House, Pt 2: Rally Point

Ryrie

• (4) “Here begins the celebrated Shema (from the first word, Hear), which became Judaism's basic confession of faith. According to rabbinic tradition, the Shema originally consisted only of verse 4 but was later expanded to include verses 5-9; 11:13-21; and Num 15:37-41. According to rabbinic law, it was to be recited morning and night. Verse 4 is subject to various translations, though the statement is likely stressing the uniqueness of Yahweh and should be translated, 'The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.' A secondary emphasis, His indivisibility, is apparent in most English translations. The Lord's uniqueness precludes the worship of any other and demands a total love commitment. This confession does not preclude the later revelation of the Trinity, for the word God (Elohim) is a plural word, and the word one is also used of the union of Adam and Eve (Gen 2:24) to describe two persons in one flesh.”

• (5) “Jesus Christ called this the first and great commandment and added to it the phrase 'with all your mind' (Mark 12:30).”

• (8) Based on this, as well as Ex 13:9 and Deut 11:18, “some Jews still wear phylacteries (little leather pouches containing short sections of the law, bound on the forehead and on the left arm above the elbow).”

• (8) “The Jews practiced this commandment later by wearing phylacteries.”

• (9) “Later the Jews placed a copy of the Shema in a small metal box or skin bag and placed it on the door. It is called a 'mezuzah' (=door frames).”

Henry

• “That the God whom we serve is Jehovah, a Being infinitely and eternally perfect, self-existent, and self-sufficient.”

• “That he is the one only living and true God; he only is God, and he is but one.”

• “The firm belief of this self-evident truth [that there is one God] would effectually arm them against all idolatry, which was introduced by that fundamental error, that there are gods many.”

• “Happy they that have this one Lord for their God; for they have but one master to please, but one benefactor to seek to. It is better to have one fountain that a thousand cisterns, one all-sufficient God than a thousand insufficient ones.”

• “The warmer our affection to him the greater will be our veneration for him; the child that honours his parents no doubt loves them.”

• “Did ever any prince make a law that his subjects should love him? Yet such is the condescension of the divine grace that this is made the first and great commandment of God's law, that we love him, and that we perform all other parts of our duty to him from a principle of love.”

• “We must highly esteem him, be well pleased that there is such a Being, well pleased in all his attributes, and relations to us: our desire must be towards him, our delight in him, our dependence upon him, and to him we must be entirely devoted. It must be a constant pleasure to us to think of him, hear from him, speak to him, and serve him.”

• We must love God...

  • With a sincere love; not in word and tongue only, saying we love him when our hearts are not with him, but inwardly, and in truth, solacing ourselves in him.

  • With a strong love; the heart must be carried out towards him with great ardour and fervency of affection.

  • “With a superlative love; we must love God above any creature whatsoever, and love nothing besides him but what we love for him and in subordination to him.”

  • “With an intelligent love; for so it is explained, Mark xii. 33. To love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, we must know him, and therefore love him as those that see good cause to love him.”

  • “With an entire love; he is one, and therefore our hearts must be united in this love, and the whole stream of our affections must run towards him.”

• The following means are prescribed for maintaining religion in our hearts and houses.

  • Meditation: “Though the words alone without the things will do us no good, yet we are in danger of losing the things if we neglect the words, by which ordinarily divine light and power are conveyed to the heart. God's words must be laid up on our heart, that our thoughts may be daily conversant with them and employed about them, and thereby the whole soul may be brought to abide and act under the influence and impression of them.”

  • Teach children: “Those that love the Lord God themselves should do what they can to engage the affections of their children to him, and so to preserve the entail of religion in their families from being cut off.”

  • Talking about them: “So far is it from being reckoned a diminution to the honour of sacred things to make them subject of our familiar discourse that they are recommended to us to be talked of; for the more conversant we are with them the more we shall admire them and be affected with them, and may thereby be instrumental to communicate divine light and heat.”

  • Frequent reading: “It is probable that at that time there were few written copies of the whole law, only at the feasts of tabernacles the people had it read to them; and therefore God appointed them, at least for the present, to write some select sentences of the law, that were most weighty and comprehensive, upon their walls, or in scrolls of parchment to be worn about their wrists; and some think that hence the phylacteries so much used among the Jews took rise.”

• Meditation “immediately follows upon the law of loving God with all your heart; for those that do so will lay up his word in their hearts both as an evidence and effect of that love and as a means to preserve and increase it. He that loves God loves his Bible.”

• The process of teaching children included “frequently repeat these things to them, try all ways of instilling them into their minds, and making them pierce into their hearts; as, in whetting a knife, it is turned first on this side, then on that.”

• “Bishop Patrick well observes here that Moses thought his law so very plain and easy that every father might be able to instruct his sons in it and every mother her daughters. Thus that good thing which is committed to us we must carefully transmit to those that come after us, that it may be perpetuated.”

• “It was prudently and piously provided by the first reformers of the English church that then, when Bibles were scarce, some select portions of scripture should be written on the walls and pillars of the churches, which the people might make familiar to them, in conformity to this direction, which seems to have been binding in the letter of it to the Jews as it is to us in the intent of it, which is that we should endeavour by all means possible to make the word of God familiar to us, that we may have it ready to us upon all occasions, for our restraint from sin and our direction and excitement to our duty.”

• As part of writing commandments on our doorframes and gateposts, “it is also intimated that we must never be ashamed to own our religion, nor to own ourselves under the check and government of it. Let it be written on our gates, and let every one that goes by our door read it, that we believe Jehovah to be God alone, and believe ourselves bound to love him with all our hearts.”

• (4-9) “Known as the Shema, Hebrew for 'Hear.' It has become the Jewish confession of faith, recited daily by the pious.”

• (4) “the Lord is one” is “a divinely revealed insight, especially important in view of the multiplicity of Baals and other gods of Canaan and elsewhere.”

• (5) “Love for God and neighbor is built on the love that the Lord has for his people. Such love is to be total, involving one's whole being.”

• (5) “Obedience flows out of love and not just reverence.”

• (6) Having God's commandments upon your hearts would be “a feature that would especially characterize the 'new covenant.'”

• (8-9) “Many Jews take these verses literally and tie phylacteries to their foreheads and left arms. They also attach mezuzot (small wooden or metal containers in which passages of Scripture are placed) to the doorframes of their houses. But a figurative interpretation is supported by 11:18-20; Ex 13:9, 16.