Loving God and Neighbor: A Guide to Reading, Teaching, and Preaching Deuteronomy

The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy is the Bible's most elaborate explanation of what it means to love God and love neighbor. In fact, the book contains the Bible's first explicit command to love God in Deut 6:4-5, often referred to as the Shema. Jesus quoted heavily from Deuteronomy during his ministry, and this book still contains many practical teachings for his followers today. Drawing from recent understanding of the book's previously perplexing structure, we find that while the Ten Commandments are famously framed mostly as brief negatives such as "do not murder," they were written to teach an open-ended array of positive ways to demonstrate love for God and neighbor. This book offers a positive restatement of each commandment to establish how Deuteronomy presents each commandment's full meaning. This book will help readers discover the riches of the book of Deuteronomy by reading it with understanding. It will also offer the resources needed to lead a Bible study on or preach through Deuteronomy so that Christians are better prepared to love God and neighbor.