A Call to Obedience
Moses asks what the Lord requires of Israel: fear, love, service, and obedience offered with the whole heart. Though heaven and earth belong to Him, He sets His love on their fathers and chooses their descendants, so Israel must no longer remain inwardly stubborn.
A12nd now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God by walking in all His ways, to love Him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD that I am giving you this day for your own good? 14Behold, to the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, and the earth and everything in it. 15Yet the LORD has set His affection on your fathers and loved them. And He has chosen you, their descendants after them, above all the peoples, even to this day. 16Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and stiffen your necks no more.
The Lord is the supreme and impartial God, beyond bribery and favoritism. Because He gives justice to the fatherless and widow and loves the foreigner, Israel too must love the foreigner.
17For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and accepting no bribe. 18He executes justice for the fatherless and widow, and He loves the foreigner, giving him food and clothing. 19So you also must love the foreigner, since you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt.
Israel is told to fear, serve, cling to, and swear by the Lord alone. He is their praise, the one who has done great things before their eyes and multiplied them from a small family into a countless people.
20You are to fear the LORD your God and serve Him. Hold fast to Him and take your oaths in His name. 21He is your praise and He is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome wonders that your eyes have seen. 22Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.