ON THE MOST IMPORTANT WORD IN THE SHEMA

(DEUTERONOMY VI 4-5)

by

J. GERALD JANZEN
Indianapolis

Although the word 'ehad (RSV "one") in the Shema is patient of

a variety of construals, the variety may be grouped into two sorts:
the word says something about Israel's God in se (Yahweh is "one,
unique," or the like); or it says something about the claim of this
God upon Israel ("Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone," or the
like). The latter sort of construal has received increasing support in
recent years, as biblical scholars have asserted the need to disen-
tangle interpretation of the Shema from the concerns of the explic-
itly monotheistic philosophy or theology of a later age, and as they
have analysed the Shema in the context of Israel's covenant tradi-
tions. In such a construal, the opening sentence contains not so
much an affirmation to Israel about Yahweh as a claim upon Israel
for exclusive covenant loyalty to Yahweh. 1
Consensus, however, is not yet in sight. This reflects the fact that
in the Shema the meaning of 'ehad is ascertainable only indirectly,
from a variety of contextual and thematic considerations. Thus, for
example, the construal "Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone" is
argued in part from presumably similar statements involving the
use of the phrase l'ébad/ -, "alone", and from the general themes (in
Deuteronomy and elsewhere) of Yahweh's claim to exclusive loyal-
ty vl*s-a-vis other gods. The degree of indirectness of this construal
is indicated by the fact that other instances of 'ehad meaning
"alone" have yet to be adduced in the Hebrew Bible.
In this article, I wish to explore the first sort of construal
("Yahweh is one") in a way that avoids importation of
anachronistic philosophical and theological concerns, and that
identifies a concern for the "oneness" of Israel's God squarely

1 I will not
attempt to survey recent interpretations. I will, however, comment
below on the proposal of Francis I. Andersen.

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within Israel's religious history and at the heart of the covenant

traditions. As with other interpretations, my argument will per-
force rest largely on indirect evidence; though in contrast to the
"Yahweh alone" construal, I hope to show that the specific nuance
I propose for "one" occurs in at least two other biblical passages.
The upshot of my analysis will be that the claim upon Israel to love
Yahweh its God with all its heart and soul and strength follows
upon an affirmation to Israel that Yahweh is 'ehad, "one". The
purpose of this affirmation is to identify in God the dependable
ground upon which an exhortation to wholehearted loyalty may ap-
propriately be made.

In a short but penetrating discussion of the theological issues in

the Shema, Patrick D. Miller makes a number of points pertinent
to my thesis. He takes the Decalogue, in particular its Prologue and
first two Stipulations, as the most important co-text2 for the inter-
pretation of the Shema. He goes so far as to say-correctly, in my
opinion-that "the Shema is a mirror image of the first part of the
Decalogue" .3 One implication which he draws from this correla-
tion is of special interest: whereas the partial quotation of the
Shema in the New Testament tends to confine our attention to its
demand aspect, the Shema (like the Decalogue) contains not only
a claim upon Israel but also an affirmation concerning Israel's God.
Miller writes.

... it is as the God who sets an afflicted and enslaved people free
that the Lord creates and claims a relationship with the people.
The single ground for identifying the Lord and explaining why
that one claims to be "your God" is the clause "who brought
you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage" (p. 20, italics
added).
That is to say, the demands of the covenant are rooted in the affir-
mation of the identity and character of the God who establishes the

2 The word "co-text" indicates the literary environment of the Shema, in

distinction from "context" which refers to its worldly environment. See
Christopher Butler, Interpretation,Deconstruction,and Ideology(Oxford, 1984), p. 4.
I will be discussing "context" as well as "co-text" in this article.
"The Most Important Word: The Yoke of the Kingdom", Iliff Review(1984),
pp. 17-29.

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covenant. If it is correct that the Shema mirrors the first part of the
Decalogue, then the identity and character of the covenanting God
in the Shema is given in the word 'ehad. To be sure, the Prologue
to the Decalogue does not explicitly address the question of the
divine unity. But it does address and confessionally answer the
question as to the character of Israel's God. This it does by sum-
ming up the narrative of Yahweh's deliverance from Egypt. That
narrative implies Yahweh's unity, in the form of fidelity to the
promises made to the ancestors. That fidelity becomes a burning
issue under the vicissitudes of Israel's history. In such a crisis, the
alternatives become worship of other gods, or re-affirmation of
Yahweh's fidelity and integrity. It is as one such re-affirmation, I
suggest, that we are to hear the word, "Yahweh 'ehad".

(1) We may begin with the narrative in Exod. i-xxiv and xxxii-
xxxiv. As xix 4 and xx 2 make clear, the covenant at Sinai is
grounded in the redemption from Egypt. That redemption, in turn,
is grounded in the identity and nature of Israel's God as disclosed
in a two-fold manner at the burning bush (iii 1-iv 17): in the giving
of the divine name (iii 14); and in the divine self-manifestation as
the God of the ancestors (iii 6), a God whose compassionate saving
acts (iii 7-8) are motivated by remembrance of the covenant and
promise made to those ancestors (ii 23-5). The integral connection
between the divine name and the divine relation to the ancestors is
indicated by the way in which the name is given in iii 14,

God said to Moses,

"Say this to the people of Israel,
`'ehyeh has sent me to you' ", ,

is immediately augmented in iii 15,

God also said to Moses,

"Say this to the people of Israel,
"
` Yahweh, the God of your fathers... has sent me to you.
Embedded in such a narrative, the Prologue to the Sinai covenant
is instinct with implications of the divine covenant fidelity. In fact,
a comparison of Exod. iii 1-15 with Exod. xx 2 makes it clear that
both redemption from Egypt and the Sinai covenant are grounded

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in the character of God as defined in terms of fidelity to the

ancestors. (As we shall see, this becomes a recurring motif in
Deuteronomy.)
The crisis narrated in Exod. xxxii-xxxiv is instructive for the way
in which it portrays from both sides the issue of the integrity of the
covenant partners. The crisis begins when the manufacture of the
golden calf throws in question Israel's loyalty to Yahweh. The other
side of the crisis emerges when Yahweh says to Moses,

Go down; for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of
Egypt, have corrupted themselves ... Now therefore let me alone,
that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them;
but of you I will make a great nation (xxxii 7, 10).

