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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 6:5 and Onkelos Deuteronomy 6:5 and Mark 10:21

Hebrew Bible · Targum · New Testament

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Summary

Deuteronomy 6 commands love of God with all one's strength, which the Aramaic translation in Targum Onkelos interprets as wealth. In Mark, the rich man says he follows the Torah, and Jesus says he needs to give his wealth, suggesting a similar reading.

Passages

Deuteronomy 6:5

Hebrew Bible
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.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Onkelos Deuteronomy 6:5

Targum
3 And you, Israel, shall receive, and keep, and perform, so that things may go well for you, and you may increase greatly, as the Lord God of your fathers has said to you, in the land which produces milk and honey. 4 Listen, Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord: 5 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your wealth. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be upon your heart. 7 And you shall teach them to your children, and talk of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you travel, and when you lie down and when you get up.
50–500 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Onkelos Deuteronomy

Mark 10:21

New Testament
17 Now as Jesus was starting out on his way, someone ran up to him, fell on his knees, and said, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’” 20 The man said to him, “Teacher, I have wholeheartedly obeyed all these laws since my youth.” 21 As Jesus looked at him, he felt love for him and said, “You lack one thing. Go, sell whatever you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22 But at this statement, the man looked sad and went away sorrowful, for he was very rich.
60–75 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Mark

References

“... We may presume Jesus cited Deuteronomy 6:5 to the scribe in Aramaic. It would be interesting to know what word he used as a rendering of me’od of the Hebrew text. The Septuagint renders this by dynamis, “might,” “power,” etc.; the synoptics use ischys, “strength.” [...] Palestinian tradition, as found in the Palestinian Targum, Onqelos and the Peshitta, rendered the word in the sense of “riches,” “abundance,” each choosing a different word to express this idea. The Palestinian Targum as found in Neofiti, Pseudo-Jonathan and the Fragment Targum has: “[thou shalt love the Lord] with all your wealth” (mamonak); Onqelos (and Targ. 2 Kings 23:25) has “with all thy property” (niksak), while the Peshitta renders “with all thy possessions” (qnynk). We may safely assume, then, that in Christ’s day this injunction of the Shema‘ was taken to mean a command to love God with all one’s external possessions. When the rich man came to Jesus asking what he should do to attain eternal life, Jesus replied that for him this meant putting this injunction of his profession of faith into practice in a particular way. Loving God with all one’s riches was now interpreted for the rich man as meaning to sell what he had, give to the poor, and follow Christ. ...”
Martin McNamara, Targum and Testament Revisited: Aramaic Paraphrases of the Hebrew Bible: A Light on the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 192.

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 6:5 and Onkelos Deuteronomy 6:5 and Mark 10:21

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