Deuteronomy 6:8

Moses speaks these words on the plains of Moab, to the generation of Israel about to cross into Canaan. Many of them had been too young to see the Exodus or to stand at Sinai, so Deuteronomy renews the covenant for them, and the Ten Commandments have just been given again in Deuteronomy 5. The land ahead was full of gods, many of them tied to the powers of nature, to fertility or to particular places, and worshipped side by side. Into that world Moses sets one sentence: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” It is known as the Shema, from its first Hebrew word.

That word, shâmaʻ, “hear”, calls for listening that pays attention, takes the message in and acts on it. To hear God in this sense is to heed him, and so the call leads straight into the command to love him in the next verse. Yisrâʼêl is the name of Jacob and of the nation that came from him. It is formed from words meaning to prevail or have power and God, recalling Jacob, who had power with God. Moses addresses the whole nation at once, so the confession that follows belongs to all of them together.

“The LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, the personal name of God, printed in capitals in the KJV and sometimes written Jehovah. It speaks of the God who exists of himself and for ever, who told Moses, “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14). “Our God” makes him Israel’s own, the God who bound himself to them in covenant. The name comes twice in one short sentence, which presses home who this God is.

The last word, ʼechâd, means “one”. The LORD is the only God, without rival or equal, whole and undivided while the nations spread their worship across many gods and many places. He alone has the right to his people’s worship, and that is the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).

This confession is the ground of everything Moses urges in Deuteronomy 5–11. It made Israel a people set apart, and it guarded them against taking up the gods of their neighbours and the evil practices that came with them. Paul confesses the same truth to the church at Corinth: “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6).

Verse 5 draws the command out of the confession. Since there is one LORD, he is to have all of us. “Thou shalt love” uses ʼâhab, the ordinary word for love, for having affection for a person. God asks his people for the love they would give the one dearest to them, and he asks it as the God who loved them first: “The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people … But because the LORD loved you” (Deuteronomy 7:7–8).

The three words that follow cover the whole person. The heart, lêbâb, is the inner self in Hebrew thought: the place of thought, will, desire, feeling and conscience, where choices are made. The soul, nephesh, is a person’s life and very self, so to love God with all the soul is to give him one’s life, even to the point of laying it down. The word behind “might”, mᵉʼôd, is elsewhere the common word for “very”, “greatly” or “exceedingly”. Here it stands for strength in full measure, and “with all thy might” means loving God exceedingly, to the utmost of all we are. Each of the three is joined to “all”, so every part of a person is given to him.

Moses comes back to this again and again. “What doth the LORD thy God require of thee,” he asks, and the answer includes “to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, To keep the commandments of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 10:12–13). Joshua gives the same charge to the tribes going home across the Jordan, “to love the LORD your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments” (Joshua 22:5), and the psalmist says, “Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart” (Psalm 119:2).

When a scribe asked Jesus which commandment was first of all, he answered with these very verses: “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:29–30). In Matthew he sets love of neighbour beside it and says, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37–40). Every other command is an outworking of this love.

Jesus himself kept this commandment perfectly. He loved the Father with all his heart, soul and strength, and “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). Through him God also gives what the command asks of us. He promised, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you … And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:26–27), and Paul says that “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us” (Romans 5:5). Christ is both the one who lived this love and the one who makes it grow in his people.

It means that what God says becomes part of who you are, shaping what you think, what you want and what you choose. “These words” uses dâbâr, which means word or speech and, as a second sense, a matter or thing. Here it is the commands Moses is giving, beginning with the Shema and taking in the whole covenant teaching he is setting before Israel. “Which I command thee” uses tsâvâh, to command, appoint or give a solemn charge. The words carry God’s own authority, spoken through Moses. The heart is again lêbâb, the inner self where thought and will and feeling meet.

“This day” is heard all through Deuteronomy. The covenant made at Sinai was a present call to the generation standing before Moses, and it needed their answer then and there. God’s word still speaks in the present tense, for “the word of God is quick, and powerful” (Hebrews 4:12).

The order of the passage matters. The words go into the heart first, and only then are they taught to children, bound on the hand and written on the gates. A parent passes on what lives in his own heart. Israel would need this in Canaan, where prosperity would tempt them to forget: “Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God … Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein … Then thine heart be lifted up” (Deuteronomy 8:11–14). Words held in the heart guard against that forgetting. The prophets later grieved over a people who honoured God with their lips while their hearts were far away (Isaiah 29:13), because “the LORD looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

Learning Scripture by heart serves this command well. “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee” (Psalm 119:11). The aim of such learning is understanding, love and obedience, so that the words become part of a person’s character and conduct.

