Room 9 of 20
Deuteronomy 6:4
The Lord is one
Verse
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
Why they use it
They say the Shema proves God is one essence, so a Godhead of three is heresy.
Why they are wrong
The Shema is Israel’s loyalty oath — not a fourth-century definition of essence.
Translation note
Hebrew: echad (אֶחָד)
one / united / alone — the word for a compound unity (one flesh, one cluster)
Echad is how Genesis says man and woman become one flesh. It is not yachid (solitary). FAIR and the Godhead essay: biblical oneness is unity and exclusive worship, not later essence-language.
The room (aka the context)
- Who wrote it
- Moses.
- Who is in the room
- Israel, about to enter the land of many gods.
- Who is speaking
- Moses, for Jehovah.
- What is going on
- The next verses: love the LORD with all your heart. Bind these words. Teach your children. This is covenant loyalty against Baal, not a lecture on substance.
- What they already believe
- Jehovah is our God. The nations have theirs. We do not.
- How they would hear these words
- NRSVUE even says “the Lord *alone*.” That is exclusive worship. Jesus quotes this Shema, then prays the Twelve into that same oneness with Him and the Father.
Clarifying verse
John 17:21
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
Jesus keeps the Shema and then uses “one” for the Twelve. If Deuteronomy 6:4 demands one being, the high priestly prayer is asking the apostles to dissolve.
Gal1:8 topic →Mark it
Tap when you can say the verse out loud.