All started with a simple video from the Bible Project1, which I recommend everyone to watch, meditate and think through them. Is actually a full playlist you can watch in YouTube2.
It is a series under the Bible Project Word Study category. But how this playlist was the deciding point for us to start our walk back to Mount Sinai?
Well, let me give you a clue. “Shema”3 is a word translated in our English version of the Bible as “Listen”, even in our Spanish versions of the Bible is translated as “Escucha”, which is “listen” in English.
For the longest time I have accepted this translation, and don’t get me wrong, the translation is acceptable, but it is not complete. You see, in the Hebrew language, “Shema” is two things, “Listen” but it is also “Obey”, this changes everything for me. Think about it for a second.
“Shema” Oh Israel, Yahweh your Elohim, Yahweh is One.
This is a prayer God fearing Israelis pray every single morning and evening. But when they pray this prayer, they not just read it as: “Listen Israel, Yahweh is your Elohim, Yahweh is one”, no, they actually read it as this:
Listen, hear and respond in obedience, Yahweh your Elohim, and Yahweh is One.
When Moses gives this word to the children of Israel, he constantly reminded them about the covenant they agreed to uphold before Yahweh. Moses4 did not give them an option; he told them several times:
You are to walk in all the way that ADONAI your God has commanded you, so that you may live and it may be well with you and you may prolong your days in the land that you will possess.
Deuteronomy 5:30 (Tree of Life Version)
“You are to walk”, “you are to obey”, “you will do them”… you get the point. Moses was bringing to the congregation verbatim the words of Yahweh on Mount Sinai, that’s when the famous “Shema” prayer comes from.
4 “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 Love ADONAI your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These words, which I am commanding you today, are to be on your heart. 7 You are to teach them diligently to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, they are to be as frontlets between your eyes, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (Tree of Life Version)
Actually, the recited Shema consists of three different passages from Scriptures5, but that beside the point, the point is, when you understand to whom this scripture was written for, just reading this phrase translate it as “listen, O Israel” start feeling wanting. But again, is not that is a bad translation, it is just lacking full understanding of what this statement really meant and should mean to us.
So that’s it, that’s what got me and my family into a journey which has expanded our perspective on how wonderful and merciful our Elohim is.
I encourage everyone of you to sit down and watch the whole playlist, because the second main word of the “Shema” is what really push us out of our comfort zone into the commitment to truly step out into the wilderness, a place you can only depend on Yahweh.
Shalom.
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