Deuteronomy 6 Summary and Study Guide

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” Israel was told to write that sentence on their doorframes, and Jewish households have been saying it morning and evening for well over two thousand years. This Deuteronomy 6 summary and study guide covers the chapter it comes from, and the warning Moses fastened to it.

Setting the Stage

God promised Abraham a land his descendants did not own, and warned him they would be strangers in someone else’s country for four hundred years first (Genesis 15:13-16). Egypt was that country, and God brought them out of it under Moses. Then, one border away, the generation He had rescued heard a report about the people already living in the land, refused to go in, and were told none of them would see it (Numbers 14:22-23).

Forty years later the children of that generation are camped east of the Jordan with the same promise in front of them, and Moses will not be crossing with them. Their parents failed at the border. Deuteronomy 6 is Moses on the failure that comes after a crossing rather than before one.

Comprehensive Deuteronomy 6 Summary

Everything Moses is about to teach them, he says, is for the land they are crossing into, a land flowing with milk and honey, so that they, their children and their grandchildren will fear God, live long there and grow into a great people. The fear he means is the awe a person owes someone far above them, and the chapter treats it as the beginning of obedience rather than as being afraid of God.

Then comes the sentence everything hangs on. The LORD their God is one LORD, and they are to love Him with all their heart, all their soul and all their might. That love starts in the heart and works outward from there: taught to their children, talked about at home and on the road and at both ends of the day, tied to their hand, worn between their eyes, and written on their doorframes and town gates.

Then comes the warning. God is handing them cities other people built, houses other people stocked, wells other people dug, and vineyards and olive groves other people planted. They will eat until they are full. A people that full can forget who filled them, and forgetting is what Moses is afraid of.

So he presses the other side. Fear God, serve Him, swear by His name alone, and leave the gods of the neighbouring nations where they stand. The God living among Israel claims Israel entirely, which is what the chapter means by calling Him jealous. And take Him as trustworthy, rather than putting Him on trial the way their parents did at Massah, where a thirsty Israel asked whether the LORD was among them at all.

The chapter ends at a kitchen table. One day a child will ask what all these rules are for, and Moses hands the parents an answer that begins somewhere other than the rules. We were slaves in Egypt, God brought us out with a strong hand, and He brought us out so that He could bring us in.

One Word Summary

• Hear: the chapter’s first command, and the word Israel named the passage after.
• Love: the whole demand of the law reduced to one thing God asks for.
• Remember: a full stomach and a short memory.

In One Sentence

On the edge of Canaan, Moses tells Israel that God is one and must be loved with everything they are, sends that command into their children through an ordinary day, and warns them that plenty will make them forget the God who rescued them.

Theme of Deuteronomy 6

Deuteronomy 6 is about undivided love for the one true God, love that starts in the heart and then shows up in the house, the body, the doorframe and the next generation. Three ideas run alongside it. Undivided has a hard edge, so the chapter bars the neighbours’ gods and bars putting God on trial.

Plenty carries its own danger, since a people given what they never worked for can stop feeling any need of the giver. And every command rests on something God did first, which is why a child’s question about the rules is answered with a rescue.

Deuteronomy 6 Outline

• Deuteronomy 6:1-3: Moses states why these commands are being taught and what obeying them will bring in the land.
• Deuteronomy 6:4-5: The Shema, that the LORD our God is one LORD, and the command to love Him with heart, soul and might.
• Deuteronomy 6:6-9: The words go into the heart, then to the children, then onto the hand, the eyes, the doorframes and the gates.
• Deuteronomy 6:10-12: God will give Israel cities, houses, wells and vineyards they did not make, with a warning not to forget Him once they are full.
• Deuteronomy 6:13-15: Moses commands fear of God, service to Him and oaths in His name alone, and forbids the gods of the surrounding nations, naming God as jealous.
• Deuteronomy 6:16-19: Refuse to put God on trial as Israel did at Massah, keep His commandments, do what is right and good, and He will drive out their enemies.
• Deuteronomy 6:20-25: A son asks what the commandments mean, and the father answers with the story of the exodus.

The Shema

Six verses in this chapter carry a name of their own. Jews call them the Shema, after the Hebrew word that opens them, shema, meaning hear. This is the passage recited morning and evening in Jewish practice, and by long custom it is among the first Scripture a Jewish child learns.