That these words place the integrity of Yahweh in question is clear

from the several considerations which Moses raises in his in-
tercessory response.
In the first place, Moses counters Yahweh's words "your people,
whom you brought up" with the words "thy people, whom thou
hast brought forth" (xxxii 11). If it is the clause "who brought you
up out of the land of Egypt" which constitutes "the single ground
for identifying the Lord" (Miller), then in Yahweh's words to
Moses that identification has been cancelled, as if to assert that
God's identity could be maintained totally apart from the past
divine redemptive relation to the people. Moses' words in response
assume that God's identity may not be so defined. To repudiate the
Exodus as an act of Yahweh would be to open up a rift, not only
between Yahweh and people, but in the divine life itself, between
its own past and its future.
This implication is reinforced by Moses' assertion, in the second
place, that the finality of the divine wrath will allow Egypt to re-
construe Yahweh's original redemptive act as not compassionate
after all, but evil in its intent (xxxii 12). This again will imply either
Yahweh's inconsistency or Yahweh's deceptiveness, in both cases
a form of double-dealing and thereby of moral doubleness.
In the third place (xxxii 13), a final judgement will mean a
forgetting of the covenant with the ancestors based on divine oath
and promise. One who forgets such a promise will be so un-
trustworthy, so lacking in integrity (shattering the connection be-
tween iii 14 and iii 15) as to leave any promise to Moses (xxxii 9)
worthless. So grave is such a forgetting in its implications for the

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divine character, that Yahweh is called upon to turn and to repent

of the action contemplated.
The gravity of the crisis of the golden calf, not only for the ques-
tion of Israel's divided loyalties, but also for the question of the
character of Yahweh, is such that it can be resolved only through
a re-statement (or hermeneutical application to the present situa-
tion) of the divine name originally given at the burning bush:
I will proclaim before you my name Yahweh: "I will be gracious
(hnn) to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy (rbm) on whom
I will show mercy" (xxxiii 19).

The divine name so re-stated is then reiterated and further ex-

plicated, when Yahweh passes by Moses hidden in the cleft of the
rock:
Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and pro-
claimed the name of Yahweh. Yahweh passed before him, and pro-
claimed : "Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious (rahum
and hannun), slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness (hesed and 'emet)" (xxxiv 5-,6).
The relevant point here is that Yahweh's forgiveness, as grounded
in the divine name of xxxiii 19, is an enactment of Yahweh's
faithfulness eemet), or integral consistency. It is this characteriza-
tion and self-identification of God which bases the claim (xxxiv 11-
26) for Israel's loyal covenant response tn Gad Formally and func-
tionally, then xxxiv 5-10 is analogous to xx 2 as Prologue to the
Decalogue: the God of deliverance from Egypt is the God of
forgiveness. In both instances the action of God discloses the
faithfulness, and to that extent the integrity, of God.
(2) The godward side of the issue of Israelite faith is presented
in closely similar yet partly different fashion in the crisis of Num.
xiii-xiv, the incident of the report of the spies. Again Yahweh an-
nounces final judgement upon the people and proposes to make of
Moses a nation greater and mightier than they (Num. xiv 12). This
time Moses' intercessory strategy takes a somewhat different tack:
Egypt is presented as concluding, not that Yahweh led the people
forth with evil intent (Exod. xxxii 12), but that the One who
brought them out of Egypt is unable to bring them into the land as
intended, and therefore has slain them in the wilderness. A chasm
opens up between the divine saving intent and the inability, in the
face of the people's sin, to carry that intent through to completion.

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The chasm will be closed, and the divine integrity secured, only by
a display of power (Num. xiv 17) consistent with the power
displayed in the Exodus (Num. xiv 13)-a power of forgiveness
enclosed in the promise of Exod. xxxiv 6-7 which Moses now in-
vokes (Num xiv 18-19).
(3) The two-sided issue arises again at another point of grave
crisis, the last years of the Northern Kingdom as addressed in
Hosea. Recent commentators have recognized that the progressive
gravity of the divine judgement in Hos. i 4-8 is announced in part
through a play on the two instances of divine name-giving in Exod.
iii and xxxiii: the name of the second child, lj' ruhama, negates the
divine name given in Exod. xxxiii 19 and xxxiv 5-7, while the name
of the third child, "not my people", is followed by the negation of
the divine name given in Exod iii 14: "I am no longer 'I will be'
to you" (Hos. i 8). Since the people's existence is grounded in
Yahweh, also known as 'ehyeh, this negation of the divine name
rhetorically enacts a divine intention like that announced in Exod.
xxxii 10, "I will consume them." But that intention would not only
consume the people; it would dissolve the character of God as iden-
tified in Exod. iii 15 and, by implication, of God as named in Exod.
iii 14.
This time there is no Moses-style intercession; for the most that
Hosea can muster is a prayer that acquiesces in the inevitability of
the divine wrath (ix 14, 17). Instead, the reader is carried forward
to ch. xi and an unparallelled portrayal of the turmoil within God.
The divine intention for irreversible judgement (xi 7) threatens to
tear open an unhealable wound in the heart of the God who called
Israel out of Egypt (xi 1). The wound is healed, the divine integrity
is sustained, only through an act of repentance in which, God ex-
claims, "My heart is changed within me; / my compassion grows
altogether (yahad) warm" (xi 8). The total and unreserved character
of this resolution (one might say, "with all the heart, soul and
strength") is indicated by the word yahad, cognate with the 'ehad of
the Shema.4 4

