CHAPTER 1

The Shema

A Marital Relationship

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

— Deuteronomy 6:4–5

In the introduction, I confessed how readily I had joined those who judged the woman at the well. As we begin this chapter, I want us to listen more carefully: to her question, to the history behind it, and to the God who calls His people into faithful relationship with Himself. Her question about worship opens a door into a much older story—the story of a people called to love the LORD with an undivided heart.

Before Ezekiel portrayed Samaria as Oholah, Israel had received the invitation to belong to God through covenant. Jeremiah would describe that relationship through the tender language of betrothal. Within that biblical picture, the Shema can be heard as an expression of covenant devotion: the confession of one LORD, answered by wholehearted love. This is the marriage imagery we will explore. The woman in John 4 remains a person with her own history; the national story helps us consider the setting of her worship without taking her individuality away.

1. Shema: Hearing That Becomes Faithful Living

The chapter begins with a command: Hear. The Hebrew word shema (שְׁמַע), written with the letters Shin, Mem and Ayin, comes from the verb shama (Strong’s H8085). Its range of meaning includes hearing, listening attentively and heeding or obeying. In the setting of God’s covenant, this hearing calls for a response. The words are to enter the heart and shape the life.1

Someone can hear a voice without giving it authority. Someone can repeat a command while resisting everything it requires. The Shema challenges that distance between what reaches our ears and what governs our choices. Israel is summoned to recognise the LORD and to live in faithful response to Him. For us, too, listening becomes meaningful when it changes how we love, what we trust and how we walk.

Moses presents the Shema in Deuteronomy as he addresses Israel in Moab (Deuteronomy 1:5). Its call to faithfulness belongs to the covenant relationship already established at Sinai. There, God reminded the people that He had delivered them and brought them to Himself before setting before them the responsibilities of covenant life:[ER1] 

“Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.”

— Exodus 19:5–6

The expression “peculiar treasure” translates segullah (Strong’s H5459), a treasured possession. “Holy” translates qadosh (Strong’s H6918), meaning holy or sacred. These words speak of a people valued by God and consecrated to Him.2 Their calling carried responsibility: their shared life was to reflect the character of the One who had rescued them. God’s invitation was personal, but it also gave them a purpose among the peoples of the earth.

The marriage comparison finds its clearest foundation in the prophets. Jeremiah records God remembering Israel’s early devotion:

“I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.”

— Jeremiah 2:2

God remembers the love of betrothal and a people following Him through the wilderness. That is the tenderness behind this chapter’s title. The relationship involved commandments, yet those commandments belonged within a covenant marked by love and faithfulness.

A Jewish wedding provides an illustration of commitment. In a customary ring ceremony, the groom declares, Harei at mekudeshet li: “You are consecrated to me.” A ketubah, the Jewish marriage contract, records marital obligations.3These practices help us picture the seriousness of covenant, although the Shema itself is a command and confession within the Torah, rather than a literal marriage contract. Through the prophets’ marriage imagery, we can hear its appeal: listen to the One who has called you, and answer Him with faithful love.

2. One LORD and an Undivided Heart

The confession at the centre of the Shema is uncompromising: “The LORD our God is one LORD.” The Hebrew word echad (Strong’s H259) means “one”. It is also used in Genesis 2:24, where husband and wife become “one flesh”.4That shared word offers a meaningful illustration of unity, but its use in a marriage passage does not turn “one” into a special technical definition of marital or composite unity. Here, the confession directs Israel’s allegiance towards the LORD and prepares the way for the command to love Him fully.[ER2] 

The marriage image helps us feel the seriousness of that allegiance. Covenant faithfulness cannot flourish where the heart continually gives its ultimate loyalty elsewhere. To confess one LORD is to bring our loyalties under His authority. Our worship, our decisions and our desires are invited into agreement with the faith we profess.

The next verse makes that response explicit: “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God.” The Hebrew verb comes from ahab, “to love” (Strong’s H157). The command reaches into every part of life. The word for “heart” here is levav(Strong’s H3824), encompassing the inner life, including thought and will. Nephesh (Strong’s H5315), translated “soul”, can refer to a person’s life or whole being. Me’od (Strong’s H3966), commonly used to express “very” or “much”, conveys “might” in this verse.5 Together, these expressions call for love offered with the whole of who we are and all the capacity we have.[ER3] 

The repeated word all searches us. It reaches our private thoughts, the decisions nobody applauds, the ambitions we protect and the fears we seldom name. God calls us to bring our whole lives into relationship with Him. We are invited to love Him through our work, our care for family, our service and our stewardship. These good responsibilities can become places where devotion is expressed. The question is whether they remain ordered by love for God or begin to command the allegiance that belongs to Him.

