Deuteronomy 6:4

Summary

Deuteronomy 6:4 opens with a command to Israel to listen, followed by a short nominal statement combining the divine name Yehovah (H3068) twice with the word 'echad ("one", H0259). The Hebrew clause contains no verb "to be," which leaves the exact division of the statement open to more than one reading.

Key words

• she.Ma' ("hear", H8085) — Qal imperative, masculine singular, addressed directly to "Israel."
• Yis.ra.'El ("O Israel", H3478) — proper name in vocative use, marking the addressee of the command.
• Yah.weh ("Yehovah", H3068) — the tetragrammaton, appearing twice in the verse, once before and once after 'elohei-nu.
• 'e.lo.Hei.nu ("our God", H0430 + suffix) — masculine plural construct noun 'elohei ("God/gods of") joined with the first-person plural suffix -nu ("our"), forming the phrase "God of us."
• 'e.Chad ("[is] one", H0259) — a numeral functioning as the final predicate term of the clause, here marked in the data as feminine singular.

What the text says

The verse begins with the imperative she.Ma' directed at Yis.ra.'El, a straightforward command to listen. What follows is a nominal (verbless) clause built from four elements: Yah.weh, 'e.lo.Hei.nu, Yah.weh, and 'e.Chad. Biblical Hebrew regularly omits the verb "to be" in present-tense equative statements, and that is the case here — no form of "to be" appears in the Hebrew text itself. This means the relationship between the two occurrences of Yah.weh, the phrase 'e.lo.Hei.nu, and the final term 'e.Chad is established purely by word order and apposition, not by an explicit linking verb.

Because of this missing copula, the four words admit more than one grouping: the phrase can be parsed as "Yehovah our God, Yehovah [is] one," treating the first Yehovah and 'elohei-nu as one appositional unit and the second Yehovah with 'echad as the predicate; or as two separate short clauses, "Yehovah [is] our God" and "Yehovah [is] one." The Hebrew syntax alone does not disambiguate between these options.

Differences between versions

The LXX and Vulgate both supply an explicit verb where Hebrew has none: the LXX uses ἐστιν ("is") and the Vulgate uses est ("is"), both placed after the second Κύριος/Dominus, effectively adopting the reading "Lord our God, Lord is one." The BSB follows this same division. The SBLIBRE Spanish version instead splits the statement into two separate assertions, "Yehová es nuestro Dios. Yehová es uno" ("Yehovah is our God. Yehovah is one"), reflecting the alternate way the unmarked Hebrew clause boundaries can be read.