(4) The two-sided issue arises again with the fall of the Southern
Kingdom and the devastation of the exile. The texts posing the god-
ward side of the issue are too numerous to be surveyed here. We

4 See
my essay, "Metaphor and Reality in Hosea 11", Semeia24 (1982), pp.
7-44.

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may note in passing that in Deutero-Isaiah as well as Ezekiel the

redemption and restoration of the community is said to be for the
sake of Yahweh's name. Analogously to the re-presentation of the
divine name in Exod. xxxiii 19, the refrain "I am Yahweh" which
runs through Deutero-Isaiah affirms the restoration of Israel
through God's faithfulness, not only to the covenant relation, but
to the divine character. It is through the proclamation of that
faithfulness that Yahweh's identity and integrity are re-constituted
for Deutero-Isaiah's hearers.
(5) The issue, on both sides, takes a particularly interesting form
in the book of Job; for here it involves not a sinful but an innocent
human covenant partner. As Matitiahu Tsevat has reminded us,5
the narrative of the book of Job is energized by two inter-related
questions: if for God the question arises as to the nature and the
grounds of human loyalty to God, for Job the question arises as to
the grounds of divine action toward human kind, and (more deep-
ly) as to the character of God as disclosed in such action. Precisely
in the context of Job's final oath of covenant loyalty, he refers to
the divine as 'ehdd (Job xxxi 15). In spite of all the accusations
against God in the preceding chapters, Job now claims from God
an integrity which will answer to the integrity which he asserts in
and through his oath of loyalty.6 6
Another usage of 'ehdd for God in the book of Job occurs in xxiii
13. This comes in the context of that speech in which (as I argue
in my commentary) Job calls God's Exodus reputation into ques-
tion. The immediate context is xxiii 11-17, which may be analysed
as follows: in xxiii 11-12, Job asserts his unswerving loyalty both
in deed ("my foot") and in attitude and intention ("my bosom").
Yet, Job is terrified by the presence of God who makes his heart
faint (xxiii 15-17). This is because, in spite of Job's loyalty, God has
a single, unchangeable purpose for him (xxiii 13-14):
But he is unchangeable (be)ebiid) and who can turn him?
What he desires, that he does.
For he will complete what he appoints for me;
and many such things are in his mind.
5 "The
Meaning of the Book of Job", in J. L. Crenshaw (ed.), Studiesin Ancient
Israelite Wisdom,(New York, 1976).
6 If the
"virgin" in Job xxxi 1-2 refers to the temptations of foreign cults, the
chapter offers an oath of covenant loyalty reflecting the basic pattern of the cove-
nant stipulations. For fuller discussion of xxxi 1-2, 15, see my commentary on Job
in Interpretation:A Bible Commentary forPreachingand Teaching(Atlanta, 1985).

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The connotation of 'ehad here is unmistakable. God's "oneness" is

the unity between desire and action, between intention and execu-
tion. Such is this "oneness", that God's action cannot be turned
or deflected from its goal. The divine "integrity" consists in the
unswerving dedication with which God pursues the divine purpose
for Job. This is precisely the connotation which I am proposing for
'ehdd in the Shema. Of course, in the Shema such a connotation is
intended to be deeply reassuring, as the divine ground for Israel's
loyal covenant response, and as the positive content of Israel's
memory and hope; whereas Job's ironic affirmation imparts a
negative connotation to God's oneness. In Exod. xxxii 12 Moses
had besought Yahweh to "turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent
of this evil against thy people". There, it was in this turning that
the divine integrity was maintained, so far as such a turning pre-
served the unity of divine saving desire and action, saving intention
and execution, toward Israel. Job here subverts the ancient tradi-
tion of God's merciful turning, not by questioning the divine in-
tegrity, but by affirming it ironically as God's undeflectibility from
dark purposes. If in ch. xxiii Job calls into question God's Exodus
reputation, in xxiii 13 such a questioning may echo the terminology
not only of Exod. xxxii 12 ("turn") but also of the Shema ("one"),
and thereby may work to subvert that Deuteronomic text.' 7
If now, xxiii 13 subverts the customary affirmation that Yahweh
is 'ehad while xxxi 15 appeals to it, the apparent contradiction in
Job's usages is no surprise; for the general tension between affirma-
tion and denial, and therefore between specific uses of conventional
terms and motifs, is characteristic of Job's dilemma. All the energy
which he brings to his moral challenge of God has as its ultimate
aim the discovery that he is wrong in his accusations and right in
his hope that God is in fact as the tradition has said. Taken
together, then, and precisely in their tension with one another,
these two uses of 'ehdd in Job are dramatically suggestive for the in-
terpretation of that word in the Shema.
(6) In the above five sections I have argued from a number of
texts outside Deuteronomy that the question of Yahweh's integrity
vis-a-vis Israel is of paramount importance in the biblical tradition,
as a counterpoint to the question of Israel's integrity if not finally

'
Job x 3-13 is reminiscent of Exod. xxxii 12: as Moses suspects an evil intent
behind the Exodus, so Job suspects an evil intent behind God's creative goodness.

