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About this book

Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 6

1 Now these are the commandments, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord your God instructed me to teach you so that you may carry them out in the land where you are headed 2 and that you may so revere the Lord your God that you will keep all his statutes and commandments that I am giving you—you, your children, and your grandchildren—all your lives, to prolong your days. 3 Pay attention, Israel, and be careful to do this so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in number—as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, said to you, you will have a land flowing with milk and honey.⁠ 4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!⁠ 5 You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being, and all your strength.⁠ 6 These words I am commanding you today must be kept in mind, 7 and you must teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up.⁠ 8 You should tie them as a reminder on your forearm and fasten them as symbols on your forehead.⁠ 9 Inscribe them on the doorframes of your houses and gates.⁠ 10 Then when the Lord your God brings you to the land he promised your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give you—a land with large, fine cities you did not build, 11 houses filled with choice things you did not accumulate, hewn-out cisterns you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—and you eat your fill, 12 be careful not to forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, that place of slavery. 13 You must revere the Lord your God, serve him, and take oaths using only his name. 14 You must not go after other gods, those of the surrounding peoples, 15 for the Lord your God, who is present among you, is a jealous God—his anger will erupt against you and remove you from the land. 16 You must not put the Lord your God to the test as you did at Massah.⁠ 17 Keep his commandments very carefully, as well as the stipulations and statutes he commanded you to observe. 18 Do whatever is proper and good before the Lord so that it may go well with you and that you may enter and occupy the good land that he promised your ancestors, 19 and that you may drive out all your enemies just as the Lord said. 20 When your children ask you later on,⁠ “What are the stipulations, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord our God commanded you?”⁠ 21 you must say to them, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt in a powerful way. 22 And he brought signs and great, devastating wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on his whole family before our very eyes. 23 He delivered us from there so that he could give us the land he had promised our ancestors. 24 The Lord commanded us to obey all these statutes and to revere him so that it may always go well for us and he may preserve us, as he has to this day. 25 We will be innocent if we carefully keep all these commandments before the Lord our God, just as he demands.”

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 6:20 and Judges 6:13

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Deuteronomy 6 shows children asking about the Torah’s commands and parents explaining by recalling the rescue from Egypt. Judges follows this pattern when Gideon asks skeptically whether that still matters as the people now suffer under Midian.

Passages

Deuteronomy 6:20

Hebrew Bible
18 Do whatever is proper and good before the Lord so that it may go well with you and that you may enter and occupy the good land that he promised your ancestors, 19 and that you may drive out all your enemies just as the Lord said. 20 When your children ask you later on, “What are the stipulations, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord our God commanded you?” 21 you must say to them, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt in a powerful way. 22 And he brought signs and great, devastating wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on his whole family before our very eyes.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Judges 6:13

Hebrew Bible
11 The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak tree in Ophrah owned by Joash the Abiezrite. He arrived while Joash’s son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress so he could hide it from the Midianites. 12 The angel of the Lord appeared and said to him, “The Lord is with you, courageous warrior!” 13 Gideon said to him, “Pardon me, but if the Lord is with us, why has such disaster overtaken us? Where are all his miraculous deeds our ancestors told us about? They said, ‘Did the Lord not bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to Midian.” 14 Then the Lord himself turned to him and said, “You have the strength. Deliver Israel from the power of the Midianites! Have I not sent you?” 15 Gideon said to him, “But Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Just look! My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my family.”
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Judges

References

"... The first education that an Israelite should have had, however, in the ethical values of the law was within the family. The head of each household had a primary responsibility in this domestic moral education (Deuteronomy 6:7; 11:19; 32:46-47). Joshua 4:6-7, 21-23 may preserve elements of ancient Israelite catechesis, in which parents and children engage in question and answer, so that the historical memory that was the foundation of OT ethics was preserved (compare Exodus 12:26-27; 13:14-15; Deuteronomy 6:20-25). The expectation that the moral ethos of Israel be handed on from father to children is thrown into relief by those two notable occasions when it was not met: Eli and Samuel. A more positive example is Ezra’s use of the heads of households, alongside the Levites, to fulfill their traditional role of proper teaching of the law to their own families (Nehemiah 8:13) ..."
Bill T. Arnold, Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 265.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Deuteronomy 6:20 and Judges 6:13

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