“Sh’ma, Yisra’el! Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad. And you are to love Adonai your God with all your heart, all your being and all your resources.” D’varim (Deu) 6:4-5 Complete Jewish Bible
If you asked a Rabbi to tell you the most important text in the Torah, he would, without a moment’s hesitation, quote the above.
Rabbi Yeshua was asked, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
Matthew 22:36-38 ESV
This passage is called “The Sh’ma.” Sh’ma is the Hebrew word for “hear.” As in “Hear O Israel…” 👂🏼
It’s been a minute since we’ve done Paleo-Hebrew. Let’s take just a second to look at this word. Remember, we read Hebrew from right to left.
🦷 Shin (sheen) – means: teeth, consume, front of face (cuz that’s where your teeth are)
🌊 Mem – water, upheaval, lift up, unknown
👀 Ayin (eye-yin) – eye, look/see
When the front of your face lifts up your eyes to look, we call that giving someone your undivided attention.
I do not multitask well at all (unless it’s on a drum kit or a piano, then, I dunno, something just happens. The gal who cannot talk on a phone AND get grocery items from a list can suddenly sing alto harmony while simultaneously doing a different thing with each foot and hand. And have a blast while doing so. Makes ZERO sense.) Anyway – If I’m doing a task and you are talking to me, I’m probably not hearing you. Not really. My mom figured this out. So sometimes after giving me instructions, she would ask, “Now what did I just tell you?”
This word for “hear” is the what-did-I-just-tell-you kind of hear. Look up from what you’re doing and give me your undivided attention.
The line “Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad” is apparently varied in meaning. The ESV has a note with the possible ways to translate it:
Then, there’s the Lexham English Bible:
“Hear, Israel, Yahweh our God, Yahweh is unique.” Deuteronomy 6:4 LEB
I kinda like it. If only people knew what unique meant…. 😑
Tum-tah-TUM… 🎺 This is a job for…
Vocabulary Girl! ✊🏼👱🏼♀️ I know you can’t recognize me because I took off my glasses like Clark Kent, but it’s actually just me – Literacy Lacy. I’m trying out a new superhero name. Whaddaya think?)
I hear “unique” often used as a synonym for “rare.” Like – “Oooo that antique lamp is so unique.” 🪔
Or a synonym for “unusual.” Like – “I found this gift shop on vacation with a lot of unique things.” 📻🏺🪆🎏🪩
It sometimes gets used when the speaker should really just use the word “quaint.” Like – “I visited this cute little English village. It was like a storybook. The houses and shops were super unique.” 🏡
Or it’s used as a kinder way to say something positive about a thing without actually complimenting it (because complimenting it would be dishonest). Like: “What do you think of our magenta wall color?” “Well… it’s certainly very unique.” 😬
Why are these wrong uses, Vocabulary Girl?
Because the word unique means one of a kind. The only one of its kind. Rare means hard to find or only a few in existence. If something is unique there are NO others in existence. So unique is not rare.
Unusual and cutely atypical are not unique either – unless nothing else like them exists. Something truly unique has nothing with which to compare it.
Unique is an absolute, so you can’t say that something is “very” unique or “so” unique or “super” unique or “pretty” unique. “Very” and “so” etc. are words that are qualitative; they infer more or less of something. That’s like saying something is “very” dead or “so” dead. It’s either dead or it’s not. Dead is also an absolute term so we don’t modify it. Something can’t be very dead or so dead. You can’t be more dead than dead. 🪦
So if Yahweh is “unique” it means that He’s the only one of His kind but by using the word “unique” instead of “one” we preserve the singularity of God AND His triune nature while avoiding the path into Modalism?
Exactly.
(Vocabulary Girl’s mom let her help choose her homeschool curriculum and she picked a new level of “Vocabulary, Spelling, and Poetry” every year.)
Speaking of homeschooling… up next is the homeschooler’s text:
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 ESV
Even if you don’t homeschool, at the very least, this verse makes it crystal clear whose responsibility it is to teach children the Word of God. And it isn’t the state or the church. It’s the parents.