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exceeding it in importance. My purpose has been to provide a

context-of-discourse which will support my construal of the term
'ehdd in the Shema. Such support from outside Deuteronomy is of
course only suggestive, in the absence of more immediate and
direct evidence from within Deuteronomy itself. I shall adduce such
evidence in section (7) below. But first I want to deal with a text
which, standing outside Deuteronomy proper, is in the
Deuteronomistic tradition. This text, Jer. xxxii 38-41, may in fact
function as an exegesis and application of the Shema to a post-exilic
situation, and in any case by virtue of its Deuteronomistic character
serves as a transition to Deuteronomy itself.
Yahweh is presented as announcing the divine intent to redeem
the people from captivity and to restore them to the land. In xxxii
38 the covenant clich6. "They shall be my people and I shall be
their God", introduces the following words:

a1 Ai I will give (natan) them one heart and one (e4dd) way
to fear me all their days
for their good and that of their children after them.

b' B And I will make for them an everlasting covenant,

that I will not turn back from doing them good.

b2 A2 And the fear of me I will put (natan) in their hearts,

that they may not turn aside from me.

2B2And I will rejoice over them to do them good,

and I will plant them in this land
in (bo faithfulness ('emet), with all my heart and with
(bel all my soul.

This passage displays two interwoven poetic structures, each em-

bodying the two themes of Israel's loyalty to Yahweh and Yahweh's s
loyalty to Israel. In one structure, the two themes occur in a two-
fold repetition. in the other structure the same two
themes occur doubly again, this time in an inversion, alblb2a2.
We may attend first to the repetitive structure AIBIA 2B2

A' I will given (natan) them ... heart ... fear

B' I will not turn back ... doing them good
A' ... fear ... I will put (natan) ... their hearts
B 2 ... to do them good ... I will plant them ... in faithfulness.

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The repeated "A" elements are the verb nitan ("give, put") and
the nouns "heart" and "fear". The result of Yahweh's giving is
that Israel will be able to give wholehearted and undivided loyalty.
This undividedness could have been expressed, in this
Deuteronomistic context, by saying something like "I will circum-
cise their heart, so that they will fear [or love] me with all their heart
and with all their soul", as in the similar passage in Deut. xxx 1-
10.8 But the expression "with all heart and soul" is to be put to an-
other use in this passage. Therefore Israel's undividedness is in-
1
dicated by the use of the term 'ehdd. Meanwhile, the repeated "B"
elements are the expression "do[ing] them good", and the
equivalent statements "I will not turn back" and "I will plant them
... in faithfulness". Clearly, to "turn back from doing them good"
would be to cease to act "in faithfulness, with all heart and soul,"
just as for Israel to "turn aside" from God would be to lose their
"one heart and one way." Now, the promise of divine reliability
is here articulated in a peculiarly interesting way. For with the
words "in faithfulness, with all my heart and with all my soul (the
same Hebrew preposition in all three instances), Yahweh is
represented as taking upon the divine lips the very phrases which
everywhere else in the Deuteronomic tradition are used to claim or
affirm Israel's loyalty to God. One could not wish for clearer
evidence that the issue for Israelite faith included the question of the
divine integrity.
Clear as this is, it is augmented by evidence in the inverted struc-
ture alblb2a2:

al one ('ehact) heart and one way

bl that I will not turn back from doing them good
b2 that they may not turn aside from me
a2 in (bo faithfulness, with (bo all my heart and with all my
soul

In this inverted structure, the "included" elements in blb2 are the

balancing negative clauses "that I will not turn back from doing
them good" and "that they may not turn aside from me". That is,
bl addresses the question of divine loyalty while b2addresses the
question of Israel's loyalty. The "including" elements in a'a2 are
the complementary phrases "one heart and one way," and "in

g Otherwise the Deuteronomic

figure of circumcison of the heart (Deut x 16,
xxx 6) occurs only in the Jeremianic tradition (Jer. iv 4; and cf. Jer. ix 24).

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faithfulness, with all my heart and with all my soul. " While al con-
cerns the possibility of Israel's loyalty, a2 concerns the assurance of
Yahweh's loyalty. This way of setting forth answering loyalties re-
sounds with echoes of the Shema

Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is lehdd;

So love Yahweh your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with (M) all
your might.

What is going on in Jer. xxxii 39-41 may be explicated further

from related Deuteronomistic passages. When the Deuteronomic
Historian says of King Josiah that "Before him there was no king
like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his
soul and with all his might" (2 Kgs xxiii 25), he is being measured
by the claims of the Shema. This is emphasized by the fact that,
whereas the dyadic "with all the heart and with all the soul" occurs
as a Deuteronomistic refrain,9 only in 2 Kgs xxiii 25 is the triadic
expression of the Shema reproduced exactly.
If Josiah is thus represented as the fulfillment of the demands of
the Shema, and thereby as the " 'hero" of the Deuteronomistic
History,10 at the same time he is presented as the fulfillment of the
terms which King David, near death, conveys to Solomon. For in
1 Kgs ii 1-4 (heavily Deuteronomistic), David concludes with the
words, "If your sons take heed to their way, to walk before me in
faithfulness ('emet), with all their heart and with all their soul,
there shall not fail you a man on the throne of Israel." This three-
fold expression finds its exact parallel only in Jer xxxii 41. The
inter-textual connections are fraught with significance. If Josiah
fulfills the claims of the Shema and the conditions which David his
dynastic ancestor relayed to Solomon, then Josiah surely should in-
herit the benefits of which David speaks: "you [will] prosper in all
that you do and wherever you turn ... There shall not fail you a
man on the throne of Israel" (1 Kgs ii 3-4). This means, however,
that we may take the report of Josiah's death in battle, and the en-
suing report of the fate of his descendants in exile, as the

9 Deut. iv 29, x 12, xi 13, xiii 4, xxvi 16, xxx 2, 6, 10;

Josh. xxii 5, xxiii 14;
1 Kgs viii 48.
10 See Richard D. Nelson,
"Josiah in the Book of Joshua", JBL 100 (1981),
pp. 531-40, on Josiah, and for a number of points bearing on the above discussion.

