Tag Archives: Shema

Psalm 95 Lifting Up Voices and Listening in Silence

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Pieter de Grebber, Moses Striking the Rock (1630)

Psalm 95

1 O come, let us sing to the LORD; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
3 For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
5 The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
6 O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today you would listen to his voice!
8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.”
11 Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”

Psalm 95 is a psalm which invites the hearer to move with the faithful into a noisy and jubilant time of worship which then is silenced so that God (or a prophet or priest speaking for God) can instruct the people in obedience. The life of worship and a life of obedience are linked here as it is frequently in the psalms and prophets. God in this psalm is the great God who reigns over all gods, is the master and creator of the earth and sea, and the one to whom the faithful owe their obedience. History and the memory of the disobedience of their ancestors becomes the invitation for the current generation to respond with obedience.

The first word of this psalm is the imperative form of the Hebrew halak[1] (to walk) and it impels the people to get moving to meet God in celebration and worship. Yet, within the command to move is also an allusion to a way of walking that is in accordance with God’s commandments and within the movement of the psalm is both the uplifted voices of the worshipping faithful but also the lives of obedience which listen to the voice of God. The invitation to ‘sing’ and ‘make a joyful noise’ while familiar in English are not as strong as the Hebrew verbs which they translate.[2] This is not a timid action of worship but instead is a community in full voice shouting and singing to their God and King. The praise of God echoes the sentiment of Psalm 24, where the earth is the LORD’s and all that is in it. The worldview of the psalms assumes the pluralistic world where the surrounding nations worship other gods, but the LORD is the sovereign over both the gods of the nations and the earth itself. The faithful come in jubilant acclamation to worship, bow down, and kneel before the God who is their maker, their king, and their shepherd who provides shelter and pasture for them. The movement and the noise climax in this acclamation and prepares the people for the time of silence that they may hear the words from their God (or God’s messenger).

The second movement of the psalm begins in the second half of verse seven with the command to listen. The congregation is to move from full voice to silence and from motion to stillness. The command to listen is the Hebrew shema which is the critical verb at key points in the declaration of the law:

Now therefore, if you obey (shema) my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession our of all the peoples. Indeed the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.”  Exodus 19:5-6 (immediately before consecrating the people and receiving the commandments)

Hear (shema) O Israel: The LORD is our God , the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6: 4-5[3]

Hearing or listening in Hebrew is not merely listening to the words but also involves living in response to the words. Lifting up praise to God in full voice without hearing and obeying God’s commands is often condemned in the psalms and prophets[4] and here the actions of the people of Israel at Meribah and Massah (Exodus 17: 1-7; Numbers 20: 1-13) are used as an example of the high cost of disobedience. The inability of their ancestors to listen is remembered as the reason for the long journey in the wilderness and the inability of the first generation that left Egypt to enter their rest in the promised land. The relationship between God and the people of Israel is a covenantal relationship which requires obedience. If the people will listen and obey then God will provide for them in the land, but if they do not hear and obey then they may end up without God’s guidance and blessing.

The two parts of the psalm, the movement and raucous noise and the obedient silence and reverential hearing, belong together. The faithful should move to the place where they can praise God in full voice in a jubilant and joyful way, but we must also remember that God desires our obedience. As Beth Tanner can state truthfully, “In worship today, God can be seen as too friendly, too nice, and too forgiving. We can easily forget the great power of the King God.” (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 718) The previous psalm reminded us, “Happy are those whom you discipline, O LORD, and whom you teach out of your law,” (Psalm 94: 12). Now Psalm 95 uses the story of the people of Israel as an illustration of the dangers when the people refuse to follow God’s way of walking. The life of the faithful is one of coming (walking, halak), hearing (shema), and living in obedience to the ways of God in both jubilant worship, silent listening, and faithful living.

[1] Halak is an important word in Hebrew. Halakha which derives from halak is the collective body of the Hebrew laws (both oral and written) and it means ‘the way of walking.’ This movement at the beginning of the psalm is both the physical motion to the place of worship and the way of walking in accordance with God’s will.