Exodus 20:3 states the demand plainly: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The covenant does not leave room for a rival deity. In the language of this chapter’s marriage illustration, faithfulness means refusing the competing loyalties that would draw the heart away from its covenant Lord.

This is the response the Shema calls forth: You are my God, and I will love You with my whole life. We may speak those words in prayer, but their truth must also be seen in our living. An undivided heart learns, day by day, to let God’s love and authority shape its choices.

3. Faithfulness in Hand, Mind and Home

The Shema reaches beyond a moment of confession. Deuteronomy 6:6–7 first calls for God’s words to be held in the heart and taught diligently to children. They are to accompany the ordinary movements of the day: sitting at home, travelling, lying down and rising. Faithfulness is to become part of the household’s life, carried through conversation and example.

Then come the visible reminders:

“And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”

— Deuteronomy 6:8–9

In Jewish practice, these commands are associated with tefillin, small leather boxes containing Scripture passages and worn on the arm and head, and the mezuzah, a parchment containing Scripture passages affixed to doorposts.6 They are reminders of God’s commandments; a mezuzah is not a sign of a woman’s marital status. Their place in Jewish devotion deserves to be understood with care as we draw our own applications from the passage.[ER4] 

For the Christian reader reflecting on the Shema, hand, mind and home offer a searching picture of lived faithfulness. Our hands speak through what we do: the work we undertake, the help we give and the choices we carry out. Our minds are shaped by what we repeatedly attend to and remember. Our homes reveal how belief is practised through patience, truthfulness, forgiveness and care. The words held in the heart are meant to influence the life around them.

This makes the account in 2 Kings 17 especially sobering. The passage describes people who feared the LORD while continuing to serve their own gods (verse 33). Worship had become divided. The problem was a competing allegiance, even where some recognition of the LORD remained. The account challenges us to examine whether our outward expressions of faith agree with the loyalties we cultivate in private.

Ezekiel gives the name Oholah, meaning “her tent”, to Samaria (Ezekiel 23:4).7 His imagery portrays a community’s covenant unfaithfulness. We can reflect on that image when we are tempted to construct worship around our own preferences. Yet we must read it in its setting. The woman at the well did not invent her community’s worship on Mount Gerizim; she referred to the practice inherited from her ancestors (John 4:20). Her question gave Jesus the opportunity to reveal the worship the Father seeks.

4. When the Covenant Was Broken

The tension between confession and conduct appears early in Israel’s story. While Moses was on the mountain receiving the tablets of God’s law, the people fashioned a golden calf (Exodus 24:12; 32:1–8). They attributed their deliverance to the image they had made, and Aaron announced a feast to the LORD. The scene is deeply troubling: religious language continued while obedience was being abandoned.

This is a warning we must allow to search our own hearts. We can preserve familiar words, familiar gatherings and familiar habits while moving our trust elsewhere. A religious form can become so comfortable that we stop asking whether our lives are answering God’s voice. The Shema calls us back to attentive hearing and faithful response.

Generations later, Jeroboam, king of the northern kingdom of Israel, established calf shrines at Bethel and Dan. His declaration echoed the words associated with the earlier golden calf, and his arrangement drew the people into sin (1 Kings 12:26–33). The account of the northern kingdom’s eventual exile describes the continuing influence of this disobedience (2 Kings 17:21–23). What leaders normalised became embedded in the community’s worship.[ER5] 

Against this wider history, Ezekiel’s portrayal of Oholah and Oholibah is severe. He identifies the sisters with Samaria and Jerusalem and accuses both of covenant betrayal, including adultery with idols (Ezekiel 23:4, 37). The marriage imagery exposes the seriousness of misplaced worship. It speaks about communities and their relationship with God; it does not supply an account of the Samaritan woman’s personal marriages.

Later, Jesus quoted Isaiah’s rebuke of worship that honoured God with the mouth while withholding the heart:

“This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.”

