Deuteronomy 6 · Doctrine · Featured Study
The Shema
Israel's confession, recited morning and evening, which Jesus named the first and greatest commandment.
Six Hebrew words say who God is, and the next verse asks for all of a person's love.
- First taught
- Deuteronomy 6:4 to 5 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the…”
- Fullest statement
- Mark 12:28 to 34 “Now one of the scribes had come up…”
Yankel Kruger, Morning Prayer, 1897. Public domain.
Summary
The Shema is the confession that the LORD our God is one, joined to the command to love Him with all the heart, soul and strength. Its name means hear, its word for one also counts many as one, and Paul set the Father and the Son within its two names for God.
- Its name is its first Hebrew word, shema, a verb that joins hearing and obeying.
- The Mishnah, the earliest code of rabbinic law, compiled in about AD 190 to 230, sets its recital at evening and morning and joins two more paragraphs to it, from Deuteronomy 11 and Numbers 15.
- The word for one, echad, also counts two as one, so the verse rules out other gods and leaves open what the New Testament says of the Father and the Son.
- Mark, Matthew and Luke each quote the command with a different list of faculties.
- Paul gives the confession's word God to the Father and its word Lord to Jesus Christ.
The Confession
Moses joins a statement about God to a command about the one who hears it.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.The two verses Israel calls the Shema, after their first word.
The first sentence confesses who God is, and the second tells Israel what to do about it. Moses gives them in one breath, so the belief and the love are one duty.
The Mishnah opens its first tractate, Berakhot, by asking from what hour the Shema may be said in the evening, and then in the morning. In Berakhot 2:2 it names the three paragraphs read together, this passage, Deuteronomy 11:13 to 21 and Numbers 15:37 to 41, and Jews say them at evening and morning prayer to this day.
The confession of Deuteronomy 6 is said again from Joshua to James.
- What it adds
- the first statement of the confession and the command, on the plains of Moab
- What it adds
- love and serve Him with all the heart and soul, the second paragraph of the Shema
- What it adds
- Joshua sends the eastern tribes home to love the LORD and serve Him with heart and soul
4The LORD alone over the earth
- What it adds
- on that day the LORD will be King over all the earth, and His name alone
- What it adds
- Jesus answers a scribe with the Shema and adds the love of neighbor
- What it adds
- the apostle's reading of the confession, in a letter on food offered to idols
- What it adds
- even the demons believe that God is one
Seven texts carry the confession from Deuteronomy to James, each a door to its verse in the Berean text.
The First and Greatest Commandment
Asked which commandment is greatest, Jesus answered with the Shema.
Jesus replied, “This is the most important: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’Mark alone keeps the opening words, Hear O Israel, before the command.
Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.Matthew leaves out the opening words and states the verdict, the first and greatest.
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”In Luke an expert in the law speaks the words, joined to Leviticus 19:18, and the parable of the Good Samaritan follows.
Jesus answered with the words a faithful Jew had prayed that morning. He named right belief about God and whole love for Him as one command, and Matthew 22:40 adds that all the Law and the Prophets hang on it and on the love of neighbor.
Each Gospel keeps the command and lists the faculties in its own way.
| Text | Who says it | The opening | The faculties named | The neighbor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deuteronomy 6 | Moses | Hear, O Israel | heart, soul, strength | Leviticus 19:18 stands apart |
| Mark 12:29 to 31 | Jesus | Hear O Israel | heart, soul, mind, strength | the second commandment |
| Mark 12:32 to 33 | the scribe | God is One | heart, understanding, strength | joined in one reply |
| Matthew 22:37 to 39 | Jesus | left out | heart, soul, mind | the second, like the first |
| Luke 10:27 | an expert in the law | left out | heart, soul, strength, mind | joined in one answer |
Hear and Do
The verb shama joins hearing and obeying, and the chapter moves the words from the ear to the hand, the door and the child.
The Hebrew verb shama means to hear, and it is the verb Scripture uses for heeding and obeying as well. At Sinai the people answered the reading of the covenant with two verbs, we will do and we will be obedient, and the second is shama.
Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people, who replied, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”The people's answer to the Book of the Covenant joins doing to hearing.
So the Shema is issued as a command. Israel is told to hear that the LORD is one, and the verses after it say what that hearing does.
ON THE HEART
The words are to be upon the hearts of the people.
TO THE CHILDREN
They are taught at home, on the road, at bedtime and at rising.
ON THE HAND AND THE FOREHEAD
Tefillin, small leather cases tied on for the weekday service, carry this verse.
ON THE DOORPOSTS
The mezuzah, a parchment fixed on the doorframe, holds this command.
On the hand and the forehead, On the doorposts
Deuteronomy wants a confession worn on the body and taught to the next generation, because Israel will be tempted to forget the LORD once the land is full.
Be careful not to forget the LORD your God by failing to keep His commandments and ordinances and statutes, which I am giving you this day.Moses warns against forgetting the LORD in the land of plenty.
Love With the Whole Person
Deuteronomy 6:5 asks for love, and it names the whole person.
