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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 6:7 and Letter of Aristeas 160

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions

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Summary

In Deuteronomy 6, Moses tells Israel to speak of God's commands when they lie down and when they get up. The Letter of Aristeas keeps the same phrase but has Moses call for meditation on the works of God and the wonder of passing from sleep to waking.

Passages

Deuteronomy 6:7

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

Letter of Aristeas 160

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions · Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates
fear of God. He tells men also, when lying down to sleep and rising up again, to meditate on the works of God, not only in word, but by observing distinctly the change and impression produced on them, when they are going to sleep, and also their waking, how divine and incomprehensible the change from one of these states to the other is. The excellence of the analogy in regard to discrimination and memory has now been pointed out to you, according to our interpretation of " the cloven hoof and the chewing of the cud ". For our laws have not been drawn up at random or in accordance with the first casual thought that occurred to the mind, but with a view to truth and the
200–150 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Letter of Aristeas

References

“... Paragraph 160 continues Eleazar’s interpretations of what Moses “commanded” (κελεύει in § 158, § 159 and § 160). Here he comments on the injunction in Deuteronomy 6 that Israelites should talk about the law in all circumstances: “And you shall teach them to your sons and talk on them while sitting at home and going on the road and lying down and rising up” (Deut 6:7 NETS). This verse immediately precedes the command to bind the laws on one’s hand, commands whose order is reversed in Aristeas. As part of the interpretation, two participles are essentially quoted from Deut 6:7, κοιταζομένους καὶ διανισταμένους, when sleeping and rising. Ps.-Aristeas reports that the obligation is to “meditate or study” (μελετᾶν) rather than recite or talk as in Deuteronomy. The infinitive recalls the obligation of the righteous to meditate on the law in Ps 1:2 (OG), where the same verb occurs, although, there is no clear evidence that Ps.-Aristeas knows any of the Psalms in Greek. Nevertheless the verb μελετάω might point to some intertextual play that affects interpretations of the Mosaic commandments. ...”
Benjamin G. Wright III, The Letter of Aristeas: ‘Aristeas to Philocrates’ or ‘On the Translation of the Law of the Jews’ (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 299.

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 6:7 and Letter of Aristeas 160

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