Deuteronomy chapter 6

vs 1

A bit repetitive, but now you know for sure what these laws are.

vs 2

Loving God is done by keeping his decrees. The long life thing I've talked about before, but this is interesting, almost a little paradoxical. God has chosen a vassalage covenant model through which to give his laws, but he uses language of love and family to describe the adherence and relationship in this covenant. So love, then, is conveyed through obedience to commands. I'd be interested to find out if other suzerain covenants of the day spoke of love for one's leige?

vs 3

They should prosper, and the land under them should prosper, if they obey God.

vs 4

Well, apparently there's no easy translation of this verse, as you can see in the NIV. The point being, it would seem, that God is one, alone, singular, that there are none other like him. This is the beginning of the shema, a saying of remembrance for the Israelites, that they were to hear and obey. It also includes verse 5 I think. This was like the grand memory verse of Jewish history.

vs 5

This is a loyal love, a primary love, a serving love, a devoted love. It is also an active love, it is done, and things are used in its doing.

vs 6

It's not just a matter of it being remembered - it's a matter of it being imprinted on your heart so that it is forever a part of you.

vs 7

When you think about the things that we currently impress upon children, and the things that take up our conversation when we are sitting at home and walking along the road, the first thing we think of in the morning and the last thing at night, you suddenly realise just how far we are from this ideal. Well, I realise it, anyway. Perhaps you are totally devoted, in which case good for you!

I think this highlights the importance in the memorization thing that's happening at our church not to just get the verses into people's minds, but to instill in them a value for those words as something worth reflecting on. That is probably more valuable than the memorizing itself.

vs 8

Of course, the Jews did this literally (buh?) but we don't. We must also remember that religion has become a lot less structured in our times. Even the Anglican church we attend periodically breaks things up and makes them interesting. But religion back then, while possibly vital, was certainly formulaic and ritualised. So the idea of strapping some verses to your head as you repeated a prayer (and possibly added personal things to it) is totally normal for the time, and is really no less personal, although possibly less individual, if you know what I mean.

vs 9

Since homes are covered by the Law, having the law represented on your home is not inconceivable.

vs 10-11

Now that is provision - here, have an entire city you haven't had to build or toil for at all. Here are fields laid out and planted, stables built and ready. I wonder how many Israelites sat back and thought about whose home it had been before they moved in?

vs 12

Whether they thought of that or not, what they were meant to think of was the provision that God had provided them, and remember that it came from God, not their own labour. That could even be another reason God let another people settle in the land he promised to Israel - so that they would be constantly reminded that God gave it to Israel fully stocked.