Day 60: ”Shema” Love the Lord Your God with Your Heart, Soul, and Strength

Today we read Numbers 8-9, Deuteronomy 8-9, and Psalm 92. In this story, we discuss how Deuteronomy uses the word “love” the most in the Old Testament and the second most frequent in the entire Bible. The book of John in the New Testament used the word “love” the most overall. We discuss how the Hebrew term Shema introduced in Deuteronomy 6:4 and discussed again here means to love the Lord your God with all your heart, souls, and strength. We discuss what that means and now it relates to when Jesus discusses the Shema in Matthew and Mark, how it’s similar but “mind” is introduced and then added.  We discuss how the story of Numbers and Deuteronomy is tethered to the entire Pentateuch or Torah whenever it is referred to by other speakers in the Bible such as Ezra and Nehemiah. In Hebrew, the first words of each book taken together would be In the beginning (Genesis,), departure (Exodus), He called (Leviticus), in the wilderness (Numbers), words (Deuteronomy).

Resources:

Dr. Ben Tertin, Dr. Tim Mackie, and Cheree Hayes (2022) What Does the Book of Numbers Teach Us?Trusting God in the Wilderness. Editors: Kenzie Halbert-Howen and Nina Simone. BibleProject Blog. Producer: Brand Witty. https://bibleproject.com/blog/what-does-the-book-numbers-teach-us/ 

Dr. Mackie, Tim and Collins, John (2017). Deuteronomy Q&R (48 minute podcast). https://bibleproject.com/podcast/deuteronomy-q-r/ 

Dr. Millar, Gary (2023) A Deuteronomy Commentary, The Gospel Coalition: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/commentary/deuteronomy/

Credits:

Podcast music by Stockaudios from Pixabay. Speaker, Dr. Rachel Bodell. Podcast Sound Engineer, Alan Darling. Podcast Artwork, Will Gerard.