Deuteronomy 6:4–5 · Featured Study
Hear, O Israel
Six Hebrew words, recited twice a day for three thousand years, that Jesus names the first and great commandment: the LORD our God is one LORD, and therefore he is to be loved with the whole person — heart, soul, and might. Deuteronomy binds Israel's confession of who God is to a command for what to do about it in a single breath.
The Confession
— Deuteronomy 6:4–5“Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah: and thou shalt love Jehovah thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
Deuteronomy 6:4–5 →Two sentences, and the whole architecture of biblical religion is in them. The first is a confession about God — that Jehovah, uniquely, is. The second is a command about the worshipper — to love that God without remainder. Judaism calls the confession the Shema, after its opening word, and recites it morning and evening to this day — the oldest continuously observed liturgical text in the world.
Hear and Do
— shama — a verb that will not stay in the earIn Hebrew, hearing implies obeying — there is no separate verb for “obey” in most contexts, because to truly hear a command is to keep it. “Hear and do” is not a redundancy in this language; it is one idea. That is why the Shema is not stated as a doctrine to affirm from a distance but issued as a command: Israel does not merely believe this about God, Israel is told to hear it.
The command that follows is bound the same way. Verses 6–9 immediately instruct that these words be kept upon the heart, taught diligently to children, talked of at home and on the road, bound as a sign on the hand, worn as frontlets between the eyes, and written on the doorposts — the origin of the Jewish practice of tefillin (phylacteries) and the mezuzah. Deuteronomy does not want a confession that stays in the mind; it wants one worn on the body and taught to the next generation before it can be forgotten (see 8:11–20).
Love With the Whole Person
— ahav — the first command in Scripture to love GodDeut 6:5 is the first place in Scripture a person is commanded to love God — not merely fear, serve, or obey him, but love him, with heart, soul and might named as if no part of a person may be withheld. The same root describes Jehovah's love for Israel (7:8, 13) and the love Israel owes the sojourner (10:19): covenant love flowing down from God and back out to neighbor, the same word doing both jobs.
The First and Great Commandment
— Jesus names this verse the greatest in the Law“The first is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one: 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.”
Quotes the Shema by name — “Hear, O Israel” — before quoting the command it introduces. Mark's fourfold list (heart, soul, mind, strength) expands Deuteronomy's threefold one.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
Matthew drops the opening “Hear, O Israel” and states the verdict directly: first and great.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.”
Placed in the lawyer's own mouth, and already fused to Lev 19:18 — the two great commandments as one answer, setting up the parable of the Good Samaritan.
When asked which commandment of the Law is greatest, Jesus does not adjudicate among 613 candidates — he goes straight to the words a faithful Jew had already prayed that morning. Orthodoxy and devotion are not separable in Deuteronomy's theology, and Jesus does not separate them either: right belief about God (“one LORD”) and total love for him are named as a single command, the first on which everything else in the Law hangs (Matt 22:40).