1 The end of the law is obedience, 3 An exhortation thereto.
Deu 6:1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess,
Commands.
The same Hebrew words in the same order as in ch. 5:31.
Deu 6:2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.
Fear the Lord. The Hebrew word “to fear” means “to stand in awe of,” “to reverence,” “to honor” (see on ch. 4:10).
Deu 6:3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you.
Increase greatly. Compare the promise of God to the patriarchs (Gen. 12:2; 17:6; 22:17, 18).
Deu 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
3The Lord our God is one Lord. Literally, “Yahweh our God, Yahweh [is] One.”
In striking contrast to the nations about them, who were polytheists, the Hebrews believed in one true God. This profession of faith has been the watchword of the Hebrew race for more than 3,000 years (see Mark 12:29).
The apostle Paul states the same truth as a tenet of Christianity (1 Cor. 8:4–6; Eph. 4:4–6). Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, the oldest extant Hebrew manuscript of any part of the OT was the Nash Papyrus, of the 1st century B.C., which contains the Decalogue and Deut. 6:4, 5.
Deu 6:5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Love. The Hebrew word here translated “love” is a general term that also suggests the ideas “desire,” “affection,” “inclination,” the more intimate cleaving of soul to soul.
The believer’s relation to God is based on love (1 John 4:19), and love is the fundamental principle of His law (Mark 12:29, 30). To love perfectly is to obey wholeheartedly (John 14:15; 15:10).
All your heart.
Christianity calls for all that a man is and has—his mind, his affections, and his capacity for action (1 Thess. 5:23). The word here translated “heart” generally refers to the affections, feelings, desires, and will. It is the source of action and the center of thought and feeling (see Ex. 31:6; 36:2; 2 Chron. 9:23; Eccl. 2:23).
The word translated “soul” denotes the animating principle in man, the life, but includes also his bodily appetites and desires (see Num. 21:5). It is rendered “appetite” in Prov. 23:2; Eccl. 6:7. The word translated “might” is from a verb meaning “to increase.”
The noun, as here, means “abundance,” and may refer to the things that have accrued to a man in this life.
Deu 6:6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.
Deu 6:7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Impress. The word here translated “teach” means “to whet,” “to sharpen” (see Deut. 32:41; Ps. 64:3; 140:3; Isa. 5:28). This call, then, is for clear, incisive teaching. Parents have weighty responsibility to instruct their children in matters of duty and destiny, day by day.
Deu 6:8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.
Tie them. The Jews later took these words literally, wearing phylacteries upon the head and the inside of the left arm (see on Ex. 13:9).
Deu 6:9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
On your doorframes. It is a custom today insome Eastern countries to inscribe words of desired blessing and promise over doorways. Moslems and Hindus do it, as do the Chinese, particularly at the New Year season.
Deu 6:12 be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Verses 10–12 stood as a warning to Israel when they entered a land in which all the good things of life were abundantly supplied. They were not to become so engrossed with their new possessions as to forget their duties to God.
With the increase of material goods there is ever the tendency to “forget the Lord,” by whose power these things are secured (ch. 8:18).
Land of slavery0. Literally, “the house of slaves.” Here their former place of abode, Egypt, is referred to as a “house.”
Deu 6:13 Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name.
That is, to bind oneself by an oath. The word thus translated is from the same root as the numeral seven. The implication is that when a man “swears” he binds himself seven times, meaning that he assumes an obligation from which nothing can set him free.
Deu 6:14 Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you;
Other gods. This injunction is closely connected with v. 13: they were not even to mention the names of other gods (Ex. 23:13; Joshua 23:7; Jer. 5:7).
Deu 6:15 for the LORD your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and his anger will burn against you, and he will destroy you from the face of the land.
A jealous God. The root of the word translated “jealous” means “to become intensely colored in the face,” that is, from deep emotions such as love, zeal, or anger. By His very nature God cannot be otherwise; how could He share the affections of His people with other gods (2 Cor. 6:14–17)?
Light and darkness cannot exist together; to harbor darkness in the soul one must exclude the light.
Deu 6:16 Do not put the LORD your God to the test as you did at Massah.
Test. Literally, 5 “try,” “prove.” Here it does not have the modern concept of enticing to sin. The same word is used of God’s “proving” or “testing” men, to develop their character and to strengthen their faith and loyalty to Him (see Gen. 22:1; Ex. 20:20; Deut. 8:2, 16; Dan. 1:14).
The English word probation is from the same Latin root as the word prove. A period of probation is a period of testing or proving. At Massah, Israel reversed the process and defiantly put God to the test (Ex. 17:2, 7). When Satan challenged Christ to jump down from the cornice of the Temple, Christ quoted from Deut. 6:16 (Matt. 4:7).
For Christ to have acceded to the suggestion would have demonstrated presumption rather than faith. Presumption is the counterfeit of faith.
Deu 6:18 Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight, so that it may go well with you and you may go in and take over the good land the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors,
Well with you. Loyally discharged duties make it possible for God to bestow additional blessings. Again and again Moses emphasized the necessity of unswerving loyalty to Jehovah.
Deu 6:19 thrusting out all your enemies before you, as the LORD said.
All your enemies. That is, all who opposed their occupation of the Land of Promise. By their persistent refusal to honor the true God they had made themselves His enemies, and thus the enemies of His chosen people.
Deu 6:20 In the future, when your son asks you, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?”
Your son asks you. See Ex. 13:14. It was ever God’s mind that parents should assume the first responsibility of instructing children in their responsibilities to God.
Deu 6:23 But he brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land he promised on oath to our ancestors.
He brought us out.
Their miraculous deliverance from literal slavery was ever to be remembered as evidence of the power of God and His claims upon them.
Deliverance from Egypt implies also deliverance from sin (see Rom. 6:12–23; 8:21).
Deu 6:24 The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today.
All that God requires of us is for our own good. The restrictions He places upon us are our protection against spiritual dangers that may not be apparent.
A shepherd does not erect a fold about his sheep to prevent them from having a good time with the wolves, but rather that he “might preserve” them “alive.”
Kept alive. That is, both as a nation and as individuals.
Deu 6:25 And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.
Our righteousness. Literally, “righteousness shall be [credited] to us.”
The idea is that compliance with God’s revealed will, in the strength He imparts to us (Rom. 8:3, 4; Gal. 2:20), is acceptable in His sight as if the “righteousness” were our own. A man is justified by faith alone (Rom. 5:1), but “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20).