[2] Ranan and rua in the intensified piel form mean to “call loudly” and “lift up a war-cry or cry of alarm.” (Nancy deClaisse-Walford, 2014, p. 716)

[3] Deuteronomy 6: 4-5 has a central place in the practice of the Jewish people and this entire command is often called the shema because of the command to ‘hear.’

[4] See for example Psalm 50, 81, Isaiah 1, and Amos 5: 21-24

Deuteronomy 6-The Center of the Faith

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The Shema in Hebrew

The Shema in Hebrew

Deuteronomy 6: 1-8 the Shema

1 Now this is the commandment– the statutes and the ordinances– that the LORD your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, 2 so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the LORD your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.

                        4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment he, like most Jewish people of his day, quotes Deuteronomy 6: 4-5 and then he attached on Leviticus 19:18, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. This is the heartbeat of the Jewish, and later Christian, walk with the LORD. They are to be a people who have one LORD and only the LORD who is to be the center of their life and devotion.

Deuteronomy 6:4 is known as ‘the Shema’, which gets its name from the first word in Hebrew of the verse. Shema means to hear or listen and these are to be the first words on their lips as the rise and when they lie down, they are to be seen and heard in their coming and in their going. They are a people constituted by these words and they are not only to say them but to talk about them to their children and their children’s children. Parents become the primary vessels by which the heartbeat of their faith is passed down. They would even wear these words as a reminder of who they were and a public statement of their devotion to the world around them. These words are to be at the heart of their identity and their life. They are not just words to be said but rather to be lived and in continually hearing these words they are recalled to their own identity.

With both the Ten Commandments and ‘the Shema’ the hearing of these words is to all Israel and it is primarily the household that is responsible for passing on the faith. There will be a tension between the household and the priestly authority in times to come, within the story of Israel after the construction of the temple there will be increasing efforts to make the temple the focal point of religious authority, yet for the passing on of the faith much of that will happen in the homes. The church in America is rediscovering the reality that after a couple generations of placing the formation of faith primarily in the hands of the church that we have many who are not equipped to pass on their faith or to think about the ethical dilemmas they encounter on a day to day basis. Martin Luther understood this when he wrote the Small Catechism which equips parents to hand on the faith to their children almost 500 years ago, and perhaps the struggle is finding the balance. Families need the church or temple to call them back to their vocation of training themselves and their children but the church cannot be the only vessel of faith formation when the primary indicator of an adult’s remaining attached to their faith tradition are the conversations about their faith primarily from family members.

It is also helpful to remember that, even though compared to many modern countries, the nation of Israel is fairly tiny that most people would not be able to travel to the tabernacle or the temple for more than festival type occasions and that without having access to the written texts in the home (that we take for granted) they relied on the continual hearing of these words to form their identity. I think there is a lot to learn from this type of repetition, and for example most Christians can readily pull up certain pieces of scripture that have meaning to them, the Lord’s Prayer or the 23rd Psalm for example, and these become things that can be recalled even if a person is dealing with dementia. These words can begin to form the identity of the people for as long as they are practiced and lived, yet they could be forgotten in one generation and that will happen throughout the life of the people of Israel, just as Christians will at times forget their own identity when they forget their story.

Deuteronomy 6: 10- 25 the Danger of Amnesia

10 When the LORD your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you– a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, 11 houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, hewn cisterns that you did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant– and when you have eaten your fill, 12 take care that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 13 The LORD your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear. 14 Do not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who are all around you, 15 because the LORD your God, who is present with you, is a jealous God. The anger of the LORD your God would be kindled against you and he would destroy you from the face of the earth.

 16 Do not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. 17 You must diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his decrees, and his statutes that he has commanded you. 18 Do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may go in and occupy the good land that the LORD swore to your ancestors to give you, 19 thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has promised.

20 When your children ask you in time to come, “What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the LORD our God has commanded you?” 21 then you shall say to your children, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. 22 The LORD displayed before our eyes great and awesome signs and wonders against Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. 23 He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that he promised on oath to our ancestors. 24 Then the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our lasting good, so as to keep us alive, as is now the case. 25 If we diligently observe this entire commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, we will be in the right.”

