Teach these commandments to your children...and tie them to your pendants and wrists so that you may observe them when busy or at rest. In today’s First Reading, we encounter the book of Deuteronomy’s explanatory section or epilogue to the Ten Commandments that was given by God through Moses. It is a section that not only enfleshes the Ten Commandments but also gives it a cushion, that is, the context through which the laws had to be interpreted and understood. In a passage that has come to be at the center of this community’s prayer life (‘Hear, O Israel…’), we see the love of God being presented as the basis and context for understanding the commandments. Love of God is the foundation of the law. Because the commandments issued forth from God, the reverence and loyalty that was owed God had to be extended to these life-giving words. He/she who was going to faithfully observe these words of the Lord was guaranteed long life and prosperity. In these accompanying instructions, we clearly see that in the Ten Commandments, the immediacy (and indeed presence) of God was to be discerned. Just as the community had made (or rather were expected to make) God close to itself, so too were the commandments to be treated. There was not to be a moment when the Israelites were to be separated from the life-giving words of God. This ensured the integration of the commandments in their lives. The commands were therefore not to be seen as something extraneous to them, that is, as something that they did. Rather, the commands were to become their very lives, the essence of their very beings. By teaching them to their children, the community made sure that the commands became part of their history. In other words, there had to be no talking about what God had done to their ancestors without invoking the Ten Commandments. The community was to be defined by the commandments.