HEBREW WORD STUDY – CIRCUMCISE – MULAL מלל Mem Lamed Lamed

Deuteronomy 6:5: “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

Deuteronomy 30:6: “And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.”

Show me a Christian who does not want to love God with all their hearts, soul, and might. It is in the very nature and DNA of a Christian to want to love God with all their hearts, soul, and might. The problem is that many Christian think they don’t love God with all their hearts, soul, and might.

We had a friend that passed away this past week. He was loved by many, but many did not realize how much they cared about him until his passing. Then the affection poured out on social media. He left a mark on this world and only after his passing did people begin to realize how much he would be missed. He was sort of taken for granted.

I read comments about my books and other writings and people talk about the love I have for God which, gratefully, shows in my written works. I can almost hear some of these people sigh and say: “I wish I had a love for God like that.” Well, I can assure you that you do, you just happen to be taking God for granted. But be faced with a financial crisis and pray to God about it without telling anyone and all of a sudden a check appears in your mailbox from a totally unexpected source and you will experience a “Hey, God really loves me, oh God, I love you to heaven and back.” Then it’s back to the routine of your daily life and like an old married couple you begin taking your partner for granted again until something happens that just stirs your heart and you fall in love all over again. I have received many, many wonderful reviews on my books and I appreciate each one. But the one that means more to me than any “wonderful teacher” or “You really blessed me” is the one where someone wrote and said: “I fell in love with God all over again.” I cherish that review. Yet, I had nothing to do with that love affair.

You see Deuteronomy 6:5 commands us to love God. How can you command someone to love you? Some act as if God buys their love by making them prosperous. Some are grateful to God for healing, an answer to prayer, or, if such is love, out of a sense of duty. As any celebrity who has been through a half a dozen marriages will tell you. They long for someone who would love them, not because they are rich, powerful, or adored by fans, but someone who would love them when their star fades, their hundreds of thousand dollars in plastic surgery just don’t bring back the beauty of their youth. They ache for someone who would love them if they fell on hard times, suffered a serious illness, and into their old age if they should become disabled.

God is no different, He wants us to love Him in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or for worse until death brings you together with Him in the ultimate intimacy. Someone who would love Him like old Job loved Him.

Can we generate such a love for an unseen God? Of course not. God created us as beings who will naturally love Him. However, He also gave us free will. We have to choose to love Him. When we make that choice that love that is naturally in us will be released, particularly when all that camouflage of sin is removed by the blood of Jesus Christ His Son. Suddenly, like Estella in Charles Dickens’s book Great Expectations, who realized that this young man named Pip who devoted his life trying to becoming rich and worthy of her love, loved her despite a deeply hidden secret. She then realized that she was in love with him all the time. I fear for many Christians they cannot enter into that love relationship with God because they feel so unworthy and yet He still loves us despite our unworthiness.

You see God circumcises our hearts. At least that is what practically all our English translations say. It is true that the word mul most likely comes from the root word mulal which means circumcision, but in its Semitic root, that word has many usages, all of which have the common denominator of causing a separation. The word mulal is often used for speaking. Rather than saying God circumcises our heart to love Him, we could read this as: “God speaks to our heart to love Him.” We are to love God with all our hearts, soul, and might or mind as some translations say. But in order for us to release that love that He has built into us, He cannot speak to our soul or mind, He must speak to our hearts.

Four times Samson told Delilah the secrets to his strength, each time shall be called the Philistines to arrest him, and each time his strength came and he broke free. The fourth time, however, he gave her the final key to the puzzle. No, not his hair as you learn in Sunday school. Read the story in Judges 16. You would think after three times in trying to arrest Samson and getting wasted by him the Philistines would not have much trust in Delilah. Yet, they not only came a fourth time, they actually brought the money with them. They knew Delilah had found the secret. Read it, Judges 16:18: “And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once, for he hath shewed me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and brought money in their hand.” He told her his heart. A heart that belonged to God which he gave to this prostitute. He broke God’s heart and lost his strength. He betrayed that love of God, that racham of God.

God speaks to our hearts, that hidden area where He placed His racham love and when he speaks to our hearts, well we respond with ‘ahav a natural love because we have yet to achieve that freedom from this human body which hinders our ability to express true racham, but one day when freed from this sinful body, we will love Him with racham. That is why people feel they don’t love God enough because they know buried deep inside of them is a love that cannot yet be expressed. So, we love with the best that we can while here on earth but agonize to love Him more.

There is one other use of the word mulal – circumcised. It also means to scrape. God is scrapping at that hard shell of our hearts to release that love for Him that he buried in us.

God is scraping, speaking, and singing to our hearts. We can return that love if we just listen close enough.

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