In this video, we explore the profound significance of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) and how it shapes our understanding of God. But what does the Shema mean in relation to the concept of the Godhead?
Join us as we delve into the Hebrew meaning of “one” (echad), the monotheistic foundation of the Shema, and how this ancient confession affirms that Yahweh is not only the only true God but also unique and indivisible. This video will help deepen your understanding of biblical monotheism and the concept of the Godhead. Perfect for anyone studying theology, the Godhead, or wanting to enrich their relationship with the Creator through the lens of Scripture. So join us as we learn the God Honest Truth about the Shema.
Transcript
So, this teaching is going to be all about the Shema and how it relates to our subject of the Godhead. Now, if you would like some more information on this particular subject, go down below in the description, click on the link, and that will take you to the article post for this episode, which will have the on-demand video, the slide that you’re seeing here on your screen right now.
You’ll also have the notes that we took for this subject, and in time to come, also transcript if that would be of any use to you. It’s all conveniently located for you in one post on our website at GodHonestTruth.com, and a convenient link has been put down there in the description, and that should be there whether you’re watching on a video platform or whether you are listening through an audio podcasting platform. So, just to recap real quick, the purpose of this series is to help you, the viewer, the listener, start from a point of not knowing anything about the Godhead or the subject of the Godhead.
Then you can learn what the scriptures say about the Godhead regarding the various elements surrounding it, especially the main elements and concepts surrounding the study of the Godhead. And then, at the end, decide for yourself which concepts of the Godhead that you most align with and most agree with, or if you decide, hey, this is a matter of splitting hairs to me. In my opinion, I’m not going to decide on any. That’s fine, too. Regardless of whatever conclusion you come to, you’re still our brothers and sisters in Messiah.
We just want to help you understand more about this subject if we can and if that’s something that truly interests you. Now, to recap the series that we’ve had so far, in Episode 1, we went over some introduction and introduction to the series and terminology that we’ll be using throughout this series. We went over the purpose of the series, like we do every drash in the series, we went over what the series will cover and what it will not include, we went over various terminology like fear-mongering, exegesis and eisegesis, Yahweh, Yeshua, Elohim, concepts of the Godhead, Trinitarianism.
The four different concepts of the Godhead, anyways, are Trinitarianism, Venetarianism, Biblical Unitarianism, and Oneness or Modalism. We also went over the terms heresy and orthodoxy and what is salvation. Now these four different concepts of the Godhead, we’ll be having a dedicated episode for each one of these coming up. So, Episode 1, we just did a brief overview of each of these four. In our last episode, Episode 2, we went over the concept of Elohim or God or Gods, what that meant.
We went over the difference between names and titles, we went over what invariant nouns were, we went over the word Elohim in that it is a word that is constructed and written out in a plural form, but it’s not always plural. It can be singular or plural depending on the context, and in Hebrew, context matters a bunch, especially with words like Elohim. We also went over the modern word God or God and what that means and how it applies both to our faith now and also this subject of the Godhead.
Now if you haven’t watched our previous episodes, we invite you to go back and watch those. That way you’ll be caught up and you’ll have a better understanding of what we’re going to be talking about when we talk about it in this episode and future episodes. So, the Shema. What is the Shema if you don’t know what it is? Well, just to briefly start out telling you some of the importance of the Shema from Chabad.org, the Shema Yisrael are the first two words of a section of the Torah that is the centerpiece of the morning and evening prayer services encapsulating the monotheistic essence of the faith.
From a BBC article describing the Shema, it states, The Shema is regarded by many believers as the most important prayer in the faith. This is because it reminds them of the key principle of the faith, there is only one God. This is a monotheistic principle. And finally, from the Bible Project, The Shema is one of the most famous prayers in the Bible. It was a daily prayer for ancient Israelites and is still recited by the Jewish people today.
This prayer has been one of the most influential traditions in Jewish history. The Shema has functioned both as the Jewish pledge of allegiance and a hymn of praise. Now for those of you who have somehow skipped all the liturgy that we do or in any Messianic synagogue or in pretty much any Jewish synagogue, here is the Shema from Deuteronomy 6, verse 4. Here, O Yisrael, Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one. Now in its simplest form, that is the Shema.
