APO:Does Deut. 6:4,5 reflect teachings on the trinity?  by J. Sidlow Baxter

   "Without claiming too much, I think is is fair to say that [the]
opening chapters of Genesis do seem to indicate a reciprocal plurality
in God. They do not state it or conclusively imply it, but they at once
take us by surprise and prepare for further disclosures on the subject.
Everytime we read, "And God said," "God saw," "God made," "God
created," it is the plural ELOHIM with a singular verb.

   What is even more arresting is that each time we have the compound
name, JEHOVAH ELOHIM, Jehovah is singular yet is linked with the
plural, ELOHIM, surely suggesting a divine unity. And, perhaps most
strikingly of all, that uni-plurality is again expressed in connection
with man's expulsion from Eden. See chapter 3:22-24:

   "And Jehovah [singular] Gods [plural]...so He [God: singular
pronoun] drove out the man, and He [God: singular] placed...cherubim to
guard the way to the tree of life." To say the least, it seems
persuasively indicate that God is somehow a plurality in unity.

   TESTIMONY OF SHEMA

   Weighty confirmation of this comes in the declaration of Deuteronomy
6:4,5, which the Jews have always taken as their prime proof-text that
God is an absolute numerical one.

   "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and thou shalt love
the LORD with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy
might."

   That is the wording as in our King James Version and in other
standard versions, except that some give the name, JEHOVAH, instead of
"LORD" in capitols.

   This is the great SHEMA, or "Hear..." with which the Jewish
synagogue starts the daily liturgy morning and evening, and which every
Jew is suppose to repeat at least once daily. It comes second in the
'Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith' as drawn up by Maimonides in the
twelfth century. Our Lord Jesus Himself has set His seal that this is
the foundation pronouncement and the "first commandment" of the Mosaic
law (Mark 12:29,30). It is the basis of both Jewish and Christian
monotheism; and by both Jewish and Gentile unitarians it has been
seized upon as being supposedly fatal to our Christian doctrine of the
divine tri-unity. "There, now" they say, "nothing could be plainer. God
is a moneity, not a plurality. He is one, not three, for Deuteronomy
6:4 says, 'Jehovah our God is ONE Jehovah.'"

   Yet the stubborn fact is that he Hebrew wording of this bedrock
statement gives us one of the clearest pointers to the triunity of God
anywhere in the Bible. Few Jews (and perhaps far too few Christians)
know the exact meaning of the original Hebrew word, for it is partly
lost in translation. A literal translation of verse 4 would read:

   "Hear, O Israel: Jehovah [singular] our Gods [plural] is Jehovah
ECHAD [echad--a unity].

   Does the Hebrew really say "our Gods" (plural)? It does. The Hebrew
plural for "our Gods" is ELOHENU, from ELOHIM which is the plural of
ELOAH. Just as IM is the Hebrew plural in words like seraphin, and
cherubim, so is ENU the plural possessive pronoun-suffix denoting
things which belong to us, as for instance ABBOTHENU (our fathers) in
Numbers 20:15, and PESHA'ENU (our transgressions) and AVONOTHENU (our
iniquites) in Isaiah 53:5. So Deuteronomy 6:4 does indeed say, "Jehovah
our Gods."

   Now look at that Hebrew word, ECHAD: "Jehovah our Gods is Jehovah
ECHAD." Admittedly it is right to translate it as "Jehovah our Gods is
ONE Jehovah," so long as we understand that ECHAD means "one"
collectively or unitedly, not one as an absolute digit. That adjective,
ECHAD, derives from ACHAD which means to unify or to collect together.

   On looking it up in the Old Testament, I find that it occurs well
over SIX HUNDRED TIMES, so we easily can ascertain its common use and
meaning. The Hebrew language has an alternative word for "one," i.e.,
YACHID (feminine, YACHIDA) which does not often occur in our Old
Testament but is the word used whenever an only one is meant, or a
single unit, as when Isaac is called Abraham's "only son," and
Jephthah's daughter his "only daughter." Even that word can and
sometimes does mean a kind of group one, though more loosely than
ECHAd. Its main emphasis is that of a single enitity; and presumably
that is the word that would have been used in Deuteronomy 6:4 if a
mathematical oneness of God had been meant.

