Love. God is Love. Love never fails.

We are memorizing the Bible description of love:

Love is patient, Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud.

That’s this week’s segment to memorize. The children repeat it after me several times, then are called upon to repeat it to me.

The Blue Letter Bible

 http://www.blueletterbible.org/search/translationResults.cfm?Criteria=love&t=KJV

reports that the English word “love” occurs 311 times in 281 verses in the King James Version of the Bible.
In it first occurrance at Genesis 27:4 and its third occurance at Genesis 29:32 it is used as a verb.

This word love is ‘ahab. Gesenius’s Lexicon, used by the Blue Letter Bible to translate the word, defines this word love:

(1)To desire, to Breathe after anything.
(2)To love a friend.
(3)To delight in anything, in doing anything.

Genesis 27:4
And make me savoury meat, such as I <b>love</b> and bring [it] to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die.

Genesis 29:32
And Leah conceived, and bare a son, and she called his name Reuben: for she said, Surely the LORD hath looked upon my affliction; now therefore my husband will love me.

It is here used as a verb.The outline of its Biblical usage:

1) to love

a) (Qal)

1) human love for another, includes family, and sexual

2) human appetite for objects such as food, drink, sleep, wisdom

3) human love for or to God

4) act of being a friend

a) lover (participle)

b) friend (participle)

5) God’s love toward man

a) to individual men

b) to people Israel

c) to righteousness

b) (Niphal)

1) lovely (participle)

2) loveable (participle)

c) (Piel)

1) friends

2) lovers (fig. of adulterers)

2) to like
The outline of its Biblical usage:
1) love

a) human love for human object

1) of man toward man

2) of man toward himself

3) between man and woman

4) sexual desire

2) God’s love to His people

This word love is ‘ahabah.
The LexiConc reports that there are nineteen entries that match “love”.

Let’s skip forward to the New Testament translations from Greek.
There are ten reported uses:

love, beloved
love, charity, dear, charitably, feast of charity
brotherly love, brotherly kindness, love of the brethren
love as brethren
love their husbands
kindness, love toward man
love of money
love, kiss
love to have the preeminence
love (one’s) children.

Since the verse I quote is 1 Corinthians 13:8, let’s look at the translation/meaning of the word in this verse.

The King James Version of the Bible says:

Charity never faileth…

Charity, agape, denotes affection, good-will, love, benevolence. This is also the version of the word used in 1 John 4:8, “God is Love.”

Vine’s expository dictionary of new testament words has this to note:

In the two statements in 1Jo 4:8, 16, “God is love,” both are used to enjoin the exercise of “love” on the part of believers. While the former introduces a declaration of the mode in which God’s love has been manifested (1Jo 4:9, 10), the second introduces a statement of the identification of believers with God in character, and the issue at the Judgment Seat hereafter (1Jo 4:17), an identification represented ideally in the sentence “as He is, so are we in this world.”

Never is used in the Authorized Version of the King James as never, neither at any time and nothing at any time. An adverb defined by Strong’s as denying

absolutely and objectively- not ever.

Fails – Vines has this note about the word translated as fails:

Fall, Fallen, Falling, Fell:

“to fall out of” (ek, “out,” and No. 1), “is used in the NT, literally, of flowers that wither in the course of nature, Jam 1:11; 1Pe 1:24; of a ship not under control, Act 27:17, 26, 29, 32; of shackles loosed from a prisoner’s wrist, Act 12:7; figuratively, of the Word of God (the expression of His purpose), which cannot “fall” away from the end to which it is set, Rom 9:6; of the believer who is warned lest he “fall” away from the course in which he has been confirmed by the Word of God, 2Pe 3:17.”

* [* From Notes on Galatians, by Hogg and Vine, p. 242.] So of those who seek to be justified by law, Gal 5:4, “ye are fallen away from grace.”