Tuesday, October 13, 2026 · Week of Pentecost 20
Deuteronomy 6:1–9
“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, 2 so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Notes
This is one of the most important passages in Judaism. It's called the Shema, after its first word, shema, "hear." Observant Jews still say it every evening and every morning, taking verse 7 at its word: "when you lie down and when you rise" (Mishnah Berakhot 1). The confession in verse 4 is four Hebrew words with no verb, YHWH eloheinu YHWH echad, so every translation has to supply one. The NRSVue's "the Lord is our God, the Lord alone" echoes Sunday's first commandment more than the familiar "the Lord our God is one Lord."
Hear. Love. Keep. Recite. Bind. Fix. Write. In these verbs hang all of the practices of following Yahweh. They start in the ear and the heart, move to the mouth, then to the hand and the forehead, and end on the doorframe and the town gate. The words travel from the inside of a person out to the edge of town.
Two of those words carry more than the English shows. "Might" is me'od, which almost everywhere else in the Hebrew Bible is the adverb "very." Love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul, all your very. Only one other verse uses it this way, 2 Kings 23:25, where King Josiah "turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might." "Recite" is veshinnantam, from a root meaning to sharpen. Rashi, following the Talmud (Kiddushin 30a), says the words should be sharp in your mouth, so that when someone asks you about them, you can answer without stammering.
Then the doorposts. The Hebrew is mezuzot, the same word Exodus uses for the doorposts the Israelites marked with lamb's blood on the night of the Passover (Exodus 12:7). The doorframe that once marked a house for rescue now carries the words of the God who rescued it. Jewish homes still fix a mezuzah there, a small case holding a parchment of these verses.
Questions for reflection
The NRSVue hears verse 4 as "the Lord alone," and older translations as "the Lord is one." What changes in the command to love God with everything when you read it each way?
Hear, love, keep, recite, bind, fix, write. Which of these practices already shapes your days, and which one has gone quiet?
