Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord - or, as the words may perhaps be better translated, 'Hear, O Israel: Yahweh (H3068) is our God ( 'Elohiym (H430), plural), Yahweh alone.' [The Septuagint has: kurios ho Theos heemoon kurios heis estin (cf. Zechariah 14:9).] The basis of their religion was an acknowledgment of the unity of God with the understanding, and the love of God in the heart (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). х lªbaadkaa (H3824), thy heart, the seat of feeling and affections-namely, of love. Napshªkaa (H5315), thy breath, the vital spirit; also the rational soul, as capable of intelligent perception and thought. And so this law is interpreted in the Gospels (Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27).]
Compared with the religious creed of all their contemporaries, how sound in principle, how elevated in character, how unlimited in the extent of its moral influence on the heart and habits of the people! Indeed, it is precisely the same basis on which rests the purer and more spiritual form of it which Christianity exhibits; but it is observable that a belief in the unity of God was a fundamental principle not of their faith only, but of their political constitution. The social fabric in all other contemporary nations rested upon the assumed truth of polytheism; and the Israelites themselves were so deeply infected with the spirit of idolatry that the stupendous miracles of the exodus could not wholly eradicate that cherished tendency, or keep them faithful to the worship and service of the true God. The wisdom of God, who had separated them for high purposes, provided that their civil polity should be essentially connected with the worship of the one living and true God; so that their national history became a history of the Church; and the moment they abandoned the service of God, they ceased to exist as a nation.
Moreover, to help in keeping a sense of religion in their minds, it was commanded that its great principles should be carried about with them wherever they went, as well as meet their eyes every time they entered their homes. A further provision was made for the earnest inculcation of them on the minds of the young by a system of parental training, which was designed to associate religion with all the most familiar and oft-recurring scenes of domestic life.