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Deuteronomy 6: What the Passage Says

90 claims across 25 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Deuteronomy 6 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses tells Israel that God gave these laws so they can live by them in the land they are about to enter. He gives the central command: the LORD our God is one, and Israel is to love him with all their heart, soul, and strength, keeping his words always before them and teaching them to their children. He warns them not to forget God once they enjoy cities, houses, wells, and orchards they did not make, and not to follow other gods or test God as they did at Massah. He tells parents what to answer when a child asks what the laws mean: God brought us out of slavery in Egypt so that he might bring us into this land.

Claim by Claim

  1. 6:1
    • These are the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments.
    • The LORD your God commanded that these be taught to you.
    • The text does not specify who is to do the teaching.
    • The commandments are to be done in the land.
    • The people are crossing over into that land to take possession of it.
  2. 6:2
    • The purpose is that you may fear the LORD your God.
    • The purpose is that you keep all his statutes and his commandments.
    • The speaker says he is the one commanding them to you.
    • This obligation belongs to you, to your son, and to your son's son.
    • It lasts all the days of your life.
    • The purpose is also that your days may be long.
  3. 6:3
    • Israel is commanded to hear.
    • Israel is commanded to be careful to do them.
    • The result is that it may go well with you.
    • The result is that you may increase greatly.
    • The LORD, the God of your fathers, promised this to you.
    • The land flows with milk and honey.
  4. 6:4
    • Israel is commanded to hear.
    • The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
    • The statement can be read either as 'the LORD our God is one LORD' or as 'the LORD is our God, the LORD alone.'
  5. 6:5
    • You shall love the LORD your God.
    • You shall love him with all your heart.
    • You shall love him with all your soul.
    • You shall love him with all your strength.
  6. 6:6
    • These words are commanded to you today.
    • These words shall be upon your heart.
  7. 6:7
    • You shall repeat them diligently to your children.
    • You shall speak of them when you sit in your house.
    • You shall speak of them when you walk on the road.
    • You shall speak of them when you lie down.
    • You shall speak of them when you rise up.
  8. 6:8
    • You shall bind them as a sign on your hand.
    • They shall be as bands between your eyes.
  9. 6:9
    • You shall write them on the doorposts of your house.
    • You shall write them on your gates.
  10. 6:10
    • The LORD your God will bring you into the land.
    • The LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you that land.
    • The land has great and good cities.
    • You did not build those cities.
  11. 6:11
    • The land has houses full of every good thing.
    • You did not fill those houses.
    • The land has hewn cisterns.
    • You did not hew those cisterns.
    • The land has vineyards and olive trees.
    • You did not plant them.
    • You will eat and be satisfied.
  12. 6:12
    • Take care lest you forget the LORD.
    • The LORD brought you out of the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD brought you out of a house of slaves.
  13. 6:13
    • You shall fear the LORD your God.
    • You shall serve him.
    • You shall swear by his name.
  14. 6:14
    • You shall not go after other gods.
    • These are the gods of the peoples around you.
  15. 6:15
    • The LORD your God is a jealous God.
    • The LORD your God is in your midst.
    • Otherwise the anger of the LORD your God will burn against you.
    • He will destroy you from the face of the ground.
  16. 6:16
    • You shall not test the LORD your God.
    • You tested him at Massah.
  17. 6:17
    • You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God.
    • You shall keep his testimonies and his statutes.
    • He has commanded them to you.
  18. 6:18
    • You shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD.
    • The result is that it may go well with you.
    • The result is that you may go in and possess the good land.
    • The LORD swore that land to your fathers.
  19. 6:19
    • All your enemies will be driven out from before you.
    • The LORD has spoken this.
  20. 6:20
    • Your son will ask you in time to come.
    • He will ask what the testimonies, the statutes, and the judgments mean.
    • He will say the LORD our God commanded them to you.
  21. 6:21
    • You shall answer your son.
    • You shall say: we were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt.
    • You shall say: the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
  22. 6:22
    • The LORD performed signs and wonders.
    • The signs and wonders were great and terrible.
    • They were done against Egypt, against Pharaoh, and against all his household.
    • They were done before our eyes.
  23. 6:23
    • The LORD brought us out from there.
    • He did so in order to bring us in.
    • He did so to give us the land.
    • He swore that land to our fathers.
  24. 6:24
    • The LORD commanded us to do all these statutes.
    • The purpose is to fear the LORD our God.
    • The purpose is for our good always.
    • The purpose is that he might keep us alive, as it is this day.
  25. 6:25
    • It will be righteousness for us.
    • This holds if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God.
    • He has commanded us so.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1
