Deuteronomy 6:4

Hear, O Israel So Deuteronomy 9:1; Deuteronomy 20:3, and similarly Deuteronomy 4:1; Deuteronomy 6:3; and nowhere else in the Hexateuch. The Sg. is to be explained as in Deuteronomy 5:1; but the continuance of the Sg. through the rest of this section is (especially if it is to follow immediately on Deuteronomy 6:1, see above) analogous to the appearance of the Sg. of the Decalogue in a Pl. context. There, as here, Moses uses the Pl. address for his own words, but quotes what God gave him at Ḥoreb in the Sg.

the Lord our God is one Lord As the R. V. marg. shows, this is one of four possible translations of the elliptic Hebrew: Jehovah our-God, Jehovah One. The other three are: Jehovah our God, Jehovah is One; Jehovah is our God, Jehovah is One; Jehovah is our God, Jehovah alone. But the four are resolvable into these two: First, Jehovah our God is One, an expression of His unity, appropriate at a time when we know from Jeremiah that by the multiplication of His shrines the people of Judah conceived Him, as Baal or Ashtoreth was conceived, not as One, but as many deities with different characteristics and powers over different localities, cp. Jeremiah 2:28. Second, Jehovah is our God alone: i.e. Israel's onlyGod, cp. Zechariah 14:9; Song of Solomon 6:9; 1 Chronicles 29:1. These passages are all post-exilic, and in the first two onemay mean unique, but that here it means only(for Israel) is probable from the following verse. Some interpreters take the verse as -a great declaration of monotheism" (so Driver). But had that been the intention of the writer the clause would have run -Jehovah is theGod, Jehovah alone." The use of the term our-Godshows that the meaning simply is Jehovah is Israel's only God. Nothing is said as to the existence or non-existence of other gods, and the verse is therefore on an equality with Deuteronomy 5:7, the First Commandment, and with Deuteronomy 7:9, which implies no more than that Jehovah is aor theGod indeed; cp. the curious Deuteronomy 4:19 bwhich seeks to reconcile His sovereignty with the fact that other gods are worshipped by other nations. Only in Deuteronomy 4:35; Deuteronomy 4:39 does an explicit declaration of monotheism appear in Deut.; it is to be remembered, however, that on other grounds the post-exilic date of these verses is possible 1 [126]. At the same time the phrase used here lends itself readily to the expression of an absolute monotheism, which later ages of a wider faith read into it. It is interesting to compare with our verse St Paul's statement 1 Corinthians 8:4-6; we know that no idol isanything in the world and that there is no God but one; for though there be that are called gods …; as there be gods many and lords many, yet to us there is One God, the Father, of whom are all things. Note even here yet to us!

[126] This is not meant to imply that some in Israel had not thrown off belief in the reality of other gods before the Exile. Jeremiah certainly had: e.g. Deuteronomy 2:11.