God promised to do this work himself in the new covenant: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). Hebrews quotes that promise twice (Hebrews 8:10, Hebrews 10:16) and shows Christ as the one who said, “Lo, I come … to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7). Paul calls believers an epistle “known and read of all men”, written “with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Corinthians 3:2–3). A heart filled with God’s word becomes a heart of love, and “love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). This command belongs to Christians as surely as to Israel, for “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

The words that live in a parent’s heart are to be passed on to the children. “Teach them diligently” translates shânan, a word whose root means to point or to sharpen, and which in this form means to inculcate: to teach by repeating and pressing a thing home. The picture is of a tool sharpened to a fine edge. The teaching is to be earnest, persistent and thorough, so that God’s truth becomes part of a child’s understanding and character.

“And shalt talk of them” uses dâbar, the ordinary verb to speak, mention or tell. The settings that follow make it the talk of everyday life. Sitting in the house covers meals, rest and family time. Walking by the way covers journeys and errands, where the world itself gives lessons about God. Lying down is the end of the day, a time for prayer and for remembering God’s faithfulness, and rising up is the morning, when the day can begin with his truth. Lying down and rising up together mean all the time, and the house and the way together mean everywhere, private and public. God’s commands are to run through every ordinary hour.

In Israel the faith was handed on chiefly by word of mouth within the family, and fathers carried much of the charge. The home was the first place of teaching. The commands Moses gives are the way to a long and blessed life in the land (Deuteronomy 6:1–3), and they were meant to reach every generation, “That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God” (Psalm 78:4–7). Proverbs adds, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Christian parents carry the same charge, to “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). What they pass on now has its centre in Jesus, “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), who said of the law and the prophets, “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17).

“Bind” is qâshar, to tie or bind. The words are to be fastened on as a “sign”, ʼôwth, which means a signal, mark, token or evidence. Scripture uses it for miraculous signs such as the plagues in Egypt, for covenant signs such as the rainbow (Genesis 9:12) and circumcision (Genesis 17:11), and for memorials. Here the sign reminds the one who wears it of God’s commands, and it marks him as belonging to the LORD.

“Frontlets” is ṭôwphâphâh, a band worn on the forehead, a rare word found only here, in Deuteronomy 11:18 and in Exodus 13:16. The hand is the instrument of work and deeds, so God’s words on the hand are to direct all we do. The place between the eyes stands for the mind, for thought and for the way we see the world, so God’s words there are to govern all we think. The same picture is used in Exodus for remembering how the LORD brought Israel out of Egypt, “for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes” (Exodus 13:9), and Moses gives these commands again in Deuteronomy 11:18–20. Proverbs uses it for mercy and truth: “bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart” (Proverbs 3:3).

The purpose is remembering. Moses warned, “lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen” (Deuteronomy 4:9). Among the nations around Israel, people wore amulets and charms for protection or in honour of their gods. Israel’s sign was a reminder of the LORD’s covenant and laws, and it set them apart from the ways of the nations that Moses describes in Deuteronomy 12.

“Write” is kâthab, to grave or inscribe, a deliberate act that leaves the words visible and lasting. “The posts of thy house” are the mᵉzûwzâh, the doorposts that frame the entrance. The doorway marks the boundary between the home and the world outside, so the words written there are the last thing seen going out and the first thing seen coming in. Every part of household life, its conduct and its decisions, is to stand under God’s word.

“Gates” is shaʻar, an opening, a door or gate, whether the gate of a city or the entrance to a courtyard or property. The city gate was the centre of public life. The elders sat there to settle legal matters, as when Boaz redeemed Ruth’s inheritance before them (Ruth 4:1–11), goods were bought and sold there (2 Kings 7:1), news was announced there, and it was the city’s strong point of defence. The house stands for private life and the gate for public life, and God’s word is to rule both. Words written on a gate also told everyone who passed by that this people belonged to the LORD.

Written words also open the way for the teaching of verse 7, since a child who sees them will ask what they mean. Today the doorpost gives its name to the mᵉzûwzâh, a small parchment scroll holding the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and Deuteronomy 11:13–21, rolled into a case and fixed to the right doorpost of Jewish homes and often of rooms inside them. Jesus spoke of himself in the language of the entrance: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9).

The Shema asks where our love lies. Wealth, status, comfort, the screens in our pockets and our own selves all compete for the devotion that belongs to the one LORD, and these verses call us back to give him the whole of our heart. He is worthy of it, and he loved us first.

Most of us will keep these verses with the Spirit’s writing on the heart, and some also with Scripture on the walls of the home. Either way, the same God who wants his words in our hearts wants them in our conversation. The table, the drive, the walk and the bedside are all places where a parent, grandparent or friend can speak of who God is and what he has done. Children learn most from faith they see lived, and an ordinary day holds many moments for it.

Our gates matter too. Our work, our dealings with neighbours and the way we speak in public are all places where God’s word is meant to be read in us. The God who is one asks for a life that is one, the same at the doorpost and at the gate, given wholly to him.