 The Deuteronomist is of a mixed mind about the people encountering abundance, on the one hand the abundance they are to receive when they enter the Promised Land is a sign of God’s blessing yet there is also a significant risk that in their security they will forget the LORD. There will always be the temptations to follow other gods or to live in a way that is more concerned with the individuals’ prosperity than God’s covenant of justice. They are called to be different from the peoples around them, a witness to them, and a means of blessing for the other nations. Yet it is in that difference that the people will struggle, the gods and practices of the surrounding peoples will be more concrete, these gods have images and yet the LORD is always a mystery-never contained within these images, not willing to share the LORD’s people with these other images.

The gods of the surrounding nations may promise fertility or individual prosperity or a bountiful harvest, in short they promised things that were in the individual’s best interest. Martin Luther insightfully could say of sin that it is the ‘heart curved inward on itself’ and the commandments and the Shema and the unfolding of them to come are really looking towards the neighbor’s best interest. It is trying to construct a world where the community can live in justice and peace. It will always be a challenge to live into this vision when there are many competing voices encouraging the individuals and families to seek their own interest and yet it is a vision of shalom worth living into.

Even with the practices outlined around the Shema there is the continual danger of a slow slide into amnesia in the generations to come. They are a people whose story emerges out of the story of God taking them out of the land of Egypt and creating them as the LORD’s own people. For their life going forward their life will be defined both by this story and by the quality of their continued relationship with their LORD. Deuteronomy will emphasize over and over the need for continued vigilance in this relationship and the blessings that will come if they keep these commandments and the curse that comes with disobedience.

Jeremiah 37: The People Who Do Not Hear

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Jeremiah 37: 1-10 A Failure to Listen

 

Shema Yisrael at the Knessey Menorah in Jerusalem

Shema Yisrael at the Knessey Menorah in Jerusalem

Zedekiah son of Josiah, whom King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon made king in the land of Judah, succeeded Coniah son of Jehoiakim. 2 But neither he nor his servants nor the people of the land listened to the words of the LORD that he spoke through the prophet Jeremiah.

 3 King Zedekiah sent Jehucal son of Shelemiah and the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah to the prophet Jeremiah saying, “Please pray for us to the LORD our God.” 4 Now Jeremiah was still going in and out among the people, for he had not yet been put in prison. 5 Meanwhile, the army of Pharaoh had come out of Egypt; and when the Chaldeans who were besieging Jerusalem heard news of them, they withdrew from Jerusalem.

 6 Then the word of the LORD came to the prophet Jeremiah: 7 Thus says the LORD, God of Israel: This is what the two of you shall say to the king of Judah, who sent you to me to inquire of me, Pharaoh’s army, which set out to help you, is going to return to its own land, to Egypt. 8 And the Chaldeans shall return and fight against this city; they shall take it and burn it with fire. 9 Thus says the LORD: Do not deceive yourselves, saying, “The Chaldeans will surely go away from us,” for they will not go away. 10 Even if you defeated the whole army of Chaldeans who are fighting against you, and there remained of them only wounded men in their tents, they would rise up and burn this city with fire.

 

For the Jewish people, their central command is to hear or listen. The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-Shema is the first word in this verse translated Hear) is to form the central practice of their lives

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. Deuteronomy 6: 4

Yet here, as throughout the ministry of Jeremiah where he speaks the word of the LORD nobody listens. Even now, in this time where Babylon has already conquered the Kingdom of Judah once and place on the throne Zedekiah in the place of Jeconiah, has taken the elites of the land into exile and has demonstrated that the words of so many of the other voices that contradicted Jeremiah’s voice were false, still nobody wants to listen to this inconvenient prophet. Yet, in this chapter here and in the next section we see in Zedekiah an acceptance of Jeremiah’s role if not his words. Zedekiah sends to Jeremiah for him to once again pray to the LORD our God (again echoing the language of the Shema) but we have heard again that Jeremiah is no longer to pray for this people.