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. 6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. 9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Israel is told to listen, and to hold as settled that the LORD alone is their God and that He is one. “With all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” asks for their inner life, their very selves, and every ounce of strength and property they own. “The posts of thy house” are its doorframes, and “thy gates” most likely means the gates of the town.

Observations from Deuteronomy 6

Two Oversized Letters Spell “Witness” (6:4)

In the traditional Hebrew text of verse 4, two letters are written larger than the rest: the last letter of the first word, shema, and the last letter of the last word, echad. Put together, those two letters make the Hebrew word ed, which means a witness.

Jewish teachers have long read the two large letters as a caution attached to the confession itself. A person can say that God is one and mean nothing by it, and the letters stand there as a reminder that God hears the confession and knows the heart it comes from.

The reading is tradition rather than something verse 4 states, and it fits what the chapter goes on to ask for, which is the words in the heart before they are on the door.

The Words Travel Outward in One Direction (6:6-9)

Heart, then children, then hand and eyes, then doorframe and gate. The last stop is most likely public property, since the town gate in Israel was where the elders sat and cases were heard (Deuteronomy 21:19; Ruth 4:1-2).

The list starts in the heart. Verse 6 is the first stop and the only private one, and everything visible after it is built on that verse. A household can get the doorframe right and the whole day’s talk right while verse 6 stays empty.

Four Gifts Israel Never Worked For (6:10-11)

Moses lists four gifts and marks each one as somebody else’s work. Other hands built the cities, stocked the houses, dug the wells, and planted the vineyards and olive trees. Israel walks in and receives all four finished.

Moses is warning them about an easy life rather than a hard one. Everything they are about to enjoy already carries somebody else’s labour inside it, and a gift that arrives finished can be the easiest kind to stop thanking anyone for.

The Same Care Runs in Both Directions (6:7, 6:17)

The King James uses “diligently” in two verses of this chapter. In verse 7 it governs what Israel passes on to their children. In verse 17 it governs what Israel keeps for themselves. The Hebrew behind the two is not the same word, so what they share is the level of care rather than the vocabulary.

Behind verse 7 is a Hebrew verb, shanan, that means to whet, the way you would put an edge on a blade. The same root turns up in Deuteronomy 32:41 of a sword being made ready. Teaching a child, in this verse, is not a talk given once; it is a repeated pass over the same surface until something takes an edge.

The Chapter Says One Sentence Twice (6:12, 6:23)

Verse 12 warns them not to “forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” Israel is warned against forgetting the God who took them out of Egypt, where they had been slaves.

Verse 23 says it again, but this time it is the answer a father gives his son: “And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in.” God took us out of Egypt for a reason, and the reason was to bring us into the land. The same event is a warning in the first half of the chapter and a creed in the second, and what changes is who is saying it.

Difficult Verses Explained

Does “The LORD Our God Is One LORD” Rule Out the Trinity?

Deuteronomy 6:4 neither rules out the Trinity nor teaches it. The verse says that Israel has one God and no other, which is the claim that set Israel apart from the nations around them and the claim the whole chapter is built on.

What verse 4 says about God runs to four Hebrew words with no verb among them, which is why English Bibles differ over it. The King James reads “The LORD our God is one LORD.”

Others read “The LORD our God, the LORD is one,” or “The LORD is our God, the LORD is one,” or “The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.” All four land on one of two claims, and Scripture makes both: God is one, and He alone is Israel’s God.

The Hebrew word for “one” here is echad, and it can describe a unity made of parts. Genesis 1:5 calls evening and morning together one day. Genesis 2:24 says a husband and wife become one flesh.

The Hebrew word for an only one, yachid, is the word used of Isaac as Abraham’s “only son” (Genesis 22:2), and Moses did not use it here. That is worth knowing, though it settles nothing on its own, since echad often carries the plain sense of a single item.

What settles it is what the New Testament writers did with this verse. They knew it by heart and never dropped it. Paul restates it in 1 Corinthians 8:6: “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” There is one God, says Paul, and he puts Jesus inside the sentence rather than beside it.

What Does “Frontlets Between Thine Eyes” Mean?

A frontlet is a band or ornament worn across the forehead, and in verse 8 it is a picture: God’s words are to sit where you cannot help seeing them, and to govern what your hands do.

The same figure had already been used of the Passover and the redemption of the firstborn (Exodus 13:9, 13:16), so Israel had met it before. Many Bible teachers read it as figurative language for keeping God’s words constantly in view, which is how the same picture works elsewhere: “Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck” (Proverbs 6:21).