The verb is ahav, and heart, soul and strength are named together so that no part of a person is held back.
The same verb describes the LORD's love for Israel and the love Israel owes the foreigner. Covenant love comes down from God and goes out to the neighbor in one word.
Because He loved your fathers, He chose their descendants after them and brought you out of Egypt by His presence and great power,Here the verb gives God's own love as the reason for the exodus.
So you also must love the foreigner, since you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt.Here the verb turns outward, to the stranger in Israel's towns.
Later in the book Moses promises that the LORD will circumcise Israel's hearts so that they love Him with all the heart and soul. The command of chapter 6 becomes a promise of chapter 30.
The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.God promises to do in the heart what the Shema commands.
One
The confession turns on its last word, echad, and the weight of the argument from it is named here.
Echad is the ordinary Hebrew number one. It is used of a thing that is single, and it is also used when several are counted as one. A man and his wife become one flesh, Ezekiel's two sticks become one in his hand, and Genesis 1:5 counts evening and morning as day one.
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.Two persons, one flesh, with the same word for one.
Then join them together into one stick, so that they become one in your hand.Two sticks joined into one, with the same word again.
Christians often point out that Hebrew has another word, yachid, meaning only or solitary, and that Moses did not use it here. Chuck Missler made this point in his teaching series Learn the Bible in 24 Hours.
“Take your son,” God said, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”Isaac is called yachid here, the word Moses passes over in the Shema.
The argument has a limit. Echad stands 971 times in the Hebrew Old Testament, very often of a thing that is single, and it does not by itself teach that God is more than one person. What it does is answer an objection. Someone who says the Shema forbids any plurality within God is told that the word does not carry that sense. The verse rules out other gods and leaves open what the New Testament says of the Father, the Son and the Spirit.
The Shema, Said Again
Paul divides the confession's two names between the Father and the Son, and teachers since have read the Shema in his light.
yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we exist. And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we exist.The apostle writes the confession with two names in it.
Paul is arguing that an idol is nothing and that there is no God but one, and he reaches for the Shema. In the Greek Old Testament his readers knew, its two nouns are theos, God, and kyrios, Lord, the word that stands for the divine name. Paul gives God to the Father and Lord to Jesus Christ, and the sentence still confesses one.
Paul names himself as the letter's writer in 1 Corinthians 1:1, and it is dated to about AD 55, within about twenty-five years of the crucifixion. Richard Bauckham, in Jesus and the God of Israel, and N. T. Wright, in The Climax of the Covenant, chapter 6, read this verse as evidence that the first Christians confessed Jesus inside the Shema long before Nicaea met in 325.
died 397 · Ambrose of Milan
On the Holy Spirit 3.14.105
The quotation1 quotation
“Such too was the teaching of the law: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord,’ that is, unchangeable, always abiding in unity of power, always the same and not altered by any accession or diminution. Therefore Moses called him one.”
Ambrose of Milan · On the Holy Spirit 3.14.105 · on Deuteronomy 6:4Patristic
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament
The quotation1 quotation
“Which is the first commandment? - The principal, and most necessary to be observed. The Lord our God is one Lord - This is the foundation of the first commandment, yea, of all the commandments.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament · on Mark 12:28Evangelical
1762 to 1832 · Adam Clarke
Commentary on the Bible
The quotation1 quotation
“But to us there is but one God, the Father - Who produced all things, himself uncreated and unoriginated. And we in him, και ἡμεις εις αυτον, and we For him; all intelligent beings having been created for the purpose of manifesting his glory, by receiving and reflecting his wisdom, goodness, and truth. And one Lord Jesus - Only one visible Governor of the world and the Church, by whom are all things: who was the Creator, as he is the Upholder of the universe.”
Adam Clarke · Commentary on the Bible · on 1 Corinthians 8:6Evangelical
1802 to 1910 · Jamieson, Fausset & Brown
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The quotation1 quotation
“Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord--This every devout Jew recited twice every day, and the Jews do it to this day; thus keeping up the great ancient national protest against the polytheisms and pantheisms of the heathen world: it is the great utterance of the national faith in One Living and Personal God--‘ONE JEHOVAH!’”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible · on Mark 12:29Reformed
John Wesley, Adam Clarke, Jamieson, Fausset & Brown
One God, Loved Whole
Israel heard, loved and bound the words, and the church confesses them still.
Israel heard that the LORD is one and was told to love Him with everything, and to bind the words on the hand and the door. Jesus called that command the first, and Paul confessed the same one God with the Father and the Son named in it.
When Jesus saw that the man had answered wisely, He said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And no one dared to question Him any further.The scribe who agreed was told he was not far from the kingdom of God.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Sefaria's index record of Mishnah Berakhot, for the date and place of the Mishnah's compilation.
- The site's book record of 1 Corinthians.
- Mishnah Berakhot 1:1 to 2 and 2:2, William Davidson Edition, English.
- Strong's H8085 shama, H157 ahav, H259 echad and H3173 yachid.
- Chuck Missler, Learn the Bible in 24 Hours.
- Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (2008); N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (1991), chapter 6.
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