Keeping, Kept

Deuteronomy 11:22 · Infinitive absolute + finite verb · 2026-07-29

כִּי֩ אִם שָׁמֹ֨ר תִּשְׁמְר֜וּן אֶת כָּל הַ מִּצְוָ֣ה הַ זֹּ֗את אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם לַ עֲשֹׂתָ֑הּ לְ אַהֲבָ֞ה אֶת יְהוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶ֛ם לָ לֶ֥כֶת בְּ כָל דְּרָכָ֖יו וּ לְ דָבְקָה בֹֽו

shamor tishmerun

For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him;

The KJV reads simply 'if ye shall diligently keep' — a single, tidy command, one act of obedience among many in a long chapter of instructions.

The Hebrew doesn't say 'diligently keep.' It says *shamor tishmerun* — literally 'keeping, you shall keep.' The infinitive absolute *shamor* stands beside the finite verb *tishmerun* (from the same root, שׁמר, 'to keep' or 'to guard'), doubling the verb against itself. This is Hebrew's grammar of intensity: no adverb is added, the verb is simply repeated in two forms so that the idea of keeping is thickened, underlined, made inescapable. English has to flatten it into 'diligently' or 'surely,' but the original gives you the verb twice, staring at you.

This is not decoration. Moses is not asking for casual compliance but for a keeping that keeps on keeping — a guarding that guards the guarding. The doubling insists that half-hearted obedience is not what's in view here; the whole weight of the sentence leans on this one repeated root before it ever moves to loving, walking, and clinging to God. The intensity of the verb sets the register for everything that follows in the verse.

Consider what kind of God asks to be kept this way — not with a shrug of duty but with a doubled, deliberate, unrelenting attention. He does not want a nation that keeps commandments the way one keeps appointments, half-remembered. He wants a people whose keeping mirrors his own faithfulness, the God who keeps covenant to a thousand generations, who does not forget, does not relent, does not do anything by halves. The doubled verb is a mirror held up: this is how I have kept you — now keep me back. Worship rises not from the command's severity but from what it reveals: a God so committed to relationship that he asks for a love that matches his own intensity, and offers his own faithfulness as the pattern for ours.

Today

Choose one command of God you have been keeping half-heartedly this week, and today keep it as if keeping it twice — deliberately, attentively, without the automatic shrug.