up and causing trouble, and through it many become defiled. 16 And see to it that no one becomes an immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. 17 For you know that later when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no opportunity for repentance, although he sought the blessing with tears.

Pirkei Avot 1:12

Mishnah
Rabbinic

10 Shemaiah and Abtalion received [the oral tradition] from them. Shemaiah used to say: love work, hate acting the superior, and do not attempt to draw near to the ruling authority. 11 Abtalion used to say: Sages be careful with your words, lest you incur the penalty of exile, and be carried off to a place of evil waters, and the disciples who follow you drink and die, and thus the name of heaven becomes profaned. 12 Hillel and Shammai received [the oral tradition] from them. Hillel used to say: be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving mankind and drawing them close to the Torah. 13 He [also] used to say: one who makes his name great causes his name to be destroyed; one who does not add [to his knowledge] causes [it] to cease; one who does not study [the Torah] deserves death; one who makes [unworthy] use of the crown [of learning] shall pass away.

 Notes and References

"... There have been various suggestions about the meaning of Jesus’ new commandment and exactly what is new about it; love of one’s neighbor was certainly not foreign to Judaism. (Compare Leviticus 19:18; 1QS 1.9-11, Pirkei Avot 1:12) Some have thought that, in the new commandment, Jesus is broadening the definition of “neighbor,” and while that may be true of the synoptic tradition (e.g. Luke 10:36), it is not so in John, where “one another” is generally confined to fellow believers. Other scholars contend that what is new is that love is now modeled after the relationship between the Father and the Son, which reveals God to the world. Another possibility is that the newness is located in the phrase “as I have loved you,” i.e. loving as Jesus loved, being willing to lay down one’s life for another. There is probably some truth in all of these options, and the last interpretation has much to commend it, as the author of 1 John seems to have understood it in this way: “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another” ..."

Baron, Lori Ann Robinson The Shema in John’s Gospel Against its Backgrounds in Second Temple Judaism (pp. 394-395) Duke University, 2015

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