The Shema was the declaration of faith for God’s covenant people whom He redeemed from Egypt. The word comes from the verb “hear” in this famous declaration in Deuteronomy 6:4,5:
“Hear [shema], 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.”

To this day its recitation begins every synagogue service. “The twice-daily repeated Shema was well-known as an overarching obligation of each individual Jew, which included the duty of obedience to the other commandments given by God.”[1]

Does this rtext support man as spirit, soul, and body? Many settle for the label “multifaceted” when defining man’s makeup due to the additional word “mind” in one of Christ’s quotations of this passage. Let’s take a closer look at the vocabulary, The LXX (Greek translation of the O.T.), and the quotations in the Gospels. Although the Shema does not prove man as spirit, soul, and body, I propose that the evidence does imply and support holistic trichotomy.

The Hebrew terms in Deuteronomy 6:5

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…” The Hebrew term for “heart” here is lebab (sometimes used in its shortend form, leb. It means “inner man, mind, will, heart” [2][ It literally means the “inner part” and is conveys the inner, deeper aspect of spiritual and psychological functioning. It is used of man and can have a counterpart in God. Concerning God’s choice of King David, “The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart…” (1 Sam. 13:14). The heart needed to be inclined to spiritual and moral obligations: “Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!” (Deut. 5:29; cf. 1 Kings 8:58,61).

When the prophets needed a word to identify the regenerated spirit that God would grant in the New Covenant, the word “heart” was used. “I will give you a new heart and [“even”] put a new spirit within you [parallelism]; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh [unspiritual] and give you a heart of flesh [living]” (Ezek. 36;26; cf. Jer. 31:33).

When used in this ontological sense (of the innermost part of man that lifts him above the animal kingdom), heart is equivalent to the human spirit [ruach]. Man has been made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) ) who is in His nature, Spirit (John 4:24). But in the vast majority of instances, “heart” refers to the psychological heart of man, i.e., the seat (deeper functioning) of his immaterial faculties.

“You shall love the Lord your God with … all your soul...” “Soul here is nephesh, meaning “soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, appetite, emotion, and passion” [3]

It is significant that this word is sometimes used of animals (Gen.1:20,21,24,30). Although God created the heavens, the earth, plants and animals by His spoken word, man (made in His image) had a different origin: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground [material body], and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [ruah, plural]; and man became a living being [nephesh]. Here is another implicit reference to man as fundamentally spirit, soul, and body.

“You shall love the Lord your God with … all your strength.” The Hebrew term, meod means “muchness, force, abundance, exceedingly; in different idioms (298 times) to express the idea of exceedingly, greatly, very (whether of magnitude or degree)” [4]

And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly [meod] (Num. 14:13).

This word is often used in the Pentateuch to denote physical strength. For example, the immediate context uses it for increase in population: “that you may multiply greatly” in the promised land (Deut 6:3; cf. Gen 26:16; Exod 1:7,20;10:19).

We observe the progression of the innermost aspect of man, heart, to the outer aspect of strength. Lange’s Commentary observes this progression, while noting the verse’s emphasis of totality of man’s duty to love God:

“Jehovah appears worthy of love, and indeed to the whole man, in heart and life, and in all his relations. Heart (Deuteronomy 5:26) the innermost, then soul as synonymous with life, thus already more external than heart, (Deuteronomy 4:29) and then strength, which designates the still more outward effective proofs of the life. (Matthew 22:37; Luke 10:27; Mark 12:33).[5]

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary underscores the verse’s emphasis on totality of devotion: “The exhortation to love “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” indicates the totality of one’s commitment in the purest and noblest intentions of trust and obedience toward God. The words taken together mean that the people are to love God with their whole selves.”[6]

The Septuagint’s translation

The Septuagint is the earliest ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). It is often abbreviated as LXX (the Roman numeral for 70) for the “70 translators.” The work was done in the 3rd-2nd century B.C. so the Biblical text to be accessible for those speaking the common language of the era.

Deuteronomy 6:5: καὶ ἀγαπήσεις [agape love] Κύριον τὸν Θεόν σου [the Lord your God] ἐξ ὅλης τῆς καρδίας [with all your heart] σου καὶ ἐξ ὅλης τῆς ψυχῆς [and wirh all you soul] σου καὶ ἐξ ὅλης τῆς δυνάμεώς σου [and with all your strength]. https://www.septuagint.bible/

I know, “That’s Greek tp me.”..