The speaker is Moses, addressing the people of Israel in a series of farewell speeches on the far side of the Jordan, just before they cross into Canaan; "the land you are crossing over to take" is that country. "LORD" printed in capitals is the standard English way of marking the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH. Jewish readers traditionally do not pronounce it, substituting a word meaning "my Lord", which is why English Bibles print the title rather than the name.
6:2
"Honor and obey" translates a Hebrew verb that literally means "fear." In this kind of writing it covers the whole attitude a subject owes a king or a child a parent: awe, respect, and doing what he says. It is not primarily an emotion of terror.
6:3
"Flowing with milk and honey" is a set phrase for land that is exceptionally productive without irrigation works: milk from grazing herds and goats, honey either from wild bees or, more likely, thick syrup boiled from dates and figs. It advertises abundance, not two particular groceries.
6:4
These words, in Hebrew beginning "Shema," became the central daily declaration of Jewish worship. The Hebrew sentence has no verb and can be read several ways: "the LORD our God, the LORD is one," "the LORD is our God, the LORD alone," or "the LORD our God is one LORD." Translators disagree, and the rendering keeps the ambiguity rather than choosing.
6:5
The three Hebrew words behind "heart," "soul," and "strength" do not divide a person the way English does. The heart is the seat of thought, will, and decision more than feeling; the "soul" is the whole living self, appetite and life-breath included, not a part that survives the body; and the third word literally means "muchness", force, capacity, and in later Jewish reading also property and wealth.
6:6
Long ago people thought of the heart as the place where you think and remember. Keeping words in your heart means holding on to them and never forgetting.
6:7
"When you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up" is a way of saying "everywhere and at every hour" by naming the opposite ends of a day and of a household's movements.
6:8
In the ancient world people wore amulets and inscribed bands on the arm and brow. Whether this instruction was meant as a figure of speech or as a literal practice was already debated; from at least the last centuries BC, Jewish practice took it literally, producing tefillin (also called phylacteries), small leather boxes holding these verses on parchment, strapped to the arm and the forehead for prayer.
6:9
Doorposts are the uprights framing a house door; "gates" are the gateways of a walled town, which were also where elders met and legal cases were heard, so the two together cover private and public life. Jewish practice later fulfilled this with the mezuzah, a small case holding this passage fixed to the doorframe.
6:10
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the founding ancestors of Israel in Genesis, three generations of a single family, and the promise of this land was made to them centuries before this speech. "Sware" is just the old past tense of "swear."
6:11
In a country with little rain and few permanent rivers, digging a well or cutting a cistern out of rock was months of heavy labor, and vineyards and olive trees take years before they produce anything. The list is a way of saying that the incoming generation inherits other people's finished work.
6:12
The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for generations before God brought them out. The King James calls Egypt "the house of bondage," which simply means the place where they were owned.
6:13
An oath in this culture named a god as the witness and guarantor of your word, and invited that god's punishment if you lied. Swearing by a particular god's name was therefore a public declaration of whose authority you lived under, not merely a form of words.
6:14
The peoples of Canaan worshiped gods such as Baal, a storm and fertility god thought to control rain and crops, and Asherah, a mother goddess, with shrines on hilltops and carved or cast images. "Go after" is the ordinary Hebrew expression for following and serving a god, the same verb you would use for walking behind a leader.
6:15
The Hebrew word behind "will not share you" is elsewhere used of a husband's response to a wife's unfaithfulness. Applied to God it describes exclusive claim rather than petty envy: Israel is bound to one God by agreement, and worshiping another is treated as a broken marriage or a broken treaty.
6:16
Massah is a place name that means "testing," given after an incident in the wilderness where the people, out of water, demanded proof that God was among them (Exodus 17). "Testing" here means putting God on trial to see whether he will perform, not being tested oneself.
6:17
"The terms of his agreement" renders a word for the stipulations of a covenant, a formal, binding arrangement between two parties, modeled on the treaties ancient kings made with lesser kings, complete with obligations, witnesses, and consequences. Much of Deuteronomy is written in that treaty form.
6:19
This refers to the conquest of Canaan later described in the book of Joshua. The land being handed over is already inhabited, and the promise as stated includes removing the people currently living there.
6:20
A question from a child followed by a set answer is a teaching formula, a way of passing on a story in a fixed form. Versions of this exchange later became part of the Passover meal, where a child asks why this night is different and an adult answers by retelling the escape from Egypt.
6:21
"With a strong hand" was ordinary political language in the ancient Near East for the coercive power of a ruler, Egyptian texts use it of Pharaoh. The claim is that a greater power overruled Pharaoh's.
6:22
"Signs and wonders" refers to the disasters inflicted on Egypt before the escape, the events usually called the plagues (Exodus 7–12). A "sign" is an event that carries a message; a "wonder" is one that astonishes.
6:25
The Hebrew word rendered "righteousness" means being in the right, standing in a relationship as one ought, the way a person cleared in court is in the right. It is a verdict about a relationship, not a score of personal virtue.

Read Deuteronomy 6