Hear, O Israel!
Israel’s name means “he strives with God.” Jacob strove with man and God for most of the first part of his life - manipulating his brother Esau into selling his birthright, tricking his father Isaac into giving him his blessing, scheming against his father-in-law Laban, bargaining with God after God’s appearance to him in a dream at Bethel, wrestling with God at Peniel. And Israel, the nation named after Jacob, strove with God too, in continual cycles of rebellion, apostasy, and syncretism. Here, Israel is instead offered - and commanded - to cease their strivings and love God.
The name Israel may also be translated, “God strives.” God strove with Israel. As my grandfather said, “God chose Israel to bear the full brunt of his faithfulness.” No matter how many times they tried to leave him, he pursued them, through prophets, priests, law, and judgment. And, when even that was not sufficient to bring his people to him, God gave his own life.
And God strove for Israel. He chose his people; he delivered them from slavery and oppression in Egypt; he fights for them.
When Jacob wrestled with God at Peniel and was given the name Israel, he finally understood: he strove with God, not in an attempt to bargain with him or exploit his own advantages, but because he recognized that he was dependent on God to bless him. We strive with God to pursue him, to be faithful to him, to acknowledge our need for his blessing.
The Lord our God
“Lord” is how our English Bibles render the Hebrew Yahweh: God’s name as revealed by himself to his covenant people, “I am who I am.” Quoting Alastair Roberts:
And the answer that God gives here [to Moses in Exodus 3:14], “I am who I am” or “I will be what I will be” could in some way be seen as not an answer. God isn’t defined by anything other than himself. When we think about naming things we’re typically naming things as a means of getting control over them. When we give something a name we feel we have some power over it, some understanding of it, and yet when God gives his name, God is the only one who can pronounce his name truly, and when he pronounced his name is not a name that we can define relative to anything else. God is self-defining and God’s name is also something that speaks of his existence and perhaps also his self-determination. God will be what he will be. It’s not for us to put God within our control; we cannot do that.
A further thing to reflect on here might be the other attempts that we see in Scripture to ask God’s name. In the book of Judges 13:17-19, the name of the angel of the Lord is asked by Manoah and his wife, and the response is, “Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?” It is a name that is not truly given. But then Manoah offers sacrifices to “the God who works wonders,” playing upon the name. It seemed here that maybe there’s a giving of a name in a not giving of a name. In Exodus 3, maybe it’s the other way around; maybe there is a giving of a name, but that name that is given is also in some sense not a name. God has a name but the name itself describes something of God’s ineffability, that God cannot be captured by any name, that no name actually is adequate to speak of God, that God exists beyond all names, and what names we have that we used to speak of God are all found to be lacking. Ultimately, God will be who he will be…
There’s a veiling but also an unveiling… [of] God’s commitment to be with his people. Remember, the first time we see “I will be” is in reference to God’s promise, his assuring promise to be with Moses as he goes to the Egyptians. And perhaps one of the things that the name of God describes here is his unchanging and unfaltering commitment to his people, the fact that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, he’s the Alpha and the Omega, he’s the beginning and the end, he’s the one who does not change, and as a result he will be with his people and assure his people of his presence, not just in their present sufferings but in whatever sufferings they may face in the future.
So, by affirming that the LORD is our God, we affirm his transcendence and his glory, his existence beyond creation and beyond our understanding, but also his presence with us. And we may remember that, while his foundational self-revelation to Moses expressed his ineffability and supremacy, in his ultimate self-revelation in Christ, he gave the name Jesus: “the Lord saves.” I AM saves his people.
The Lord is one!
Quoting Alastair Roberts again:
There are various ways in which this statement has been interpreted and translated. Some see it as, “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” That’s a statement of the exclusively of God as the Lord of his people. There are no other gods that they will have besides him…
Another way to take it is that “the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” That being a statement about God’s nature: that God is unique, there is no other being like the Lord, or that God is simple: that there is no division in God, there’s no separation is no distinction between action and potential in God or between genus and species.
It could also be interpreted as, “The Lord our God is one Lord.” The claim there would be that the Lord is not many, a lord of this location and a lord of that location, but the Lord of all the earth, the Lord of all things.
You shall love the Lord your God
“Love” is a heavily overloaded word in English; it may cover how we feel about anything from our spouses to our sports teams to God to pizza. The NET Bible suggests that here it “communicates not so much an emotional idea as one of covenant commitment. To love the Lord is to be absolutely loyal and obedient to him in every respect.”
I appreciate Voddie Baucham’s definition of love: “an act of the will, accompanied by emotion, that leads to action on behalf of its object.” He applies this definition in discussing the New Testament’s command to love each other, but it can apply to God as well: We choose to love God by committing to be faithful to him. This doesn’t depend on emotion, but it’s accompanied by emotion; how can we not feel gratitude, awe, and affection? And we act based on this, seeking to learn more about God, enjoy his presence, deepen our relationship with him, and serve him.
With all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
The heart, in Hebrew thought, was the seat of the will and intellect. We must love God with all of our minds.
The soul refers to someone’s self, life, or being. The Hebrews didn’t think of a human as the union of a physical body and immaterial soul - that was a Greek idea - so the idea is instead to love God with all of one’s being, with all of one’s self. I too often feel scattered or dis-integrated - pulled in a dozen directions by worries and distractions and competing desires. I instead want to be integrated and single-minded, making God my goal, and letting the rest of my life flow out of that.
And we must love God with all of our might - our capabilities, abilities, strength.
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
We’re told to talk about these commandments. People naturally enjoy talking about what’s important to them: current events, their families, their work and hobbies, sports teams’ accomplishments, the media they’re following. It should be natural to talk about what we’re learning about God, what our church is doing, what God is doing around us, how we seek to serve and grow.
We’re told to create physical reminders of these commandments. Early Jews took this literally: they put fragments of Scripture in leather boxes, called tefillin or phylacteries, and tied them around their arms and forehead. Physical practices and symbols like those can become rote or legalistic, but if used properly, they serve a useful purpose: we’re physical creatures, and so physical objects and actions serve as a way to direct, reinforce, and remind ourselves of our focus. This may be most obvious as part of the role of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, but many Christians also practice it with physical Bibles, kneeling, lifting hands, intentionally chosen decorations and mementos, and so on.
And we’re told to teach these commandments. That can mean formal instruction, but much of teaching is simply a way of life: demonstrating the kind of life that’s transformed by God, showing what it means to follow God, showing that God is real and worth following, so that people who want to know what it means to follow God can use us as examples (Phil. 4:9).
And underlying all of these specific actions is the assumption, belief, and knowledge that this commandment in Deuteronomy 6:4-9 is part of God’s Word; that, like all of God’s Word, it’s worth repeating, studying, and meditating on. At 114 English words, the average adult can read these verses in thirty seconds or so; yet it’s repeated every morning and evening as part of Jewish prayer services for thousands of years. And, as we’ve seen here, even these 114 words have significant depth and richness as we meditate on God’s glory, transcendence, uniqueness, and faithfulness and on what it means to be part of God’s people, to recognize him, to love him with all of our being, and to live out from that.