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Deuteronomic Historian's implicit way of posing the question of

the faithfulness and integrity of Yahweh.
In that case Jer. xxxii 36-41-in taking up the three-fold expres-
sion found in one form or another only in the Shema, 1 Kgs ii 4
and 2 Kgs xxiii 25-may be viewed as one attempt within the
Deuteronomic tradition to resolve the theological problem posed by
Josiah's death and the end of the dynasty in exile. In this passage,
the divine integrity is re-affirmed eschatologically in terms of the
promised restoration.
All these considerations lead naturally to the following equation:

SHEMA JEREMIAH xxxii

Yahweh: one = in faithfulness, with all

my heart and with all my
soul
Israel: with all your heart = one heart and one way
and with all your soul
and with all your strength

This is to suggest that in the Shema the 'ehad is to be construed

as referring to Yahweh's integrity or moral unity. It is that moral
unity which is the ground of the claim for Israel's loyalty (the
Shema); and it is that same moral unity which is the ground of the
possibility that, in spite of centuries of demoralizingly ambiguous
response (compare Jer. xvii 1 and xiii 23), Israel as a whole (and
not just a Josiah) may be enabled to offer such loyalty (so also xxxi
31-4).
(7) From Jer. xxxii it is clear that the issue of divine integrity
present in other texts of the Hebrew Bible appears also in the
Deuteronomistic tradition, and this in terms most closely related to
the Shema. Now I shall seek to show that it is at home also in the
book of Deuteronomy, both generally and in connection with the
Shema.
To begin with, we must note the frequency in Deuteronomy of
the reference to Yahweh's oath and promise to the ancestors. Oc-
curring some 29 times, this reference constitutes an important
motif in the theology of the Deuteronomist. It is not just that the
entrance into the land is presented as the fulfillment of that oath
and promise, but further, that the God who made that promise will
be shown by its fulfillment to be a faithful God. To be sure, the

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word 'emet, "faithfulness" , does not occur in Deuteronomy." But

the implication as to Yahweh's faithfulness is clear in the occur-
rences of the motif of the fulfilled oath. This is evident from iv 25-
31, which envisages Israel's fall into idolatry and the judgement of
exile: The God of such a judgement is further characterized (in
dependence upon Exod. xxxiv 6) as "a merciful God" eël rahfim), 12
One who will not forget the covenant sworn with the ancestors
(compare Exod. xxxii 13).13
More striking is the passage in Deut. vii. In this connection we
should recall Norbert Lohfink's identification of the rhetorical pat-
tern to which he has given the name BeweisJührung.14 In this sort of
passage the introductory words to the successive sections are the
verbs "remember" (zakar), "know" (yddac) and "keep"
The sections so introduced contain reports of what has happened in
the past, consequences for faith, and implications for action.
Lohfink notes that sometimes not all the three verbs occur; yet the
content of the sections reflects conformity to this rhetorical pattern.
In ch. vii, he observes, vii 8 grounds the first commandment in a
short presentation of the classical Prehistory of the Prologue; vii 9-
10 follow with a solemn declaration of the being of Yahweh (eine
feierliche Wesensaussage uber Jahzve) likewise in allusion to the
Decalogue; and the pattern concludes in vii 11 with an exhortation
beginning "so keep". From the fact that Yahweh has kept the oath
to the ancestors (vii 81. the primary thing Israel is to know concern-
ing the character of Yahweh is that Yahweh is "the faithful God
hanne'eman) who keeps covenant and steadfast love ..." (vii 9).
This rhetorical structure exactly corresponds to the structure of
the Shema, in which the proclamation in vi 4, "Yahweh our God,

Cognates occur in a theological sense only in i 32 and ix 23 (the failure of

Israel to believe Yahweh); in Deut. xxxii 4, 20 (concentrating Yahweh's faith-
fulness [)emûnâ]and Israel's lack thereof and in vii 9 (on which see
below).
'2 In this connection we
may recall the redemptive vision in Hab. ii 2-4, which
Yahweh vouches for as reliable In response, Habakkuk prays in part.
"Yahweh ... In wrath remember mercy (ra4im)." See my essay, "Eschatological
Symbol and Existence in Habakkuk". CBQ 44 (1982), pp. 394-414.
13 One wonders if the unusual
repetition of Yahweh in the Shema reflects Exod.
xxxiv 6: yhwh yhwh raham wehannun. In that case the two adjectives rahum and
hannun would give a specific background to the connotations of 'ehad.
Das Hauplgebol: Eine UntersuchungliterarischerEinleitungsfragenzu Dtn 5-11
(Rome, 1963), pp. 123-7.