A word for church leaders…
If you aim to reach the children, you will win some children.
If you aim for moms, you will win moms and they will bring their children too.
If you aim for fathers, they will bring the whole family.
Speaking of fathers and sons…
“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.”
Deuteronomy 6:20-21 ESV
If a youngster in your life asked you right now, “What is the meaning of the Gospel?” Are you ready to respond?
“but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, but with gentleness and respect.”
1 Peter 3:15 NASB2020
“You shall also write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
Deuteronomy 6:9 NASB2020
The Hebrew word for doorpost is mezuzah. Observant Jews and some Christians put a mezuzah on their doorpost. I have one that looks very similar to this:
On the inside of the “tube” is a small scroll with these verses from Deuteronomy 6. The symbol on the front is the letter Shin. That’s the first letter in Sh’ma (Hear).
So you literally have these words written on your doorpost.
There there are phylacteries…
A phylactery is a small box containing this portion of Deuteronomy (at least) that is literally tied to the hand and/or forehead as in:
“You shall also tie them as a sign to your hand, and they shall be as frontlets on your forehead.” Deuteronomy 6:8 NASB2020
The Pharisees who rejected Jesus as Messiah wore phylacteries. Here’s some of what Jesus had to say about them:
“And they tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as their finger. And they do all their deeds to be noticed by other people; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments. And they love the place of honor at banquets, and the seats of honor in the synagogues,”
Matthew 23:4-6 NASB2020
I think the point of the original commands was less about attaching things to your door and tying physical objects to your body and more about making the Word of God part of the fabric of your home and life.
CHAPTER 7
The main message of this chapter is: Don’t be like the pagans!
You don’t intermarry with them. You don’t move next door and watch them do their pagan things and shrug and say, “Bro, you do you.”
Israel is commanded to destroy their shrines and their idols – not even taking the silver or gold from them. How many of us would be able to take a golden object (knowing how much gold is worth) and destroy it, melt it down and bury it? (And I don’t mean like a pirate treasure.) Remember this command. It’s going to come up in Joshua.
Then there is this precious text:
“It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 7:7-8 ESV
God’s love has WAY less to do with us being lovable and WAY more to do with HIM being faithful. God loved His people Israel and He loves the Church because He is Love, not because humans are so completely irresistible. Let’s not flatter ourselves.
There’s a line in the song What A Beautiful Name It Is (which I have sung) but it always makes me uncomfortable. “You didn’t want heaven without us…” I’m not 100% sure about that. I mean, God enjoyed heaven just fine without us for eternity before making mankind. I think the reason He accomplished redemption had much more to do with Him keeping His promises and accomplishing His eternal will than some sappy sentiment of needing people to feel fulfilled. God needs nothing outside Himself to sustain existence. That’s why He calls Himself I Am.
Speaking of God’s name… Let’s compare:
“Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.”
Deuteronomy 7:9-10 ESV
“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
Exodus 34:6-7 ESV
Moses has reminded Israel of the name that the LORD proclaimed before Him when Moses saw the afterglow of God’s glory.
It’s important that they go into the land knowing who Yahweh is and what makes Him different than all other gods. Remember how the ancient world had a kind of “my-god-is-bigger-than-your-god” way of thinking? So – Israel is about to go up against these Giant Clans with huge fortified cities and superior military technology.
It’s kinda like being the pizza delivery guy in a beater car going to a mansion with a bunch of Ferraris and Porches out front. You might feel a bit inferior even if you’re not.
They need to know:
- WHO their God is (His character and nature) so they don’t get him mixed up with some other god.
- That Yahweh loves them and is committed to them
- That He is superior to the other guy’s gods and will guarantee victory.
The Lord is going to continue to educate them on Who He is for a bit longer. I don’t think anyone after this is going to honestly be able to play the “but we didn’t know” card.
To The Reader 