If I would walk down the street and randomly ask ten people to name a verse in the Hebrew Bible (Tanach), I bet many of them would pick the above verse.

What does it mean? Is it to be taken literally? Is it really even possible?

In the Tanach there are three times where there is an explicit command to love. One is to love God, two is to love the stranger and three is to love your neighbor.

The Torah does not command you to love your children or to love your spouse. Why not?

Because there is no need to command someone to love when that love is natural. We naturally love our children. We love our spouses—after all we chose them!

However, to love God is not always so simple. It is complicated. Especially when things don’t seem to be going your way or when you see tragedies in the world. It is also not so easy to love the stranger or neighbor. Can you love someone you may not even know well?

Hence the three instances where we are commanded to love. God tells us to love when it is not so easy to do so.

There have been many insights offered to explain this verse. Here are a few:

1. Love your neighbor like yourself. Just as we are very forgiving when it comes to our own shortcomings and character flaws, so too we must be equally as forgiving of others.
2. The way we treat others is the way we can expect God to treat us, therefore the verse ends, “I am God.”
3. We should desire to fill the needs of others just as we would want our needs filled.
4. “like yourself”—Loving others is very much dependent on developing self-love. You cannot love others if you do not love yourself first.

A great sage Rabbi Akiva once remarked that “Love your neighbor like yourself is the “great principle” of the Torah.