Later Jewish practice made it literal. The tefillin are two small leather boxes, one strapped to the arm and one worn on the forehead, holding four passages of Scripture including this one. The mezuzah is a parchment of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 in a case fixed to the right-hand doorpost, which many touch and then kiss the finger on passing.

What Jesus named in Matthew 23:5 was the display, not the wearing: the Pharisees “make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,” and He says they do it “to be seen of men.”

Does Deuteronomy 6:25 Mean We Are Made Righteous by Keeping the Law?

Read the condition before you read the promise. Verse 25 offers righteousness on one term, “if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD our God,” and the word doing the work in that line is “all.”

The chapter itself puts the order the other way round. Verses 20 to 24 have the father telling his son about the rescue first and the rules second, because Israel was not commanded in order to be saved out of Egypt; they were saved out of Egypt and then commanded. Verse 24 even gives the reason for the commands, which is “for our good always.”

Paul takes up the same standard and states what it costs. “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight” (Romans 3:20), and “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Galatians 3:10).

Nobody stands acquitted before God on the strength of law-keeping, because the standard is the whole law and human obedience runs short of it. Obedience still matters, and Deuteronomy 6 spends most of its verses commanding it. The verse settles where that obedience stands, which is on a rescue God has already carried out.

Common Misunderstandings

• The misreading: that “one LORD” is an argument against the deity of Christ. Jesus quoted this verse Himself, and a scribe who heard Him quoted it back in agreement (Mark 12:29-32). Whatever else the Shema does, it never put Jesus or the writers of the New Testament in a corner.
• The misreading: that “thy days may be prolonged” guarantees a long life to anyone who obeys. Deuteronomy uses that phrase again and again, and mostly of the nation keeping its place in the land rather than of one person’s lifespan. King Josiah is the plainest case against reading it the other way: 2 Kings 23:25 describes him in the exact words of Deuteronomy 6:5, and four verses later he is killed in battle.
• The misreading: that verse 7 is a command for parents only. Jewish teachers read “thy children” as everyone under your care and teaching, and Matthew Henry carried that reading into English three hundred years ago. A believer with no children in the house is not standing outside this verse.
• The misreading: that the danger in verses 10 to 12 is wealth. Moses never tells them to want less. He tells them to remember more, and the thing he names is forgetting.

Christ Connection

The strongest link is one Jesus made Himself. Asked which commandment was first of all, He answered with this chapter: “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength” (Mark 12:29-30).

Jesus quoted the Shema and called it the first commandment of them all. He also used four words, “heart, soul, mind and strength,” where Deuteronomy has three. The extra word spells out what the Hebrew already held. Lev, the word behind “heart,” takes in the mind as well as the feelings, so Jesus said in four Greek words what Moses had said in three Hebrew ones.

Four more links run from this chapter into the Gospels, and the New Testament makes each one itself rather than leaving it to be inferred.

• Jesus answered the devil out of this chapter, twice. To the offer of the kingdoms He replied, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10), which is Deuteronomy 6:13. The Hebrew of Deuteronomy 6:13 reads “thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him,” while the Greek Old Testament in use in Jesus’ day carries the word “only,” which is the form He quotes. That word is what makes the answer final: an offer of shared worship has nowhere to go once “only” is in the verse. To the invitation to jump from the temple He replied, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matthew 4:7), which is Deuteronomy 6:16 word for word. To tempt God here means to put Him on trial and make Him prove Himself on demand. His third answer, “Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4), came from Deuteronomy 8:3. All three answers came out of the same short stretch of one book.
• He met Massah’s test and refused it. At Massah, Israel had no water, turned on Moses, and asked “Is the LORD among us, or not?” (Exodus 17:7). God gave them water out of a rock, and the place kept a name that means testing. Christ, hungry in a wilderness after forty days, was invited to demand the same kind of proof from His Father and would not ask for it.
• He kept what the law required and nobody had kept. Deuteronomy 6:25 holds out righteousness on the condition of keeping all these commandments, and Scripture says plainly that no one has met that condition (Romans 3:23). Paul answers with a righteousness that arrives from outside the law altogether, “even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe” (Romans 3:21-22). God counts a person righteous through faith in Jesus, who did keep it.
• He is the out and the in. “He brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in” (6:23) carries the shape of the gospel as well as the shape of the exodus. Paul writes it as one sentence: God “hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13).