The Greek terms kardia (heart) and psyche (soul) are the New Testament counterparts to the Hebrew terms noted above. The word for strength is dunamis reminds us of the English term “dynamite” from which it is derived. Its usage in the NT conveys power and might.

Often dunamis conveys the meaning of demonstrated (outwardly manifested) power. “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles [dunamis], wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst…” (Acts 2:22; cf. 2 Cor. 12:12; Heb. 2:4).

So the LXX translation is an accurate translation of the Hebrew text.

New Testament quotations

1. Matthew 22: 36,37

36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” 37 Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

The third noun in the Shema, “strength” could be physical strength or other aspects of intensity. Intensity of will (determination) and intensity of mind (concentration) are within the range of meaning the Hebrew [meod]. Evidently some manuscripts of the LXX have the term dianoia (mind).

2. Mark 12:29,30

28 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”
29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’…”

As in the parallel passage in Matthew, the word mind (dianoia) is used, but with the inclusion of the word “strength.” (As noted above, “strength” is the more literal translation of the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 6:5.)

The word for strength” here (and in Luke 10:27) is a synonym of the word dunamis (strength, which was used in the LXX translation of the Shema). Strenght here is ischys, meaning “ability, force, strength” [7]

Why did our Lord add the concept of “mind” to the original Shema in Matthew and Mark? We need to remember that Christ would have taught in Aramaic. (This Aramaic would use the Hebrew language in its written form but would be linguistically distinct. The original N.T. manuscripts were written in Greek.) We believe in verbal plenary inspiration of the Holy Bible (2 Tim. 3:16,17), yet the Scriptures are not a transcript. They are an accurate rendition, record or summary of words and events. So either Christ used a Hebrew word more closely corresponding with “mind,” or the Holy Spirit guided the Gospel writers to bring out a meaning implicit in the Hebrew wording of the Shema. Or Christ may have mentioned “mind” in an additional sentence. As observed above, the Hebrew word for “strength” (Deut. 6:5) would include other aspects of intensity, such intensity of mind (concentration).

3. Luke 10:27

“25 And behold, a certain lawyer stood up and tested Him, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What is your reading of it?”
27 So he answered and said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’”

Note that the quotation is from a Jewish layer in dialog with Jesus.

Conclusion

The famous and familiar Shema summarizes our supreme moral duty to God:

Hear [shema], 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.”

The Lord Jesus affirmed that this is the supreme commandment of the Bible (Mark 12:29,30). And the second greatest is to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31; Lev. 19:18).

In the accounts of Matthew and Mark, the concept of one’s “mind” was added. This was within the range of meaning of the original word, strength (intensity). A more complete study of biblical psychology assigns the faculty of “mind” to the soul (along with volition and emotions). The human spirit has faculties higher than soulical faculties of animals. Spiritual faculties include intuition, conscience, and communion. The intention of the Shema command is to emphasize the totality of our life and resources being devoted to God, who first loved us (1 John 4:19).

To affirm that the Shema supports man as spirit, soul and body does not require the nouns (heart, soul, and strength) to be mutually exclusive; rather, their functions overlap. “From the viewpoint of biblical anthropology, ‘heart’, ‘soul’, and ‘mind’ are not mutually exclusive but overlapping categories, together demanding our love for God to come from our whole person, our every faculty and capacity.”[8]

Whatever the specific details of how the Shema was originally quoted by the Lord Jesus Christ, this does not cancel the significance of the original heart, soul, and strength wording that would be quoted daily by His Jewish audience.

It has been observed that the words begin in the innermost aspect of man, “heart” —which is used uniquely of man made in God’s image—and progress through “soul,” to “strength” (implying outer demonstrated power). This corresponds to the inner to outer flow of 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (This quotation demonstrates how progressive revelation contributes to the clarity of biblical psychology in the New Testament, especially in the Epistles.)

In light of this study we conclude that, although the Shema does not prove holistic trichotomy it does align with it.

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JBW

[1] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the New Testament

[2] Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon. It is a frequently used term (252 x, and 593 x in its shortened form)

[3] Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon. 753 occurrences.

[4] Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon

[5] Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Critical, Doctrinal and Homiletical

[6] Expositors Bible Commentary Abridged

[7] Vine’s Expository Dictionary

[8] Expositors Bible Commentary Abridged

Biblical quotations are from the New King James Version