The life of the king and the prophet and the people are also caught up in the geo-political events of the day and so as the great empire to the north (Babylon) hears of the movement of the armies of the empire to the south (Egypt) they move to engage the armies of Pharaoh. Much of the policies in this interim time between the first and second invasion of the armies of Chaldea (the forces of the Babylonian empire) have involved political maneuvering to place the Judean people in alliance with the Egyptians. These alliances will fail and Judea will be left alone to face the wrath of Babylon, but in Jeremiah’s view Judah has a more important enemy, the LORD their God. Jeremiah again prophesies what he has prophesied for years, there is no escape from the armies of Babylon, that even if their entire army was destroyed leaving only the wounded that would be enough for them to carry out their function in destroying Jerusalem.

 

Jeremiah 37: 11-21 Jeremiah Put in Prison

 

Salvatore Rosa, Jeremie Tire De La Cistern, 3rd quarter of the 17th Century

Salvatore Rosa, Jeremie Tire De La Cistern, 3rd quarter of the 17th Century

 11 Now when the Chaldean army had withdrawn from Jerusalem at the approach of Pharaoh’s army, 12 Jeremiah set out from Jerusalem to go to the land of Benjamin to receive his share of property among the people there. 13 When he reached the Benjamin Gate, a sentinel there named Irijah son of Shelemiah son of Hananiah arrested the prophet Jeremiah saying, “You are deserting to the Chaldeans.” 14 And Jeremiah said, “That is a lie; I am not deserting to the Chaldeans.” But Irijah would not listen to him, and arrested Jeremiah and brought him to the officials. 15 The officials were enraged at Jeremiah, and they beat him and imprisoned him in the house of the secretary Jonathan, for it had been made a prison. 16 Thus Jeremiah was put in the cistern house, in the cells, and remained there many days.

 17 Then King Zedekiah sent for him, and received him. The king questioned him secretly in his house, and said, “Is there any word from the LORD?” Jeremiah said, “There is!” Then he said, “You shall be handed over to the king of Babylon.” 18 Jeremiah also said to King Zedekiah, “What wrong have I done to you or your servants or this people, that you have put me in prison? 19 Where are your prophets who prophesied to you, saying, ‘The king of Babylon will not come against you and against this land’?

 20 Now please hear me, my lord king: be good enough to listen to my plea, and do not send me back to the house of the secretary Jonathan to die there.” 21 So King Zedekiah gave orders, and they committed Jeremiah to the court of the guard; and a loaf of bread was given him daily from the bakers’ street, until all the bread of the city was gone. So Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.

 

Jeremiah’s words have not made him popular with the remaining leaders in Jerusalem, so when he sets out from Jerusalem during this break in the siege by the movement of the Chaldean army he is arrested and placed in a makeshift prison set up at the house of Jonathan the secretary. Jeremiah is beaten, imprisoned and in Jeremiah’s eyes left for dead. Surprisingly, it is King Zedekiah who sends for him in secret (and this probably drew the ire of many of the officials who were enraged at Jeremiah and had him beaten and imprisoned).  Zedekiah, son of Josiah the faithful king, once again seems to respect the role of the prophet Jeremiah and so asks again for a word from the LORD. Jeremiah answers again, probably not with the words the king wants to hear but with a message that is probably not surprising to the king. Unlike the other officials the king is not enraged by these words, perhaps even accepts the inevitability of them. Then surprisingly we hear the plea of Jeremiah, making his case that he is not a traitor or a liar, but rather the very prophets who spoke the words the officials wanted to hear have spoken lies and Jeremiah pleads to be rescued from his current situation in the house of Jonathan the secretary.  Jeremiah’s plea is heard and the king places him in the court of the guard (where Jeremiah 32 and 33 take place) which is apparently a more hospitable imprisonment where Jeremiah receives regular food until famine and the lack of food from the siege overtake the city. Even if the king cannot change the course of the city and the kingdom’s eventual destruction by Babylon, and even if he is unwilling (or perhaps unable-Zedekiah does not occupy the typical strong position we often imagine with kings) to surrender to Babylon, at least he is able to provide some protection for the prophet Jeremiah.