Right now I am taking an "the Pentateuch and Historical Books" as an intensive summer class. It is a lot of work. We have three eight page exegetical papers to turn in this week and a major mid-term on Monday.
Here is a mildly modified paragraph from one of the papers on Deuteronomy:
"Sometimes the most common words in the Bible end up being the words most difficult to properly understand. Many of us reading the book of Deuteronomy will come across difficult passages, but probably we don't typically think of 6:5 as one of them. The famous verse reads: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart….” However, in the suzerain-vassal structure of the book of Deuteronomy the word "love" takes on an important meaning. Daune Christenson notes that “the command to love belongs to the treaty language of the ancient Near East.” Wienfeld, citing The Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon, writes that “when a suzerain demands loyalty from his vassal, he adjures him that he shall love (ra’amu) the king as he loves himself.” It is interesting that Deuteronomy is the first book to speak of loving God, and of all the books in the Pentateuch, it bears most distinctive suzerain-vassal format. What is interesting, is that in these treaties, to love meant to be loyal, not the state of feeling a particular emotion. The suzerain lords were not demanding a particular emotional state upon their vassals; instead they were requiring loyalty to their authority alone. This is attested in the treaties and oaths in the both ANE documents and in the Greek, Hellenistic and Roman periods."
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