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Yahweh is )ebiid," is followed by the claim in vi 5.15That is to say,

the opening declaration of the Shema corresponds to the
"remember" and the "know" sections of this rhetorical pattern.
This tends to militate against the construal of in the Shema
as "alone". Rather, we are to construe the opening sentence of the
Shema as explicated in vii 9. Structurally, the two passages corre-
spond closely:

vi 4 yahweh
yahweh 'ehad
vii 9 yahweh 'eloheka
hû) häWifhîm ha'el hanne)emän

In both passages the opening "Yahweh" is resumed after the

following "Our/your God", in the one instance by the reiteration
of the name, in the other by the pronoun standing in for that name.
(The repetition of the name befits the more solemn and founda-
tional character of the Shema-echoing Exod. xxxiv 6?-while the
pronominal substitution befits the exegetical character of ch. vii.)
This leaves the )ehdd of the Shema with its focus on the faithfulness
to divine covenant. In this way, ch. vii guides our interpretation of
the most important word in the Shema.
The above textual data are representative, rather than ex-
haustive, in their attestion of the integrity of God as a prominent
issue in Deuteronomy. But as so far considered, the issue is
presented only from the side of God, in the form of varied and
repeated divine assurances to Israel. No less striking is the way in
which the issue is presented from the side of the people, coming as
it does at the very beginning of the book and at the end of the first
major section, the great sermon on the first commandment. In
Deut. i 26-28 the narrator re-presents the crisis narrated in Num.
xiii-xiv as a crisis originating in the people's doubt as to God's
motives and trustworthiness. In ch. ix the narrator re-presents both
the Numbers incident and the crisis of the golden calf in Exod.
xxxii-xxxiv, the latter likewise originating in the people's implicit
doubt concerning Yahweh. That the sermon on the first command-
ment should come to a climax in such a way is weighty rhetorical

11 Note that the claim is introduced

by a converted perfect, as in the case of the
verbs introducing the respective sections in Lohfink's Beweisfiihrung.

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evidence for the importance of the two-sidedness of the issue of in-

tegrity in Deuteronomy.
Needless to say, the Deuteronomist is not attempting to re-open
that issue, but rather, in view of its wide-open character both in the
received tradition and in his own time, to respond to that issue with
every possible assurance as to Yahweh's reliability. The argument
is that, if such great two-sided crises of the past can be survived
through Moses' intercession, and God's faithful hearing of Moses
and remembering of the ancestors, then the people of the present
generation may hope in God's steadfastness toward them when
they repent, no matter how grievously they may fail the covenant.
(This is the burden of passages such as iv 25-31 and xxx 1-10.) With
its conclusion in x 12-15, the long sermon on the first command-
ment comes full circle back to the Shema, having explicated the
meaning of its )ebiid.
When the oneness of Yahweh is taken as the basis for the follow-
ing claim, the Shema is seen to parallel the covenant formulary as
exemplified in the Decalogue: 16

Preamble Preamble
I am Yahweh your God Yahweh (is) our God
Historical Prologue Historical Prologue
who brought you out ... Yahweh is 'ehad
Stipulations Stipulations
Yon shall have no other You shall love Yahweh
gods... your God ...

As Patrick Miller writes,

... "the Lord is one" serves to underscore that the one who receives
our ultimate allegiance and is the ground of being and value for us
is consistent, not divided within "self" in any comprehensive and
inclusive. We do not encounter the reality of God in one time or place
or experience that is not wholly conformable with all other moments
and experiences. The presence and involvement of God in the world
and in shaping history and human destiny is not in one guise now and
another guise elsewhere. In purpose and being God is one and the same
though open and hidden to the future, becoming as well as being ([n.
3], p. 22; italics added).

'6 Some have construed the

opening lines of the Decalogue as constituting an
extended casuspendens.Even in such a syntactic construal, the sequence of formal
elements, with their respective thematics, remains similar.

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With such an understanding of the oneness of God in the Shema,

the issue of monotheism gains a fresh perspective. Acknowledging
that this question as posed for Israel's religion in the formative
period resists easy answers in the categories of later philosophy and
theology, Miller asserts "it is clear that the First and Second Com-
mandments and the Shema are the roots from which that theological
position has grown". He goes on to say,

... the monotheism which arises out of this Deuteronomic center

claims that there is only one ultimate or absolute-the power that
undergirds all reality is one and not multiple, a whole and not divided
... (p. 28; italics added).

The ultimate power is one as known in its fidelity and absolute

reliability, a fidelity in the divine relation to the world and in the
divine self-relation.

At this point I will address briefly Francis I. Andersen's construal

of Deut vi 4, "Our one God is Yahweh, Yahweh", in which
" Yahwe ... yahwe is the (discontinous) predicate: 'Wldhe-nu- ... )ebäd is
the (discontinuous) subject." 17 If his syntactic analysis is correct,
that by itself does not decide exactly what is conveyed in the word
'ehad. My arguments to this point suggest that, in the sentence as
Andersen reads it, the word would function in this way: "our
faithful [or consistent, or 'integrous', if there were such a word]
God is Yahweh, Yahweh".
But several aspects of Andersen's analysis remain problematic.
His initial syntactic analogues for Deut. vi 4 are Exod. xv 3, ix 27
and iv 14, of which only the last-mentioned contains a repeated, or
discontinuous, element (in this instance the predicate); and of this
"discontinuous" construal of iv 14 Andersen says only that "it is
possible." His final analogue is likewise unconvincing. He writes,
"The same construction [as in Deut. vi 4] is found in the cry of
allegiance in Isaiah 33 : 22-'Our judge is Yahweh, our legislator is
Yahweh, our king is Yahweh!' But Andersen has abstracted this
construction from its connection with immediately following "he
shall save us." The sentence yahweh sopetenic, yahweh mehoqeqenu,
yahweh malkenic, is analogous to Deut. xxxi 3, yahzveh

