"Be a disciple of Aaron, peace-loving and peace-making; love men, and draw them to the
law."
"Whoever abuses a good name (or, is ambitious of aggrandizing his name) destroys it."
"Whoever does not increase his knowledge diminishes it."
"Separate not thyself from the congregation, and have no confidence in thyself till the day
of thy death."
"If I do not care for my soul, who will do it for me? If I care only for my own soul, what
am I? If not now, when then?"
"Judge not thy neighbor till thou art in his situation."
"Say not, I will repent when I have leisure, lest that leisure should never be thine."
"The passionate man will never be a teacher."
"In the place where there is not a man, be thou a man."
Yet his haughty Pharisaism is clearly seen in this utterance: "No uneducated man easily
avoids sin; no common person is pious." The enemies of Christ in the Sanhedrin said the same
(John 7:49): "This multitude that knoweth not the law are accursed." Some of his teachings are of
doubtful morality, e.g. his decision that, in view of a vague expression in Deut. 24:1, a man might
put away his wife "even if she cooked his dinner badly." This is, however, softened down by modern
Rabbis so as to mean: "if she brings discredit on his home."
Once a heathen came to Rabbi Shammai and promised to become a proselyte if he could
teach him the whole law while he stood on one leg. Shammai got angry and drove him away with
a stick. The heathen went with the same request to Rabbi Hillel, who never lost his temper, received
him courteously and gave him, while standing on one leg, the following effective answer:
Do not to thy neighbor what is disagreeable to thee. This is the whole Law; all the rest is
commentary: go and do that." (See Delitzsch, p. 17; Ewald, V. 31, Comp. IV. 270).
This is the wisest word of Hillel and the chief ground of a comparison with Jesus. But- It is only the negative expression of the positive precept of the gospel, "Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself," and of the golden rule, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should
do to you, even so do ye also to them"(Matt. 7:12; Luke 6:31). There is a great difference between
not doing any harm, and doing good. The former is consistent with selfishness and every sin which
does not injure our neighbor. The Saviour, by presenting God’s benevolence (Matt. 7:11) as the
guide of duty, directs us to do to our neighbor all the good we can, and he himself set the highest
example of self-denying love by sacrificing his life for sinners. - It is disconnected from the greater law of supreme love to God, without which true love
to our neighbor is impossible. "On these two commandments," combined and inseparable, hang all
the law and the prophets" (Matt. 22:37–40). - Similar sayings are found long before Hillel, not only in the Pentateuch and the Book of
Tobith 4:15: (ὃ μισεῖς μηδενὶ ποιήσῃς, "Do that to no man which thou hatest"), but substantially
even among the heathen (Confucius, Buddha, Herodotus, Isocrates, Seneca, Quintilian), but always
either in the negative form, or with reference to a particular case or class; e.g. Isocrates, Ad Demonic.
c. 4: "Be such towards your parents as thou shalt pray thy children shall be towards thyself;" and
the same In Aeginet. c. 23: "That you would be such judges to me as you would desire to obtain
for yourselves." See Wetstein on Matt. 7:12 (Nov. Test. I. 341 sq.). Parallels to this and other biblical
maxims have been gathered in considerable number from the Talmud and the classics by Lightfoot,
Grotius, Wetstein, Deutsch, Spiess, Ramage; but what are they all compared with the Sermon on
A.D. 1-100.