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Deuteronomy 6 - The Shema and the Love of God

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This narration is from a previous version of the study and may include a combined recording of multiple chapters.

The Ten Words have named the shape of obedience; Deuteronomy 6 gives its living center. Israel must hear the one Lord and love Him with the whole person. That love is to become audible in the house, on the road, at night, and upon rising. Moses then turns toward houses, wells, vineyards, and olive trees the people did not make. The heart that remembers God in need must also learn to remember Him when it is full.

Orientation

The Shema takes its traditional name from the Hebrew opening command, “Hear.” Moses speaks east of the Jordan, preparing Israel for settled life. The chapter joins confession, daily instruction, gratitude, resistance to temptation, and a child’s question about the commandments. Faith is handed on through a remembered deliverance, not only through a list of rules.

Instruction for a people brought out of Egypt (Deuteronomy 6:1-3)

A note on the reading. Brenton ends verse 3 with a clause about the ordinances commanded in the wilderness after Israel came out of Egypt. This clause is absent from the Hebrew-based NKJV verse. The electronic Swete Greek text consulted here prints it with verse 4, before the Shema; the numbering of that clause therefore belongs to the particular edition, not to every Greek text.1

1 And these are the commands, and the ordinances, and the judgments, as many as the Lord our God gave commandment to teach you to do so in the land on which ye enter to inherit it. 2 That ye may fear the Lord your God, keep ye all his ordinances, and his commandments, which I command thee to-day, thou, and thy sons, and thy sons’ sons, all the days of thy life, that ye may live many days. 3 Hear, therefore, O Israel, and observe to do them, that it may be well with thee, and that ye may be greatly multiplied, as the Lord God of thy fathers said that he would give thee a land flowing with milk and honey: and these are the ordinances, and the judgments, which the Lord commanded the children of Israel in the wilderness, when they had gone forth from the land of Egypt.

The command extends through sons and grandsons and through all the days of life. It seeks reverence, obedience, and the people’s good. The land is promised, but its reception will require a way of living that can carry covenant memory beyond the generation that first heard Moses.

Brenton’s closing clause keeps the Shema beside deliverance. The people have already gone forth from Egypt when they receive this instruction. Love answers God’s prior care. It is neither a payment for rescue nor a permission to ignore the commandments because rescue has occurred. The covenant word gives freedom a faithful shape.

The one Lord and the whole person’s love (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

4 Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord. 5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and all thy strength. 6 And these words, all that I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart and in thy soul. 7 And thou shalt teach them to thy children, and thou shalt speak of them sitting in the house, and walking by the way, and lying down, and rising up.

8 And thou shalt fasten them for a sign upon thy hand, and it shall be immoveable before thine eyes. 9 And ye shall write them on the lintels of your houses and of your gates.

“Hear” comes before love and before the teaching of others. The heart needs a word it has not invented. The Lord is one, and so the people cannot divide allegiance among Him and competing gods. The confession reaches memory, speech, hands, eyes, and the threshold of the house. Worship is to shape the ordinary places in which a life is spent.

The signs on hand and before the eyes, and the writing on doorposts, belong to Israel’s embodied reception of the commandments. Christian application need not erase their original setting. The searching question remains whether our actions, attention, and household habits bear witness to the God we confess.

Language insight: “Mind” and “heart”

Brenton reads “with all thy mind” in verse 5, while Hebrew-based NKJV reads “with all your heart.” Swete’s Greek has διάνοια, dianoia, here in the form διανοίας, concerning the mind or understanding. The Hebrew verse names the heart. In Matthew 22:37, Christ names heart, soul, and mind; Mark 12:30 also names strength.1 The Gospel formulations gather the whole person without requiring us to oppose thought to affection. Loving God includes the stories we believe, the desires we cultivate, and the strength we spend.

A distracted mind is not cured simply by blaming oneself for distraction. Give the mind true words to return to. A short passage remembered during work, or a prayer repeated while traveling, can begin to reorder what has silently claimed our attention.

Gems from the Fathers: One God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

St. Athanasius addresses the Son’s unity with the Father in Against the Arians, III.4. He distinguishes their persons without dividing the divine nature: “neither is the Son another God”.2 In III.15-16 he speaks of the one Godhead in the Triad, meaning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is a doctrinal lens for Christian confession, not a claim that Athanasius is commenting directly on this verse in those sections. The Son whom we worship does not stand beside the Father as a rival deity.

