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?
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