When, Where, and Why

• When: at the very end of the forty years in the wilderness. Deuteronomy 1:3 places Moses’ addresses in the fortieth year after Israel left Egypt, in the eleventh month. He tells them himself that he is a hundred and twenty years old and will not cross the Jordan (Deuteronomy 31:2).
• Where: the plains of Moab, east of the Jordan (Deuteronomy 1:5; Numbers 22:1). Israel is close enough to see the land and has not yet crossed into it, which is why every command in the chapter is written for life on the other side of the river.
• Why: Moses is not going in with them. Chapter 5 ends with God saying of Israel, “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me” (Deuteronomy 5:29), and God is wishing there for the very thing chapter 6 then commands. Moses has one last chance to fix that in a new generation before he dies.

Key Verses

Deuteronomy 6:5: “And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

Love God with your whole inner self, your whole life, and everything you have. This is the verse the rest of the chapter exists to protect: the teaching, the words on the hand and the doorframe, and the warning against forgetting are all ways of keeping this one command alive.

Deuteronomy 6:7: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”

Israel is to teach God’s words to their children over and over, and to talk about them at home, on the road, at bedtime and first thing in the morning. Faith is handed on here in ordinary hours rather than in a scheduled lesson, and the hours named are the ones anybody has.

Deuteronomy 6:12: “Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”

Israel is told to watch itself, or it will forget the God who ended its slavery and marched it out of Egypt. The warning lands at the exact moment their life is about to turn comfortable, which is the moment Moses judged to be dangerous.

Deuteronomy 6:23: “And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers.”

“Thence” means from there, so the line reads: He brought them out of Egypt in order to bring them into the land He had sworn to give their ancestors. The rescue had a destination, and this is the sentence a father is told to hand his child when the child asks why the family obeys.

Key Lessons from Deuteronomy 6

• Knowing who God is comes before loving Him, which is why the confession of verse 4 stands in front of the command of verse 5.
• God asks for the whole person, not a portion of one, and heart, soul and might between them leave nothing out.
• What is not already in your own heart is hard to hand to anyone else, which may be why verse 6 comes before verse 7.
• Faith is passed on in ordinary hours more than in set-aside ones, which is what the four moments in verse 7 amount to.
• Plenty can make a person forget the God who supplied it, which is why verse 12 arrives as a warning rather than as an observation.
• Testing God means demanding that He prove Himself again, and Israel had already been given proof enough at Massah.
• When a child asks why we obey God, the answer Moses puts in the parent’s mouth is a story about rescue before it is anything about rules.

For the whole book at a glance, read our chapter-by-chapter guide: The Book of Deuteronomy Summary by Chapter. You can test what you remember with our Deuteronomy 6 quiz, or read the chapter for yourself at Deuteronomy 6 (KJV). And to go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: Lessons from Deuteronomy 6.

Bible Study Questions

1. Read Deuteronomy 6:1-3. What does Moses say obedience will bring Israel in the land, and who besides the adults listening is named in verse 2?
2. Verse 6 puts God’s words in the heart before verse 7 puts them in a child’s ear. Why does Moses order it that way, and what goes wrong when the order is reversed?
3. List the four things in verses 10 and 11 that Israel did not do for themselves. Why does Moses attach the warning of verse 12 to that list rather than to a list of hardships?
4. Read Exodus 17:1-7 alongside Deuteronomy 6:16. What exactly did Israel say at Massah, and what would the same attitude sound like coming out of a person today?
5. In verses 20 to 25 a child asks what the commandments mean. What does the father say first, and what does that order tell you about how obedience and God’s rescue are related?
6. Jesus answered the devil twice from this chapter (Matthew 4:7, 4:10). What was He being offered each time, and what did each answer refuse?

Frequently Asked Questions

Deuteronomy 6, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it:

2 That thou mightest fear the LORD thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged.

3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the LORD God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey.

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

10 And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,

11 And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full;

12 Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.

13 Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name.

14 Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;

15 (For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

16 Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, as ye tempted him in Massah.

17 Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee.

18 And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD: that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers,

19 To cast out all thine enemies from before thee, as the LORD hath spoken.

20 And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD our God hath commanded you?

21 Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in Egypt; and the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand:

22 And the LORD shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes:

23 And he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he sware unto our fathers.

24 And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day.

25 And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the LORD our God, as he hath commanded us.