St. Basil likewise resists turning the baptismal names into an arithmetic of separate gods. In On the Holy Spirit, 18.44-45, he writes, “we do not let an ignorant arithmetic carry us away to the idea of a plurality of Gods.”3 He preserves the real distinction of the persons and the unity of the Godhead. Wholehearted love is offered to the one God revealed in salvation, not divided into three competing loyalties.

The Church’s Voice in Worship: Prayer through the day

The Agpeya, the Coptic Book of Hours, gives prayer a rhythm from rising through the day’s hours to evening and sleep.4 That daily discipline can serve the household pattern named in verse 7. It is a Christian practice corresponding to the passage’s call for remembrance, not a claim that Moses prescribed the later prayer book. A modest, faithful rule helps the words of God remain present when feeling and attention fluctuate.

At the first prostration of the Pentecost Kneeling Prayers, the Church reads Deuteronomy 5:22-6:3; at the second, Deuteronomy 6:17-25.5 The first reading joins God’s voice and longing for a faithful heart to instruction for the next generation. The second brings obedience into the story told to a child. Heard at Pentecost, these words can lead us to pray for the Spirit to make the remembered deliverance fruitful in the home.

At Matins on February 20, 2026, the Friday of the first week of Great Lent, Deuteronomy 6:3-7:26 was read as one continuous prophecy.6 The Shema and the call to a holy people therefore stand together in that dated service. The appointment gives love of God a concrete demand for fidelity without establishing an unqualified recurrence claim for every calendar year.

The gift that can conceal the Giver (Deuteronomy 6:10-15)

10 And it shall come to pass when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware to thy fathers, to Abraam, and to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and beautiful cities which thou didst not build, 11 houses full of all good things which thou didst not fill, wells dug in the rock which thou didst not dig, vineyards and oliveyards which thou didst not plant, then having eaten and been filled, 12 beware lest thou forget the Lord thy God that brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 13 Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve; and thou shalt cleave to him, and by his name thou shalt swear.

14 Go ye not after other gods of the gods of the nations round about you; 15 for the Lord thy God in the midst of thee is a jealous God, lest the Lord thy God be very angry with thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

The repeated “which thou didst not” names the received character of Israel’s abundance. Cities, houses, wells, vineyards, and olive trees stand ready before the people have made them. The danger comes when eating and fullness obscure the memory of bondage and rescue. Forgetfulness can arrive through ordinary comfort rather than a dramatic rejection of belief.

The Lord’s jealousy protects a relationship in which He alone can give life. The ending of verse 15 preserves the warning against destruction; the passage cannot be turned into a gentle recommendation to maintain religious habits while serving other gods. Yet its severity is not permission to call every hardship divine retaliation. It addresses the people’s deliberate turning toward rivals.

We can receive professional success while forgetting the teachers, helpers, opportunities, health, and providence that made our labor fruitful. Thanksgiving speaks truth about dependence. It also loosens the fear that losing a gift would mean losing the God who gave it.

Language insight: “Him only shalt thou serve”

Brenton’s Greek-based English rendering includes “only” in verse 13. The Swete witness consulted here reads αὐτῷ λατρεύσεις, “Him shalt thou serve,” without the word for “only.” The Hebrew-based NKJV wording also lacks it. Matthew 4:10 explicitly has αὐτῷ μόνῳ λατρεύσεις, “Him only you shall serve.”7 Brenton and Matthew therefore share the explicit exclusivity of the English wording, while the consulted Greek Deuteronomy text does not contain the same extra word. We should not attribute a uniform reading to every Septuagint witness. The context itself forbids other gods, so undivided worship is the point in each form.

Israel’s testing and the Son’s faithful answer (Deuteronomy 6:16-19)

16 Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God, as ye tempted him in the temptation. 17 Thou shalt by all means keep the commands of the Lord thy God, the testimonies, and the ordinances, which he commanded thee. 18 And thou shalt do that which is pleasing and good before the Lord thy God, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and inherit the good land, which the Lord sware to your fathers, 19 to chase all thine enemies from before thy face, as the Lord said.

To tempt God here is to demand that He prove Himself on terms set by a mistrustful people. The opposite is to keep His commands and do what is pleasing and good. The promise of inheritance is joined to obedience, not to a contest in which Israel requires another sign before it will believe.

Language insight: “In the temptation”

Hebrew-based NKJV names Massah, the place recalled in Exodus 17:1-7. Brenton renders the place name’s meaning as “the temptation”; Swete prints the corresponding Greek πειρασμῷ, peirasmō, a form of the word for testing or temptation.1 In Matthew 4:7, Christ answers the tempter from this command. Where Israel demanded proof of the Lord’s presence, the Son refuses to leap from the temple to force a demonstration. He fulfills trust without spectacle.

