Day 3: Deuteronomy 6:4–9

“Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (vv. 8–9).

By the time Saul was thirteen years of age, he was considered a son of the law. He assumed all the religious responsibilities of the adult Jew. He started wearing phylacteries, called tefillin, during weekday morning prayers. Phylacteries were made up of two black leather cubes with long leather straps. Each cube held certain passages from the Torah written on strips of parchment. Saul wore one of the cubes on his left arm facing his heart. The other cube was placed in the center of his forehead. The leather straps on the left arm were wound precisely seven times around his arm.

The Code of Jewish Law prescribed that a Jewish man thirteen years or older was to put on the tefillin at the first moment in the morning when enough daylight was present to recognize a neighbor at a distance of four cubits.5 These practices seem very strange to us perhaps, but we should appreciate their attempt to interpret Scripture as literally as they knew how.

Exodus 13:9 says the annual observance of the Feast of Unleavened Bread was to “serve as a sign for you on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead, so that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth” (hcsb). You can see that for the strict Jew, the phylacteries were a literal act of obedience.

The left arm was chosen because it was ordinarily the weaker. They were to wear God’s Word as a banner and shield over their weakness. We don’t practice the outward expression of the Jew, but we are wise to share the inward principle.

Saul would have placed the phylacteries around his forehead and arm in total silence. If interrupted while putting on the phylacteries on any given morning, he would have started the procedure all over again, repeating the appropriate benedictions. You see, a thirteen-year-old Hebrew boy could not even get out of bed in the morning without remembering to whom he belonged. As he wound the straps of the phylacteries around his head and arm, he was reminded of his binding relationship to his Creator. Soberly he assumed the responsibility of one associated with God. The law of the Lord was his life.