   We come back, then, to that word, ECHAD. Those who insist it always
means a uni-plurality (so it seems to me) are over-streching, for again
and again it is used of a single thing or person; but this is certainly
true, that when a compound "one" is meant to be emphasied, ECHAD is the
word used. It is used to express the oneness of evening and morning in
one day, as in Genesis 1:5, "There was evening and there was morning,
ONE day"; ALSO THE DUAL ONENESS OF WEDLOCK, AS IN GENESIS 2:24, "THEY
TWO SHALL BE -ONE- FLESH." <my emphasis Fred> It denotes a multi-unit
in Genesis 11:6, "Behold, they are ONE people," as it does also several
times in Exodus 26, "And thou shalt make fifty clasps of brass and put
the clasps into the loops and couple the tent together that it may be
ONE." It is the word used in such phrases as "ONE cluster of grapes"
(Numbers 13:23), "ONE company" (1 Samuel 13:17), "One troop" (2 Samuel
2:25), "ONE tribe" (1 Kings 11:13), "ONE nation" (1 Chronicles 17:21).

   That is how it must be taken in Deuteronomy 6:4, after the plural
ELOHENU ("our Gods"). What that great Shema says is "HEAR, O ISRAEL,
JEHOVAH OUR GODS IS JEHOVAH A UNITY."

   We may well appeal to the millions of Jews who still believe in the
authentic inspiration of Tenach (our Old Testament) to take careful
note of ECHAD and the plural ELOHENU (our Gods) in Deuteronomy 6:4. In
the THIRTEEN PRINCIPLES OF JEWISH FAITH, which is meant to be the
standard guide for all Jews, why have the Jewish scholars who framed it
changed that ECHAD in Deuteronomy 6 to that other word, YACHID? They
were Hebrew specialists. They well knew the difference between ECHAD (a
plural unity) and the other word, which denotes a single unity. As
already mentioned, ECHAD is from the root ACHAD which means to collect
together; and to this day ACHAD retains that meaning; for a Hebrew
dictionary recently published (1949) in the new State of Israel gives
the English equivalent of MU'ACHAD as "collective." Why then was ECHAD
changed to YACHID in the THIRTEEN PRINCIPLES OF JEWISH FAITH?
Undoubtedly that switch has much influenced general Jewish thinking as
to the being of Jehovah.

   In the "Authorized Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew
Congregations of the British Empire," sanctioned by the late Chief
Rabbi, Dr. N.M. Adler, YACHID is used of the eternal one, whereas
Tenach (the Old Testament) never uses that word of Jehovah. Strikingly
enough, though, there is one instance in which it is used of the
Messiah, and where it remarkably confirms what we are saying here. The
passage is Zechariah 12:10-14. We Christians believe that the "pierced"
one in verse 12 is our Lord Jesus Christ. As we put in capitols, for it
is the Hebrew YACHID.

   "And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants
of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall
look upon Me whom they have pierced, and they mourn for Him as one
mourneth for His ONLY Son, and shall be in bitterness for His
firstborn."

   And on the heels of that see chapter 14:9, where twice in one verse
the collective unit, ECHAD, is used of Jehovah as being a compound or
collective "one."

   "And Jehovah shall be King over all the earth. In that day there
shall be ONE Jehovah, and His Name ONE."

   In view of such ample evidence, let it be grasped once for all that
what Deuteronomy 6:4 really says is "HEAR, O ISRAEL, JEHOVAH OUR GODS
IS JEHOVAH A UNITY." Through defective transmission of its meaning,
Jewish thought about God has been diverted from trinitarian monotheism
to unitarian monotheism

   Most Jews think that we Christians are tri-theists, worshiping a
trinity of deities of whom two are not truly God. What we must keep
telling them is that we are as monotheistic as the most orthodox Jew,
that we worship the same eternal Jehovah and that our trinitarian
worship of Jehovah we own origianlly to their own Jewish Scriptures.

   I have seen the surprise among Jewish friends when the wording of
their great "Shema" (Deuteronomy 6:4,5) has been truly interpretated to
them. That solemn word of God through Moses was DIRECTED NOT ONLY
AGAINST POLYTHEISM BUT AGAINST MONOTHEISTIC UNITARIANISM, <my emphasis
Fred..> i.e., the worship of God as numerically one instead of
complexly one.

   My special thanks to J. Sidlow Baxter....'Majesty: The God You
Should Know'
