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King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

Deuteronomy, Chapter 11, verse 18

¹⁶ and by threatenings. A careful study is required in God's words

¹⁸Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.

Read more:Deuteronomy, Chapter 11

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11 Moses exhorts them to obedience by rehearsing God's works, Deu 11:1-7.
By describing the goodness of the land, Deu 11:8-12.
By promises and threats, Deu 11:13-17.
An exhortation to teach their children, closed with a promise, Deu 11:18-25.
A blessing and a curse, Deu 11:26-32.

11:18 Lay up - Let us all observe these three rules,

Let our hearts be filled with the word of God. Lay up these wordsin your hearts, as in a store - house, to be used upon all occasions.
Let our eyes be fixed upon the word of God: Bind them for a signupon your hand, which is always in view, and as frontlets between your eyes, which you cannot avoid the sight of.
Let our tongues be employed about the word of God, especially with ourchildren, who must be taught this, as far more needful than the rules of decency, or the calling they are to live by.

NOTES

The blessing and curse of which God speaks are expressed with utmost simplicity in the Book of Deuteronomy: they are life and death. We rarely discuss religion in such terms. We better understand talk of...

What does the sacred writer mean when he calls people to "bind on the hand" and "fasten above the eyes" the words of the Torah? At first glance, this call can be understood only allegorically, as...

What does the sacred writer mean when he calls people to "bind on the hand" and "fasten above the eyes" the words of the Torah? At first glance, this call can be understood only allegorically, as a call always to have the Torah before one's eyes and to be guided by it every minute, measuring every action against it. But taking into account the historical realities of the era in which the book was written, one can suppose that a literal understanding of the text in this case also has its meaning. Amulets in pagan antiquity were extremely widespread; they were often worn on the hands and on the forehead, using them as protective charms. And the author of the book, as is evident, calls for replacing these sacred amulets with something like small plates or medallions with a text from the Torah.

At first glance such a replacement seems a simple formality: after all, it will not automatically make the wearer of such signs a believer. The author does not accidentally remind us that the Torah must be present first of all in the human heart, defining all his inner life, his "soul." But besides inner life there is also outer life, which in those times was permeated with paganism not only at the state and public level, but also at the everyday level. Paganism formed that fabric of life which determined its everyday quality, and it was precisely this fabric that absolutely had to be cleansed of paganism. Of course, replacing some symbols with others was still far from enough. But doing without such a replacement was impossible as well.

Indeed, the everyday life of fallen man consists in many respects of half-conscious habits, of that automatism which often makes a person act before he has time to think about what he is doing, and even before he has time to understand that he should stop and think. And the habitual environment recreates such behavioral patterns, closing a circle from which it proves far from simple to break free. Then a very understandable and natural thought is born in the sacred writer in such a situation: what if, within this very habitual environment, where the eye is accustomed to seeing familiar pagan symbols, one placed instead something that would remind not of paganism but of the Torah, not of gods but of God?

Of course, such a replacement by itself still guarantees nothing. But at least it gives everyone living in the habitual circle one more chance to break out of it. And therefore a chance to set out on the path of righteousness, which in the end leads the one walking it into the Kingdom.

By revealing His Torah to the people, God places them in a situation of choice. The choice of a way: the way of life and the way of death. Though it would be more accurate to speak of one way, because the way of death is essentially pathlessness, leading nowhere...

By revealing His Torah to the people, God places them in a situation of choice. The choice of a way: the way of life and the way of death. Though it would be more accurate to speak of one way, because the way of death is essentially pathlessness, leading nowhere. In the text, however, the issue is not life and death as such, but blessing and curse, and in the original sense of these words. In that original sense, blessing means God's granting a person strength, and curse means taking it away.

Originally the matter, of course, might not have concerned only God, but in the Yahwist context of the Book of Deuteronomy this definition can be considered exhaustive. The way of receiving God's strength and the way of losing it: these are the two ways from which the people will have to choose. Studying the Torah, teaching the Torah, the Torah on the forehead and on the hand, the Torah on the doorposts: all this is important insofar as it helps a person choose the right path and remain on it. The Torah must enter the heart, the soul, and the life of each concrete person. Then his path can become the way of life.

Of course, this is not only about the text; knowledge of the text alone is not enough. What matters is the awareness of the commandments as God's intentions, directly addressed to the human person, as God's will present in inner experience. Then the commandments become for a person a spiritual and moral imperative that organizes his whole life, and the Torah becomes living, not remaining only a text carved on stone or written on papyrus. Then the land too becomes truly promised, the very one God had promised to Abraham.

Indeed, God never promised the people only a geographical space, soil, or territory. He promised them the land as the space where the people could live together with Him. First of all as a spiritual space, and only afterward as territory, land, as geographical space. To enter such a land, or rather, to enter the land promised by God in that way, one must walk the way of the Torah.

Of course, one must also pass through the land itself, since this is about real history and real geography, but the path through the land must be traveled together with the way of the Torah, which opens for the human person the space of relationship with God. And one can live on the land only by remaining in that space. That is why following the Torah becomes the condition for remaining on the land given by God. There is no other way. Otherwise sacred history will end and the most ordinary kind of history will begin, the kind of which there has been and will be much in the fallen world, and in the course of such history anything at all can happen to any people. Even to the people of God.

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