How would you maintain a feudal commitment to a Lord you never saw?
In the previous chapter, Moses reminded the people that it was their own decision to avoid getting too close to God. They begged Moses to go and face Jehovah on their behalf, and they would surely obey whatever it was Moses relayed to them. The Lord agreed to that, but even with the column of fire and smoke hovering over the Tabernacle, the people still quickly went astray.
The power of leadership cannot rest on a shock to the human senses. That might do well enough to establish authority, but it cannot maintain the sense of awe. The sense of awe must come from within; the newness of external shock wears off in the fleshly mind. So Jehovah lays before the people a very strong command to make a commitment from the heart.
So after a few introductory matters, He states flatly that He is their sovereign Lord, and they are His vassals. He is the one and only Master they have to deal with. It was utterly necessary that they fully commit their whole beings to Him. Nothing could be kept back.
Then in a symbolism they should have understood, the Lord warned them to provoke themselves from within, to find any and all means necessary to keep this fresh in their minds. It was literally their law to talk about this often, to teach and to make it a habit to think about it often. But everyone knows that, if it rests on a human discipline, it simply will not stand very long.
So the Lord goes on to remind them how much it will hurt if they forget.
He’s going to let them conquer the people and drive them out, and let His nation just walk right in and take over where the previous occupants left off. He was giving them the whole land and all its infrastructure as an inheritance. They didn’t have to work too hard for it. Would they be able to make it a habit of mind and mouth to give Him credit for it?
Maybe if they sort of regimented the business of teaching their kids about how Jehovah saved them from Egyptian slavery. Maybe if they reminded themselves how all of this was promised and prophesied, and then brought to reality before their eyes.
It is just possible for humans to engage in a heart-led conscious awareness. In that culture, it was a basic assumption, but we can see that far too many people slipped below that standard too often. But those who understood all that made a portion of this chapter a sort of daily ritual chant, in a desperate bid to keep that heart-led commitment alive:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
