Shema

"Shema, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!"

I am currently taking a class on how to creatively teaching the Bible, and this is one of the questions, followed by my answers. Many thanks to Daniel Katz for his Hebrew scholarship and discussion.

Q: The Hebrew word shema means both “to hear” and “to obey.” How often does your hearing of Scripture lead to an obeying of it? Why is there often a gap between the two?

     It seems that the Hebrew connotates more than just “hear” (which is rather passive in our language) and “obey.” You could almost say that it means “heed.” On the human side, it was used to plead with God in prayer, in effect, “Hear my plea, answer me, deliver me!” It is not simply hearing, or even responding (which carries no determinate of responding negatively or positively). So if we are to shema the Word, we must take it as a call to heed Him and his commandments, and it is far more personal than obeying a set of rules. It is someone pleading with us to hear and obey Him because of his great love, calling for us to soften our hearts to his Word.

     I would say that occasionally during a corporate setting of hearing the Scripture, such as chapel, I do not always that it father than just hearing the Word, and I think this is partially because there is not enough time to let the Word settle in before moving on. But I usually take what I read as a call to something. Oddly enough, I find that when I read the Scriptures aloud to myself, it gets inside me more than just reading silently. It brings the personhood of God to bear. But it is more than that too, it's something I can't put into words, it is communion, or correspondence. The Scripture itself is not one way, because the Word dwells in us, it manifests itself in us. And prayer is not an entirely separate exercise from reading the Scriptures, for the latter calls for us to engage in the first without ceasing.

     I think the gap between the two is perhaps actually rather simple to explain. We think of Scripture as a recorded sermon, rather than a conversation. We take in what Scripture is saying as if there is no one there, and response seems silly, like clapping for the speaker after listening to a podcast in your room, alone. But what if those same principles were told to you by someone that was flesh-and-blood standing in front of you? Only the most bitter or socially oblivious would find it acceptable to not respond at all. We do not shema the Scriptures when we forget that it is a personal and infinite God who is speaking to us.

“Shema, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” ~ Deuteronomy 6:4-9