Thursday, May 13, 2010

Sunday School Lesson 17: Beware Lest Thou Forget

Deuteronomy 6 Moses addresses the entirety of Israel using "thou." Thou is second person singular. The Old Testament is interesting grammatically because they are operating on centuries old constructs, many of which have faded from everyday language.  Oddly, enough, once he hits verse three, he actually switches to "ye" for some reason.  "Ye" is the original objective tense of "you," "you" being at that time the direct object case of "ye." This happens all the time in scriptures (the random switch from 2nd person singular to 2nd person plural), and I always wonder, (particularly when it's the Lord speaking and it happens) whether it was intentional and we're supposed to get something out of it; or perhaps it was unintentional, meaning, Moses knows he's addressing an entire group of people, and subconsciously conjugates one pronoun in the plural, even though he's technically addressing them using a collective noun; or, perhaps a translator made a clerical mistake and should have been more thorough in verifying that his translation was consistent.  It happens a lot in the Doctrine and Covenants, which is untranslated, eliminating that as an option, but you can add to the list that Joseph Smith was using "thee," "ye," etc. with nothing more than a 3rd grade formal education and possibly didn't fully understand them either, considering they were well out of common usage by the 1800s.

Deut 6:5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. This is the source of Christ's answer to the Pharisees when they wanted to know which commandment was greatest.  Oddly enough, I was pretty mature before I realized this was here, and that he was not making up commandments on the spot when they asked him.

Deut 6:6-7 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. I love this part.  The Israelites have become something unique in the world. As a group, they have been subjected to the most consistent application of discrimination and abuse that I can think of.  Millennia of shared mistreatment by the rest of the world has given them a strong sense of identity.  In the book, This is My God, the author talks about their identity.  He believes that it was not only the shared suffering that has created it, but their obedience to the law of Moses. I think this commandment is about families.  If we make it a point to talk about gospel truths in our homes, our children will grow up knowing them, and that will give them the basis for an identity that is not tied to what other sociopathic teenagers try to tell them when they are going through high school and struggling to figure out who and what they want to be.

Deut 6:17-18 Ye shall diligently keep the commandments...And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord.  This is interesting to me.  He says keep the commandments and then follows it up with an instruction to also do that which is right and good, indicating that keeping the commandments he has laid out is insufficient to cover all situations and possible actions.  You need to also make good judgements in order to always do the right thing.

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