One thing this shows is that at its heart, the Bible is the Lord's way of loving us, and the commandments there are His way of helping us accept his love and live in joy forever. That was literally true of the people of Israel at the time, and is true for all of us now and forever if we understand those laws in their spiritual meanings. The spiritual meaning of "the law" is closely tied to the literal meaning. At its deepest, it represents divine truth, which is the perfect, infinite expression of the Lord's love flowing as a life-giving force to the world. The divine truth permeates the text of the Bible, including the books of the law, and is encapsulated in the Ten Commandments, which are the center and heart of the law. Because of these relationships, "the law" can also represent the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament, the books of the law or the Ten Commandments. Jews at the time of Jesus had a number of ways to break down and describe the books of the Old Testament. Among the more common was "the Law and the Prophets," with "the Law" meaning the five books of Moses, Samuel, Kings and other books offering a historical narrative, and "the Prophets" meaning Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the other prophetical books. This phrase was used a couple of times by Jesus himself, including His statement in Matthew 22:40 that on His Two Great Commandments "hang all the law and the prophets.