During my school years, from elementary through secondary, I led several of my friends into becoming Christians. At the time, that entailed them praying a prayer of forgiveness and accepting Jesus as their Saviour. Then, I would help them obey the Bible, because that’s what I thought it meant when people said “follow Jesus”.

Later I learned that through Jesus we’re under grace, not under the law. So it’s not about the rules. That was great news, but also made me wonder: why did we get such a better deal than the Israelites?

So I looked into it, and found the Hebrew word shama. It means to listen attentively, with the intent to respond. English doesn’t have a single word that carries the same richness. That’s why translators often default to “obey”—but that choice changes the tone. Listening is closer to what the Hebrew actually means. And that matters, because…

1. Mutual Listening

The same word shama is used for us listening to God and God listening to us, both with the intent to respond:

• ‘The Lord listened to me…’ (Deut 10:10)
• ‘God heard the boy crying…’ (Gen 21:17)

• ‘If you listen to the voice of the Lord…’ (Deut 28:1)
• ‘Follow Him and listen to His voice.’ (Deut 13:4)

2. Translation Decisions

English Bibles tend to translate shama as “obey” only when God is the one speaking. But the original Hebrew doesn’t make that distinction—it’s the same word in both cases.

• About God: “Because you have obeyed me.” — Gen 22:18
  (Hebrew: shamaʿta bĕqolî — “you listened to my voice”)

• About Adam: “Because you listened to your wife…” — Gen 3:17
  (Hebrew: shamaʿta lĕqōl ʾishtĕkha)

3. Rules Don’t Speak

English Bibles say things like “obey (shama) the commandments”, but you don’t listen to rules, you listen to a person. In the Old Testament, shama is never used with “law” (torah) or “commandments” (mitzvot) as its object. Concerning these, you:

• Keep the commandments (shamar) — Deut 6:2
• Do the law (ʿasah) — Leviticus 18:5
• Walk in the statutes (halak) — Leviticus 26:3

4. Listen is the Closer Word

There is no Hebrew word that cleanly means “obey” in the modern, legalistic sense of complying with orders from above. The Old Testament doesn’t speak that way. It uses relational words:

• shama – listen attentively, respond
• shamar – guard, keep
• ʿasah – do, act
• halak – walk with, walk in

Imagine removing every use of the English word “obey” from the Old Testament. We’d still have every warning, every call to faithfulness and every consequence. But we’d hear it the way the original audience did: as a voice, not a rulebook.

So it turns out the Old Testament originally spoke of a covenant relationship with a loving God. And we translated it into obeying impersonal rules. They didn’t have such a bad deal after all.

If I had known this back in school, I wouldn’t have introduced my friends to a rulebook. I would have introduced them to a God who speaks. And “follow Jesus” would’ve meant what it was always supposed to mean.