3. that it may go well with you. Again and again, the Deuteronomist stresses the causal link between loyalty to God and prospering in the land. This notion is variously adumbrated in earlier biblical texts but never given the central emphasis it enjoys here as an overriding conception of history.

a land flowing with milk and honey. The syntactic connection of this phrase with the whole clause is a little obscure, or at least elliptic. Some scholars supply “in” before “a land.” The Septuagint and the Peshitta read, “to give you a land.”

4. Hear, Israel. This entire passage, through to verse 9, has been aptly described as a catechism, and it entirely fits its character as an exhortation to hew to God’s teachings that it later should have been incorporated in the daily liturgy, recited twice each day in Jewish worship. Some translators render ʾeḥad, “one,” as “alone,” but the evidence that this common Hebrew numeral term ever meant that is questionable. The statement stands, then, as it has been traditionally construed, as a ringing declaration of monotheism. Both Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra point to Zechariah 14:9 as an indication that in days to come the LORD our God will be recognized as the one God by all.

5. And you shall love the LORD your God. It is a new emphasis of Deuteronomy to add to the traditional fear of the LORD the emotion of love, perhaps in an effort to deepen psychologically the conception of monotheism. Ibn Ezra links this injunction with the immediately preceding declaration of God’s oneness: “Since we have no other god but only Him alone, you have to love Him, for we have no other god.” In this view, the lack of rivals obliges us to make this divine suitor the object of our affection. But “love” also belongs to the ancient Near Eastern language of international relations, appearing in treaties in which fealty is sworn to a political overlord.

with all your heart. The heart is the seat of understanding in biblical physiology, but it is also associated with feelings.

with all your being. The Hebrew nefesh means “life-breath” or “essential self.” The traditional translation of “soul,” preserved in many recent versions, is misleading because it suggests a body-soul split alien to biblical thinking.

with all your might. The Hebrew meʾod elsewhere is an adverb (“very”), not a noun. It is not clear whether this distinctive Deuteronomic usage reflects stylistic inventiveness in converting one part of speech to another or rather records an idiomatic sense of the word that is simply not used elsewhere in the biblical corpus.

7. rehearse. The Hebrew verb shinen is construed here, in accord with Jeffrey H. Tigay, as a variant of shanah, “to repeat.” Many commentators, medieval and modern, insist on the fact that the root elsewhere means “sharp,” and thus that the meaning here would be “to teach incisively” or even “to incise upon.” It may well be that the writer is punning on the two phonetically related verbal roots in order to suggest something like “to rehearse with incisive effect.”

house . . . way . . . lie down . . . rise. These two pairs of terms, each of which is what is technically called a merism, two opposing terms that also imply everything between them, obviously have the sense of wherever you are, whatever you do.

8. a sign on your hand . . . circlets between your eyes. Perhaps the original meaning is metaphorical, but inscribed amulets were in fact common in the ancient Near East, and early rabbinic Judaism would interpret these words literally as the injunction for wearing tephillin, small leather boxes on hand and forehead containing this and other biblical passages written on parchment. The denotation and etymology of “circlet,” totafot, are not entirely certain, though the precedent of Egyptian ornaments worn on the forehead suggests itself. See the comment on Exodus 13:9.

9. in your gates. These would be the gates of the city, since houses did not have gates.

11. you will eat and be sated. The full belly is the enemy of faith in Deuteronomy. The comforts of prosperity are thought of as leading to complacency, or perhaps even to cultic assimilationism—worshipping the gods of the previous inhabitants who planted those groves and vineyards and hewed those cisterns. Thus the history of Israel teeters on the edge of a precarious balance: if Israel punctiliously adheres to the commands of its God, it will prosper; but when it prospers, it runs the danger of falling away from its loyalty to God.

15. For the LORD your God is a jealous God. As in similar contexts elsewhere, it is quite likely that the adjective qanaʿ refers to jealousy, even in the sexual sense, rather than to “passion,” as some have claimed, for what is at stake is that the LORD will brook no rivals.

the face of the earth. The Hebrew ʾadamah could also mean “soil” or “land,” referring to the tenure of this agricultural people in the land of Israel, but it may be more plausible to see this verse as a threat of total destruction, thus warranting the translation of ʾadamah as “earth.”

16. You shall not try the LORD your God. For the incident at Massah (a name that means “trial”), see Exodus 17:1–7. The trial in Exodus was the people’s lack of faith that God would provide for them in the wilderness. In this prospective instance, all sorts of bounty would have already been provided to them, and yet, with far less warrant than their ancestors, they would “try” or provoke God by casting aside their obligations of loyalty to Him.

20. Should your son ask you. The didactic impulse of Deuteronomy is here made perfectly explicit in the catechistic form of the entire passage. Appropriately, the passage was incorporated into the text of the Passover Haggadah as part of the rationale for the ritual retelling of the Exodus story.

22. before our eyes. The verse concluded by this phrase is a stringing together of formulaic locutions repeatedly used in the Plagues narrative in Exodus. What this final phrase adds is the reiterated emphasis in Deuteronomy on Israel’s having been ocular witness to God’s saving power.

25. a merit. This is the most likely meaning here of the Hebrew tsedaqah, which also means “righteousness” and “innocence.” (For the sense of “merit,” compare Genesis 15:6.) But it also occasionally means something like “bounty” (see Judges 5:11), and that sense could also work here.