But in the fuller form, like we do here in the liturgy, those other parts were added later on. But originally, this is what the Shema consists about, this one verse. And in Hebrew, it is Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. So that’s in a nutshell what the Shema is. And in fact, it was so important that Yeshua, our Messiah, even reiterated this in the Brit Hadashah. Mark, chapter 12, verses 29 through 30. And Yeshua answered him, the first of all the commands is, Here, O Yisrael, Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one, and you shall love Yahweh your Elohim with all your heart and with all your being and with all your mind and with all your strength.
This is the first command. So it’s so important that even our Master and Messiah, Yeshua, made sure to reiterate this in his teachings during the Brit Hadashah. Now a couple of concepts I think is important to have a better understanding of the Shema anyways. One of those concepts is the concept of an ordinal number. What is an ordinal number? Well, from grammarly.com, ordinal numbers are numbers that show position or order in a sequence. Ordinal numbers show something’s position in a series, such as its sequential order, ranking or place in a list.
Ordinal numbers are only used for organization and list, not quantities. From dictionary.com. Israel calls ordinal numerals any of the numbers that express degree, quality, or position in a series as first, second, and third. That’s what an ordinal number is. Words like first, second, third, fourth, fifth, etc., etc. And then finally from mylanguages.org on the concept of ordinal numbers in Hebrew. Hebrew ordinal numbers tell the order of things in a set, first, second, third, etc. Ordinal numbers do not show quantity, they only show rank or position.
So this is one of those areas where Hebrew matches up with the English concept of something in ordinal numbers. Both in Hebrew and in English, the ordinal number shows the position in a series or in a set. However, ordinal numbers, both in Hebrew and in English, do not denote quantity. So here’s an example from the Hebrew of an ordinal number. Genesis chapter 1 verse 8, An Elohim called the expanse heavens, and there came to be evening, and there came to be morning, the second day.
Now I just read that in English, but if you’ll notice, the ordinal number second came before the noun day. However, in the Hebrew, it has the ending right there, yom she’ni, yom, the word for day, and then she’ni, the Hebrew word for second, that’s the ordinal number. So you see here in Hebrew, it’s got the noun and then the ordinal number. Genesis chapter 1 verse 13, And there came to be evening, and there came to be morning, the third day.
Again, in English, the ordinal number precedes the noun, but in Hebrew there, at the end of chapter, or verse 13, has yom sh’li-shi, I’m sorry, yom sh’li-sha. So once again, we have yom day, and then we have the ordinal number for third coming after the noun. Another example, 1 Samuel chapter 17 verse 30, And he turned around from him toward another and said the same word, and these people answered him a word like the first word.
So here we’ve got at the ending, first word, the ordinal number comes before the noun in English. But as you can see, in the Hebrew, it has the ordinal number, ha-ru-shom, coming after the noun, … Hopefully you understand what Yahad is.
Also the formation Yahid. Yahad means together, unity, unified, something like that. That is different from the word Echad. Echad is the numeral for the quantity of one. That’s different from Yahad. In fact, the root for Echad is from Strong’s H258. Echad, or Echad, and pretty much means a unit. One singular unit or one which we’ve been saying all along. Echad means one. But Yahad comes from Strong’s H3161. Yahad means to be or become one, join or unite.
So if you have a group of people that come together, they are Yahad, they are unified. Or if you just have one person, that’s Echad, one. An example of both of these words occurring in the same verse, Deuteronomy 25, verse 5. When brothers dwell together and one of them has died, etc., etc. This is part of the law of the Levorah marriage. Anyways, here you’ve got the word for together, Yachda, which is a conjugation of Yahad.
And then you’ve got the word for one, Echad. When brothers dwell, Yachda and Echad of them have died. When brothers dwell together and one of them has died. So here you’ve got a clear example of the difference between the two words in Hebrew, meaning together or united, and then the number for the quantity of one. And it’s translated just like this in various translations, showing the distinction between these two words. So, once again, just to recap, not to beat a dead horse, but just to recap for you guys, Yachad means unity, unified, together, something like that.
Echad means the numeral one, the quantity of one, singular only. So how does all this come together and why do we cover all this nerdy stuff? Well, number one, because I’m a nerd and because I like this kind of stuff. And number two, so that you can better understand the Shemana, when we put all these concepts and understandings together, so that we can properly interpret and exegete the Shemana, especially in the study of the Godhead that we’re doing here in this series.
So, let’s recap some of these points that we have covered so far before we actually put it all into practice. The Shemana is considered as one of the most, if not the most important prayers. Yeshua even stated the Shemana as the first of all the commands. Echad means one, meaning number or quantity. Yachad means unity or united or together, something like that. Cardinal numbers denote quantity or how many, and always come before the noun except for the number one, which comes after the noun because it’s singular.
