ABSTRACT
God's love is also manifested through the sufferings He brings on His beloved, as a father who punishes his son in order to educate him. This kind of relationship explains why the lover should keep the beloved's commandments. The basis of this view is Proverbs 3.11-12: 'My son, do not despise the Lord's instruction; nor be weary of his chastisement: for the Lord reproves him whom He loves, and He resembles a father who loves52 his son.' This notion recurs also in Pslams and Job and in Post-Biblical literature in the Talmud and Midrash. 53
In sum, in Biblical and Post-Biblical literature we find several ideas concerning both God's love for man and man's love for God, but these have not crystallized into a theory of love in any of the works cited. However, it seems that some signs of the motifs (nomos, agape, and even eros54 ) which we shall find in Christianity and Islam were already found in early Jewish literature. Our next discussion deals with love in Christianity according to the New Testament.
