NOTES for Deu 6:1-25
The Book of Deuteronomy calls every believing Jew to remember the words of the Torah, to study them and teach them to their children, to bind them on the hand and forehead and fasten them to the doorpost. It should be noted that Orthodox Jews still observe all these instructions quite literally today. At the time when they were given, they held a special meaning. In those days, all kinds of amulets, sacred images and figurines were very widespread in the pagan world.
Such amulets were worn on the hand or forehead, usually as a band, fastened to the doorpost, and sometimes placed on the roof of the house, more precisely on its ridge. Of course, merely replacing one pagan amulet with another, Yahwistic one, could have been a formality that committed one to nothing. But if people could not manage without amulets, it was better for the amulets to remind them of the Torah and the God of Israel than of pagan gods and spirits.
The chief point, however, was the call to study and teach the Torah. This concerns both commandments and laws—things that are connected, yet at the same time fundamentally different. A commandment remains a commandment for all time: it does not change and is given once and for all. To understand a commandment fully, a person must receive it as an inward spiritual and moral imperative, as God’s intention directed towards that person. Only then is the commandment revealed as such, in the fullness in which God has given it to us. A law is another matter.
As the text of the Pentateuch shows us, laws can change over time. Some laws in Exodus, for example, differ from those in Deuteronomy even when they concern the same offences. Both sets of laws are evidently founded on the commandments of the Decalogue, but those commandments are interpreted differently according to particular circumstances, which can change over time, just as the legislator’s motivation can change when proposing one or another way of putting a commandment into practice.
Unlike the unchanging commandments, laws vary and can be changed according to place and time. The legislator’s motivation in proposing a particular way of observing a commandment, as well as particular sanctions for violating it, can also change according to place and time. Through changing laws and unchanging commandments, the Torah is thus able to exist in history, changing with the age while remaining itself in what is essential.