— Matthew 15:8, citing Isaiah 29:13

That rebuke leaves me with a question I cannot reserve for someone else: how near are my words to God, and how near is my heart? I confessed in the introduction that I had repeated judgments without examining them. Now I must also examine whether I have repeated expressions of devotion without allowing them to govern my life. The call to hear begins with me before it becomes a message I offer to another person.

5. Jesus and the Call to True Worship

Jesus Himself brings the Shema into the heart of His teaching. When asked about the foremost commandment, He begins with Israel’s confession of one LORD and the command to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength (Mark 12:28–30). Wholehearted love belongs at the centre of the life He teaches. This gives us a firm foundation for considering His conversation about worship in John 4.

John records that Jesus “must needs go through Samaria” (John 4:4). The journey brings Him to the well, where He begins by asking the woman for a drink. He then speaks of the gift of God and living water (John 4:7–10). Before the conversation turns to her marital history or the place of worship, an invitation is already before her. She is being drawn into a conversation about a gift she has yet to understand.

When she raises the question of the mountain and Jerusalem, Jesus leads her towards the Father’s purpose:

“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.”

— John 4:23

We can hear a resonance with the Shema’s call to faithful devotion, while allowing each passage to speak in its own terms. “Spirit” and “truth” are not alternative translations of the Hebrew words for love and oneness. Jesus is revealing the worship the Father seeks, beyond the dispute over those two places. The woman’s inherited question becomes the doorway to a greater revelation.

The New Testament also gives Christian readers grounds for the marriage imagery. John the Baptist speaks of the bridegroom in relation to Jesus (John 3:29), and Paul describes his desire for the Corinthian church in these words:

“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.”

— 2 Corinthians 11:2

Paul is addressing the church. Through this image, we can reflect on Christ’s call to faithful devotion. In that devotional sense, the well becomes a place where we consider His invitation to the divided heart: receive the gift He offers, listen to His word and allow Him to lead you into true worship. This reading does not depend on identifying the woman’s five husbands with the deities named in 2 Kings 17.[ER6] 

The love that calls for our response has already reached towards us. God’s gift of His Son and Christ’s death for sinners reveal love acting before we could offer a faithful answer (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). We come to Him with the whole truth of our lives. Jesus knew the woman’s history, spoke truthfully about it and continued to reveal Himself to her. Her past did not prevent the conversation from becoming a revelation of the Messiah.

The Shema asks whether our hearts will answer the God we confess. The encounter at the well invites us to consider that question in the presence of Christ’s truth and mercy. Will we continue to divide our devotion, or will we bring our whole lives before Him? May the words we speak become the faithfulness we live. May the love we confess take root in our thoughts, our actions and our homes. And may we learn to hear Him deeply enough to answer with all our hearts.

Five Questions to Examine Your Own Shema

Take time with each question. Ask God to show you where your confession and your conduct agree, and where a faithful response is still needed.

1. Are you saying Shema with your lips, but not living Shema with your life?

Read Matthew 15:8 and Isaiah 29:13. Jesus warned of lips that honoured God while the heart remained distant. You may confess that the LORD is one, but what governs your decisions throughout the week? Consider how you respond to ambition, status, approval and fear. How can your work, family responsibilities and daily choices express wholehearted love for God? Where is your heart really?

2. Who is before His face in your house?

Read Exodus 20:3 and Deuteronomy 6:6–9. The command forbids other gods before the LORD. Look beyond the words displayed or spoken in your home and consider the loyalties being practised there. What has been given an authority that belongs to God? In your home, marriage or ministry, what needs to change so that your life agrees with the faith you confess?

3. Have you built your own tabernacle like Oholah?

Read Ezekiel 23:4 and John 4:20–24. Oholah is Ezekiel’s name for Samaria within his portrayal of covenant unfaithfulness. Use the image to examine your own devotion. Have your preferences, ambitions or desire for a platform begun to determine how you worship? Are you willing to let God’s word correct your assumptions and lead you into the worship the Father seeks?

4. Do you have a divided heart—fearing the Lord but serving your own gods?

Read 2 Kings 17:33. The passage describes people who feared the LORD while serving their own gods. Where might a similar division appear in your life? What repeatedly commands your trust, obedience or attention at the expense of faithfulness to God? Name the competing loyalties honestly, and consider the practical steps by which you can turn from them.