Ordinal numbers, on the other hand, denote position or in a sequence degree or ranking, and it always follows the noun. Even when you get up to like second, third, etc., because each ordinal number is a singular position in that series or a singular ranking. So, it comes after the noun. Here is an example from Numbers 1119 of some more cardinal numbers. You shall not eat just one day or two days or five days or ten days or twenty days.
So, in English, once again, each cardinal number precedes the noun that it’s attached to. This is how we do it in English. But in Hebrew, it’s slightly different. Just one little tweak there. The Hebrew words for one day is Yom Echad. Once again, you’ve got that Echad, that singular one coming after the noun because it’s a singular concept we’re trying to explain here. The word for two days is Yom Ayin. And then that’s just one word, which that gets into a whole lot of this stuff.
But let’s move on to five days. Yom Echad, which means five days. But again, you’ve got the cardinal number coming before the noun that it’s attached to. Same thing with ten days and twenty days. The only difference in the cardinal numbers is with the number one, Echad. Moving on into the Shema. Hero Israel, Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one. Shema Israel, Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh Echad. Once again, you’ve got that Echad, that singular one coming after Yahweh.
So how many is Yahweh? We know it’s singular because A, it says this one. And we also know that there’s only one Yahweh and Yahweh is singular because that number comes after the noun it’s attached to. See, that’s why we’ve been beating this dead horse, since you can see it right from the get-go when you look at the Shema. Now, in Deuteronomy 6, 4, there are various ways that this has been translated over the years. In the Scriptures 2009, it has Hero Israel, Yahweh our Elohim, Yahweh is one.
In the Legacy Standard Bible, Hero Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. With the ESV, pretty much the same thing. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. But in the King James and a few other ones, they have just a slight variation here. See if you can recognize it. Hero Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. Little bit different. However, the first three translations that I read you here are more true to the flow of the actual Hebrew.
And here it is laid out for you. Each word, as it appears in the Hebrew, matches up with the equivalent word in English. Shema, here, Yisrael, O Yisrael, Yahweh, Eloheinu, our Elohim, Yahweh, Yahi, one, is one. So, in most of these translations, like the Scriptures 2009 that we read from, it pretty much follows the exact same flow and word order of the Hebrew. And sometimes you’ve got to change that around because it doesn’t make sense in English grammar.
But here, it’s pretty much word for word the same thing as the Hebrew. It’s a little bit different in the Greek though. And I’ll diagram that for you here in just a minute. But here, O Israel, Yahweh, Elohim, Yahweh is one. More evidence to the singularity of Yahweh. Back in the previous episode, we looked at Elohim and the word God or gods. And we went over how the Hebrew word Elohim is plural in construction, but not always in usage.
Now, a lot of people get that confused. They think that since Elohim is plural in construction, therefore, Elohim always indicates plurality. But it doesn’t. If you missed last episode, go back and watch episode 2 for a further explanation on that. However, when you get into the Step 2 agenda and the Greek translation of the Tanakh, or a.k.a. Old Testament, here you’ve got the word Seos, where you would normally have the word Elohim in the Hebrew. Why is this important? Because Greek has both a singular and a plural for Seos.
You have either Seos or Seoi. However, in Deuteronomy 6.4, the Step 2 agenda, the Greek translation, uses the singular Seos. More proof, more evidence that Elohim is intended to be understood as a singular concept here, not a plural one. And here is your diagramming of the Greek, or the Step 2 agenda from Deuteronomy 6.4. And yes, getting nerdy on that, but I thought that was a fairly interesting point to bring up just to help illustrate the singularity of Yahweh, and also the fact that Elohim is not always plural.
It always depends on the context. And this is just some extra evidence from the Greek. Anyways, in summary on the Shema, the Shema is considered one of the most, if not the most, important prayer in the faith. Yeshua even stated the Shema as the first of all the commandments. Ordinal numbers denote position or order in a sequence, degree, or ranking, and always follow the noun. Remember, ordinal numbers are like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. Cardinal numbers denote quantity, or how many, and always come before the noun, except for the number one.
Again, a singular. And that one, Yechad, comes after the noun. Yechad means unity, united, unified, together, something like that. Yechad means one. The quantity, the number, one. And here on Yisrael, Yahweh, or Elohim, Yahweh is one, the Shema. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Yechad. And that’s just the God honest truth.