Gems from the Fathers: Forbearance rather than display

St. John Chrysostom, in Homilies on Matthew, 13.3-4, follows Christ’s answers from Scripture. On the refusal to tempt God, he says that we are to overcome the devil “not by miracles, but by forbearance and long-suffering”.8 He does not name Deuteronomy in that sentence; the Gospel answers themselves identify its words. Patient obedience refuses the demand to prove our worth through a religious display. Christ’s power is sovereign, and He freely chooses the humility that teaches us how to resist.

A child asks why (Deuteronomy 6:20-25)

20 And it shall come to pass when thy son shall ask thee at a future time, saying, What are the testimonies, and the ordinances, and the judgments, which the Lord our God has commanded us? 21 Then shalt thou say to thy son, We were slaves to Pharao in the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought us forth thence with a mighty hand, and with a high arm. 22 And the Lord wrought signs and great and grievous wonders in Egypt, on Pharao and on his house before us. 23 And he brought us out thence to give us this land, which he sware to give to our fathers.

24 And the Lord charged us to observe all these ordinances; to fear the Lord our God, that it may be well with us for ever, that we may live, as even to-day. 25 And there shall be mercy to us, if we take heed to keep all these commands before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.

The answer begins, “We were slaves,” and continues with what the Lord did. The child receives the commandments within a shared history of deliverance. Parents are neither invited to suppress questions nor to answer with authority alone. They are to tell the truth about the God whose mercy has made the family’s life possible.

“He brought us out” leads to “to give us this land.” Liberation has a destination and a way of living. Likewise, Christian catechesis joins the Cross and Resurrection, Baptism, communion in the Church, and the changed conduct by which freedom is practiced. We do not hand on faith well if we describe only prohibitions and leave the child unable to recognize the Savior.

Brenton’s “there shall be mercy to us” in verse 25 differs from NKJV’s “it will be righteousness for us.” The ancient Greek wording here speaks of mercy, as the people keep what the Lord has commanded.1 Neither form makes obedience self-salvation. The chapter begins with a God who delivers and ends with a people called to answer His gift faithfully.

Spiritual Fruit

Make love audible in an ordinary hour. Choose one point in the day’s routine, such as rising, a meal, or bedtime, for a short Scripture reading and prayer. Begin with a rule your household can keep. A child learns what matters partly by hearing what returns each day.

Give your mind something true to carry. Learn a short phrase from the passage and return to it when attention is drawn into resentment, fantasy, or anxious comparison. Love of God includes the thoughts to which we repeatedly grant a home.

Thank the Giver for what preceded your work. Name one good thing you did not make or earn. Include a person whose help you have begun to take for granted. Gratitude keeps success from rewriting your history as self-creation.

Answer a question with the story of mercy. Let a child or younger believer ask why the Church prays, fasts, or obeys. Give the reason in Christ’s saving work before explaining the rule. A truthful answer can join freedom and obligation without threat or evasion.

The house has a door, the road has another mile, and the day has its beginning and end. God’s word can accompany each of them. You do not need an extraordinary occasion to love Him faithfully. Receive the hour before you, and let remembrance become prayer.

Footnotes

  1. H. B. Swete’s Greek Septuagint, Deuteronomy 6:3-5, 16, 25; Hebrew-based NKJV Deuteronomy 6. The electronic Swete page attaches Brenton’s closing 6:3 clause to 6:4. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. St. Athanasius, Against the Arians, III.4, with III.15-16 for the Triad, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 4, direct text. ↩

  3. St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, 18.44-45, translated by Blomfield Jackson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 8, direct text. ↩

  4. Agpeya, The Prayers of the Hours, especially the descriptions of the First and Twelfth Hours. ↩

  5. Coptic Church, Pentecost Kneeling Prayers, First Prostration, Deuteronomy 5:22-6:3, and Second Prostration, Deuteronomy 6:17-25, Coptic Reader, service selected for Pentecost, June 20, 2027. ↩

  6. Coptic Church, Great Lent, first-week Friday Matins, Prophecies, Coptic Reader, service selected for February 20, 2026: one continuous reading, Deuteronomy 6:3-7:26. ↩

  7. Brenton Deuteronomy 6:13; Swete Deuteronomy 6:13; Matthew 4:10 Greek. Brenton’s “only” is not printed in the consulted Swete verse; Matthew prints μόνῳ. ↩

  8. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, 13.4, translated by George Prevost, revised by M. B. Riddle, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 10, direct text. ↩

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