5. Will you let the True Husband restore your Shema at the well today?

Read John 4:4–10, 23–28 and 2 Corinthians 11:2. In the Christian marriage imagery explored in this chapter, Christ calls His people to faithful devotion. He knows your history as well as your thirst. Will you bring Him your shame, confusion and divided loyalties, and receive the living water He offers? The woman’s departure from the well, leaving her waterpot behind, can serve as a picture for reflection: what might change in your priorities as you respond to Him?

 [ER1]Deuteronomy 1:5 places Moses’ address in Moab. The covenant at Sinai is retained as the earlier foundation, rather than treating the wording of Deuteronomy 6 as a literal wedding ceremony at Sinai. The ring and ketubah comparison is presented later as an illustration.

 [ER2]Echad means “one”; it does not inherently mean “composite unity”. Genesis 2:24 remains a devotional illustration of unity, with the distinction made clear. See the reproduced Brown–Driver–Briggs entry, H259, in reference 4.

 [ER3]The Hebrew verb is from ahab (H157), rather than the noun ahavah. The word for heart in Deuteronomy 6:5 is levav (H3824); lev (H3820) is a related form. The lexical discussion now uses the relevant meanings in this passage rather than combining every possible dictionary sense.

 [ER4]Tefillin and mezuzah have been described as Jewish reminders of Scripture. A mezuzah is not a woman’s marriage marker. The chapter no longer asserts that the people in 2 Kings 17 had mezuzot outside and idols behind their doors; that scene is not supplied by the text.

 [ER5]Jeroboam ruled the northern kingdom of Israel and established shrines at Bethel and Dan (1 Kings 12:26–33). The city of Samaria was founded later under Omri (1 Kings 16:23–24). The account’s continuing pattern of sin is retained without the overbroad claim that every northern king was uniformly evil in every respect.

 [ER6]Paul’s “one husband” image is addressed to the Corinthian church (2 Corinthians 11:2). Its application is identified as devotional. The chapter carries forward the introduction’s correction: 2 Kings 17:24, 30–31 names five incoming peoples and seven deities, and John 4 does not identify the woman’s five husbands as those gods. “Spirit” and “truth” are also kept distinct from Hebrew lexical definitions. All five reflection questions remain, with corresponding factual clarifications.

Notes and References

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (KJV). Biblical references within the chapter identify the passages supporting the discussion. The marriage imagery is a devotional reading grounded in the prophets and the New Testament; connections drawn between different passages are distinguished from the passages’ explicit statements.

[1] Francis Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), entry for shama, indexed as Strong’s H8085. Online text: https://biblehub.com/bdb/8085.htm.

[2] Brown, Driver and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, entries for segullah (H5459) and qadosh (H6918). Online texts: https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5459.htm and https://biblehub.com/hebrew/6918.htm. The relevant material is the reproduced historical lexicon, rather than the additional topical commentary on those pages.

[3] Moshe Bogomilsky, “Wedding Speeches for Matot”, Chabad.org, discussion of the customary betrothal declaration: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2840173/jewish/Wedding-Speeches-for-Matot.htm. Maurice Lamm, “What Is the Ketubah?”, Chabad.org: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/465168/jewish/What-Is-the-Ketubah.htm.

[4] Brown, Driver and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, entry for echad (H259). Online text: https://biblehub.com/bdb/259.htm. See also Genesis 2:24 and Deuteronomy 6:4–5. For the translation discussion of the Shema, see the New English Translation (NET Bible), notes to Deuteronomy 6:4–5: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+6:4-5&version=NET.

[5] Brown, Driver and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, entries for ahab (H157), levav (H3824), nephesh (H5315) and me’od (H3966). Online texts: https://biblehub.com/hebrew/157.htm; https://biblehub.com/hebrew/3824.htm; https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5315.htm;https://biblehub.com/hebrew/3966.htm. The discussion uses the meanings relevant to Deuteronomy 6:5.

[6] Menachem Posner, “19 Ritual Items Found in a Jewish Home”, Chabad.org, sections on mezuzah and tefillin: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/5489978/jewish/19-Ritual-Items-Found-in-a-Jewish-Home.htm.

[7] NET Bible, note to Ezekiel 23:4, on the names Oholah and Oholibah and the chapter’s allegory: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+23&version=NET. The KJV spells the names “Aholah” and “Aholibah”; “Oholah” and “Oholibah” are used in this chapter’s prose for consistency.

Online sources accessed 5 October 2026.