11 The Hebrew VerblessClause in the Pentateuch(Nashville, 1970), p. 47.

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3WIdhekd hû) cõbër lepaneka, which Andersen translates "YHWH your

god, he is crossing in front of you" (p. 60, # 87).
His assertion that "The confession [in Deut. vi 4] goes with the
first commandment, 'You shall not have other gods besides me' "
is form-critically unlikely. As Miller has shown, and as I have
argued above, Deut. vi 4 is not part of the Stipulations, but is the
Shema-analogue to the Prologue.
Finally, Andersen's statement that " A combination of Rule 3
and Rule 6 points to another solution" is a confession of the im-
provisational character of his argument, an acknowledgement that
the first verse of the Shema does not conform exactly to any
standard nominal sentence pattern. On the semantic level, words
which display a variety of standard nuances may be used in con-
texts which impart fresh nuance to them. (What Owen Barfield
calls "speaker's meaning" goes beyond, and at the same time
augments, the store of "lexical meanings".) Just so on the syntactic
level, in the Shema we seem to have a formulation which goes
beyond standard sentence patterns. The purely syntactic con-
straints may be, as Andersen proposes, "a combination of Rule 3
and Rule 6"; but other possibilities are at hand. Given that the
Shema is patterned basically on the Decalogue (with vi 4 as the Pro-
logue and circumstance for the claim in vi 5), the syntactic con-
straint may be sought in Andersen's Rule 3 qualified in the
direction of Riile 5 w 4.3). / To cite one of his examples .1 (see
, o. 43
.1.
[iii], and p. 57, # 50): 'abinu ziiqën ... nasqeh 'et-'abinu yayin.
"Our father is old ... come, let us ply our father with wine" (Gen.
xix 31-2). Such a construction may illuminate the relation between
Deut. vi 4 and vi 5: "... Yahweh is one, so love Yahweh your God
with all your heart ..." "Speaker's syntax" is likely to occur where
the burden of the utterance is unusually great. When it occurs, any
and all construals are soft; but in such passages especially the
linguist should not overlook the help offered by a consideration of
form-critical constraints and the general themes of a workl8-in this
instance, the covenant formulary and its specification in Lohfink's s
Beze?eisfuhrung, the prominence of the motif of Yahweh's faithfulness
to covenanted promise, and the exegesis of the Shema in Deut. vii
9 suggested above.

18 On the inter-relation of
linguistics and poetics, see Meir Sternberg. The
Poeticsof Biblical Narrative (Bloomington, 1985), p. 21.

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As acknowledged at the outset, my interpretation of the term

"one" in the Shema is based largely on indirect evidence of the sort
commonly adduced in literary readings of texts, where connota-
tions of words are construed from immediate context, association
with similar contexts or analogous images or statements, and the
like. In the nature of the case, such a construal must be content to
claim something less than conclusive proof. But it needs to be re-
peated that the standard construals of 'ehad in the Shema likewise
rest upon contextual and analogical arguments, and that none of
them so far has gained a consensus. As mentioned earlier, however,
my proposal has the advantage over the construal "Yahweh
alone", in being able to claim other instances in the Hebrew Bible
where 'ehad carries the same connotation. I have already discussed
Job xxiii 13 and xxxi 15. Another instance occurs in Dan. ii 9.
Twice in Dan. ii 2-9 the king has asserted that "the word from
me is sure" concerning punishment for failure to make known his
dream and its interpretation. When he goes on in ii 9 to say "there
is one sentence for you", the latter expression appears to "second"
(in James Kugel's use of the term) the two earlier expressions "the
word from me is sure." In that case hada hi' diitekôn may be
translated "your sentence is one," with the connotation, "your
sentence as already spelled out [ii 5] is unchangeably fixed: it will
be what I have said it will be, and you can count on that." Such
a connotation contrasts the king's "sure" word with the "lying and
corrupt words" (ii 9) which the king's soothsayers will speak to
him.
There is one further text, on which any plausible interpretation
of the Shema must shed light: Zech. xiv 9, "On that day Yahweh
will be one and his name one." It is common to take this statement
in close connection with the immediately preceding sentence, and
to read: "And Yahweh will become king over all the earth; on that
day Yahweh will become one and his name one." In such a con-
strual, the "oneness" of Yahweh is connected with the relation be-
tween Yahweh and the whole earth. Presumably, Yahweh will be
the sole deity in all the earth, as signalled by the status of the divine
name as the sole cult-name invoked by all peoples. To that extent
this text could be taken to support the "Yahweh alone" construal
of the Shema.

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It is not certain, however, that the two sentences in xiv 9 are to

