Although the notion of hatred in comparative religion has not yet received adequate attention, certain basic themes may be discerned. The concept of hatred in the Hebrew Bible plays an important role in ethics, as in the verse “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart” (Leviti-cus19:17). This becomes the source for the well-known rabbinic maxim articulated by Hillel: “What is hateful to you, do not do unto others. All the rest is commentary” (Shabbat 31a). Sinat hinam (causeless hatred) is the rabbinical term for unjustified hatred, and it is emphatically denounced in the Talmud. There hatred is said to be morally equal to murder, idolatry, and fornication, and to have caused the destruction of the Second Temple.
The Bible also develops the idea of ethical hatred, an attitude the Psalmist calls perfect hatred. For instance, one ought to hate those who hate God. The Psalmist says, “Do I not hate them, O Lord, who hate Thee? . . . I hate them with a perfect hatred” (Psalms 139:2122). The corollary is likewise true: Loving God entails hating evil (Psalms 97:10), cov-etousness (Exodus 18:21), and wickedness (Psalms 45:8). According to Proverbs, “The fear of the lord is to hate evil” (8:13). Some narrative sections of the Bible pick up the theme. Joab, for example, rebukes David for loving those who hate him, and hating those who love him (2 Samuel 19:7).
The idea of justified hatred colors the rabbinic view as well. The Talmud states that one is obligated to hate a rasha, the Hebrew term for the wicked. And on the verse, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus19:18), the medieval sage Maimonides comments, “He is thy neighbor if he is good, but not if he is wicked.”
Most intriguing of all, some passages of the Hebrew Bible place hatred in the context of imitatio Dei, as a duty that follows from the fact that God himself hates the immoral (for example, Deuteronomy 12:31 and 16:22; Isaiah 1:14; Amos 5:21; Psalms 5:6).
The New Testament links the question of divine attributes to that of human morality, and uses hatred to define the ethically impermissible: “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). Shortly thereafter, the Gospel of John presents God as the embodiment of love (1 John 4:8).
In Matthew, Jesus takes a step further and challenges the notion that hatred is ever justified: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (5:43-44).
In a much-commented-upon verse, Luke posits a certain kind of hatred as the very condition of religious life: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters— yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
Later Christian theology embroidered on the notion of theological hatred, sometimes presenting odium Dei as a necessary complement to amor Dei. The early Church Father Lactan-tius, in his treatise De ire dei, and John Calvin —in his Commentaries on the Prophet Malachi and Commentary on the topic of Psalms— insist on the legitimacy of divine hatred, and both attribute hatred to God. Following this tradition, Milton in his epic poem Paradise Lost has the Son say to the Father, “whom thou hates, I hate” (Milton 1957, 734).
In the Qur’an, the picture is less complete. The Qur’an features plenty of Allah’s wrath for unbelievers (16:106), and it speaks of Allah stirring up “enmity” between men (5:14), but the word hatred appears only once: “For he who hateth Thee, he will be cut off.” Still, in several passages Allah “loves not” those who sin (5:64; 7:55).
In Buddhist thought, hatred (dosa) is one of three morally unwholesome roots—the others being greed and illusion. Its opposite is adosa (nonhatred), an ideal that requires love of all sentient beings. Classical Sikh texts often refer to God as “free of hate,” or “the One who has no hatred.”
The Hindu Vedas call on the faithful to abandon hatred, violence, and the sense of sep-arateness that causes them. According to the Isa Upanishad, “The wise man beholds all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings; for that reason he does not hate anyone.” The avoidance of hatred is sometimes understood as an emulation of the absence of hate in the divine realm: “The brother shall not hate the brother, and the sister not the sister! Harmonious, devoted to the same purpose, speak ye words in kindly spirit! That charm which causes the gods not to disagree, and not to hate one another, that do we prepare in your house” (Atharva Veda 3:30).
