D4-4: Understanding the SHEMA As The Ancient Hebrews Understood It

Yesterday I explained the true meaning of the word “SHEMA“.

I told you it meant to actively LISTEN AND OBEY…

…as opposed to just passively listening.

Let’s see what happens when we recite the SHEMA by changing the word “hear” to “obey”.

We get the following:

“OBEY, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord“

We get a totally different feel for the verse that makes more sense within the context, doesn’t it?

Because what good does it do to listen to commands if you’re not going to obey them.

Now let’s modify the SHEMA a bit more.

FIRST, where the word “Lord” is used, God’s personal name YHVH is used instead.

This shouldn’t surprise you as I’ve pointed this out many, many times before.

SECOND, remember when I pointed out that the word “heart” in ancient Biblical times was NOT thought of as the place where our emotions resided.

Instead the heart was considered to function like how we now scientifically know the brain functions today.

In other words, ancient Middle Easterners believed the heart was where our intellect resided.

So whenever you come across the word “heart” in your Bibles (whether “Old” or New Testament), take a pen, cross it out and write in the word “mind” instead.

That will give you a much more accurate sense of how the ancient Hebrews understood certain Scripture verses.

Let’s re-render the SHEMA with these two additional changes.

Here’s what we get:

“OBEY, O Israel: YAHWEH our God is one:
And thou shalt love YAHWEH thy God with all
thine MIND, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy might.”

Now doesn’t that put a totally different slant on things?

Instead of the usual and flaky gentile church idea where all we have to do is understand God intellectually and then somehow let the Holy Spirit envelope our souls (whatever the heck that means?!) while we sit back and do absolutely nothing…

…the way I’ve redone the verse here requires us to TAKE ACTION by following His commands.

Let’s not forget that Yeshua said the SHEMA is the most important commandment of them all.

In addition, the SHEMA is the foundation of the 10 Words (the 10 commandments) and the 613 Torah commands.

Can you now see why it’s so important to get the truest possible sense of what God is saying to us through His Word?