be read in such a conjunction; they may well fall within different
units of the chapter. After an opening announcement of the
eschatological theme of "The Day of Yahweh" in xiv 1-3 (an open-
ing marked off by "a day of Yahweh" in xiv 1 and "a day of bat-
tle" in xiv 3), the rest of the chapter seems to be organized around
a seven-fold recurrence of the phrase "on that day" (xiv 4, 6, 8,
9b, 13, 20, 21-end). In each of these units, an internally consistent
imagery develops a specific aspect of the new state of affairs in-
augurated by the Day of Yahweh. For the most part, the phrase
"on that day" opens each unit (in xiv 21 it closes the whole
passage). This suggests that xiv 9a is to be understood as the con-
clusion of the statements in xiv 8.19 As for xiv 9b, it may be taken
as inaugurating a new unit which ends with xiv 11: "Jerusalem
shall dwell in security." Whereas xiv 8-9a sound themes of
Yahweh's universal rule from Jerusalem, xiv 9b-11 are directed
toward Jerusalem considered in and for itself. These verses take up
the old promises and assurances concerning the security and "rest"
of this city. It is in relation to these old assurances, at the core of
the royal theology, that the assertions of "oneness" in xiv 9b are
to be understood. Beginning with the fall of Jerusalem, Yahweh's
promises concerning that city have become problematical, and to
that extent the integrity of Yahweh itself is placed in question. For
Deutero-Zechariah's predecessor, Ezekiel, the restoration of
Jerusalem was to be for the sake of the divine name. I take Zech.
xiv 9b-11 to envisage the restoration of Jerusalem to security as a
manifestation of the oneness of Yahweh and of the divine name-
that is, of the integrity of Israel's God. If, then, commentators are
correct in seeing xiv 9b as a reflex of the Shema confession, for
Deutero-Zechariah the affirmation of the integrity of Yahweh is
thrown into an eschatological perspective.
The unit opens with imagery of living waters flowing from Jerusalem. Their
spatial reach (from sea to sea) is a motif familiar in royal contexts. Thus, e.g., Ps.
lxxii 8, "May he have dominion from sea to sea, / and from the River to the ends
of the earth!", and Ps. lxxxix 26, "I will set his hand on the sea / and his right
hand on the rivers." Their temporal span (in summer as in winter) contrasts their
enduring character to the "seasonal" ebb and flow of imperial powers in the an-
cient world (compare Isa. Ix 6-7, 23-4). The imagery of waters can connote both
sovereign power (compare Isa. viii 8, Ps. lxvi 4-5) and the life-giving character of
Yahweh's rule from Jerusalem (compare Ezek. xlvii 1-12). All this imagery is
gathered up in the straightforward statement, "Yahweh will become king over all
the earth."

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To this point, I have sought to interpret the Shema in relation

to various parts of its biblical "co-text" (see n. 2 above). Now a few
comments may be essayed concerning the significance of the Shema
in its historical context. Some who have argued for the construal
"Yahweh is one" have connected the affirmation with the move-,
ment toward cultic centralization and unification in the time of
Josiah. My own analysis relates the rise of the affirmation to an-
other aspect of the religious issue confronting Israel in the time of
the composition of Deuteronomy.
The issue has its comparative background in Mesopotamia, the
religious traditions of which Thorkild Jacobsen has interpreted in
The Treasures of Darkness (New Haven, Conn., 1976). According to
Jacobsen, by the beginning of the first millennium B.C.E. the
religious issue for Babylonians was constituted by two contrasting
forms of their religious heritage as focussed in two metaphors for
the Gods. In the third millennium the gods came to be viewed as
august royal figures, transcendent and lordly in their rule of earth,
and ultimately indifferent to the needs and concerns of human be-
ings.2° In the second millennium a "personal religion" emerged (or
perhaps re-emerged) within which the gods were experienced and
perceived as divine parents of their human children, and as offering
generative power, nurture, protection and guidance. The latter
view proved unable to survive the vicissitudes of history and
nature. By the first millennium the parental metaphor by and large
had given way to the older view of the gods as august and ultimately
unanswerable to human aspiration and need. However, Jacobsen
observes, before the parental metaphor faded in Babylon it was car-
ried to Canaan by Israel's ancestors (sic) where it became the foun-
dation of Israelite faith.21 Jacobsen's concluding paragraph in his
discussion of this "personal religion" is worth quoting in full:

As far as we can see, it is only Israel that decisively extended the at-
titude of personal religion from the personal to the national realm.
The relationship of Yahweh to Israel-his anger, his compassion, his
forgiveness, and his renewed anger and punishment of the sinful
people-is in all essentials the same as that of the relation between

2°
See Jacobsen, pp. 91, 121 and 163, and contrast p. 147.
2' See the citation
of Jacobsen's interpretation in Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite
Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), p. 75 n. 120.

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god and individual in the attitude of personal religion. With this

understanding of national life and fortunes as lived under ultimate
moral responsibility, Israel created a concept of history as
purposive-one which in basic essentials still governs conceptions of
meaningful historical existence (p. 164).

As Jacobsen's last sentence implies (and as attested in Judaism

and Christianity down to the present), the parental metaphor did
not crumble in ancient Israel the way it did in Mesopotamia. But
at several points in Israel's history (attested in the texts examined
in 1-7 above) such a crumbling seemed all too likely to occur.
Perhaps the most severe such test occurred in the crisis surrounding
the fall of the southern kingdom-precisely within the horizon of
the composition of Deuteronomy. It is in the face of such a test that
the affirmation, "Yahweh 'ehad", has its significance in the context
of the history of the religions of the ancient Near East. This affirma-
tion concentrates in this one word all the connotations of the found-
ing parental metaphor (compare Exod, iv. 22-3, and Hos. xi 1),
and confesses the inner consistency of those connotations through
time and all its vicissitudes. It is this consistency which is of the
essence of the divine faithfulness Cemet, The divine
faithfulness to Israel is what it is because of an even deeper internal
divine faithfulness. The fidelity of the divine relation to Israel is
rooted in the divine self-relation that I have been calling integrity
and that the Shema calls "elia-a'.
When Rabbi Akiba, dying under torture, shaped his expiring
breath in a drawn-out )ehdd, was he not enacting his own covenant
response to God with all his heart and with all his soul and with all
his strength? And was that response not one of total reliance upon
One whose total reliability was taken to be efficaciously present in
this concentrated and most important word in the Shema?

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