Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God

Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: (International) 1915

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! (NASB) 1979

Listen O Israel: Jehovah our God is one Jehovah. (New World) 1984

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. (RSV) 1994

Of the above translations, the two older versions stand out as having in some way highlighted the verb "is" as an addition to make English sense of the Hebrew grammar. The actual text reads more like "Hear Israel Y'hovah Elohiym one Y'hovah." The "O" is added as another Anglaicism indicating that this was being addressed to a large congregation and the speaker was calling for the people's attention before he began the real message. Additionally, punctuation is added to indicate the flow of speech that any speaker would use, thus the comma, colon, exclamation mark, etc., after "Israel."

The word "Elohiym" should be rendered as "Gods" instead of "God" because it is actually the plural of "'El," the Hebrew word for one god. The word 'El is used in Genesis in certain places, but primarily the word Elohiym is used, especially when God is Himself doing the talking, such as the description of creation in the first two chapters. (There is also an odd shift from Abraham calling God 'El to God referring to Himself as Elohiym when He institutes His covenant with Abraham.)

The reason for including the Jehovah Witnesses version (an otherw