Deuteronomy 5-8

These are some of the most important chapters in Deuteronomy with some of the most memorable verses. Chapter 5 contains the reiteration of the Ten Commandments. One of the differences between the wording here and that of Exodus 20 has to do with the fourth commandment. In Exodus 20 the command is to “Remember the Sabbath day…” Here the Israelites are told to “Observe the Sabbath day…” Friedman explains “that the two are both necessary and are complementary: In the mind, one must remember it. In actions, one must observe it.”[1] The Sabbath also introduces a rhthym to the week. One observes the Sabbath on the seventh day, but remembers the blessings of the Sabbath throughout the week and looks forward to observing the next Sabbath as the end of the week draws near again.

Deuteronomy 6 contains the famous “shema”: “Listen, Israel: YHWH is our God. YHWH is one.” These are “the most commonly known and frequently repeated words in the Bible for Jews…”[2] Furthermore, forms of the word for “listen” occur some eighty times in this book.

These words are followed by the commandment that Jesus said was most important: “And you shall love YHWH, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:5)

Moses says that these words are to be on the hearts of his listeners and that they are to impart them to their children, speaking about them when they sit at home, when they walk along the road, when they lie down at night, and when they get up in the morning. This verse, Deuteronomy 6:7, reveals that the best way to teach children to love God is in the context of everyday life and that the best teachers are parents who are also following YHWH and seeking to love him.

In Deuteronomy 6:8-9 Moses instructs: “And you shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall become bands between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and in your gates.” Many Jews take these commands quite literally, others, like Friedman, take them more figuratively.

Deuteronomy 7 introduces, once again, the subject of holy war. Friedman comments intriguingly on this subject:

Many people have been troubled by the idea of commanding the annihilation of the Canaanite residents of the land. The archaeological evidence is that such a destruction never took place. This passage in the Torah was written long after the period of the Israelites’ settlement in the land, and so it is ironic that the author of this text conceived of a degree of violence that appears never in fact to have happened, and then people are troubled by this degree of violence in Israel’s history….you shall not marry with them….This command is curious because in the preceding verse Moses has already said that the Canaanites are to be completely destroyed. The ban on marrying them appears to come from the recognition that the Israelites may fail to eliminate the Canaanites from the land or that it may be a very long process—which is in fact what happens (see Judg 2:1-3).[3]

Deuteronomy 8:3 contains one of the verses quoted by Jesus in the New Testament: “…one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (See Matthew 4.) Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy more than once. He was obviously very familiar with the book and meditated on it often. The sustaining nature of the word of the Lord is one of the predominant themes of this book.

This raises the question: do we take sufficient time to read and meditate on the word of the Lord so that we have it in mind when we face times of temptation in the wilderness, just as Israel did and as Jesus did?

[1] Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, 582

[2] Ibid, 586

[3] Ibid, 589

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