Recently, as part of my daily devotional, I worked through a six-video series by The Bible Project on the Shema, a famous Jewish prayer based on Deuteronomy 6:4-5.  I more or less pulled this study out of a hat and my expectations weren’t that high. I doubted I was going to discover any deep new and exciting information.

Boy, was I wrong!

This Bible Project series is a word study of six key words in this prayer: Listen, LORD, Love, Heart, Soul, and Strength. The narrator takes each of these words and explores how the original Hebrew word would have been understood by the Israelites in Biblical times. To say that our modern understanding of these words is shallow would be an understatement. Unpacking each of these words has ramifications throughout the scriptures and really helped me realize even more how God’s love and our response permeate every aspect of our lives.

Each of the six videos is less than five minutes long and I highly recommend them. The series can be found at the Bible Project website, or you can walk through it as a daily study using the YouVersion Bible app as I did.