Why Can't You Make Yourself Change?

Why Can't You Make Yourself Change?

What Deuteronomy knew about the human heart, and what God promised to do about it

By Dr. Shawn M. Greener | Sunday Summation and Deepening, Deuteronomy 10-26

© 2026 Dr. Shawn M. Greener. All Rights Reserved.

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There's a sticky note on a lot of bathroom mirrors.

Some say Be patient with the kids. Some say No phone before prayer. Some have hung there so long the corners curl, and the person brushing their teeth in front of it doesn't see it anymore. They only feel it.

If you have one of those notes, you know the feeling. You know exactly what you should do. You've known for years. And you've tried. The promise in the car after the argument. The fresh start on the first of the month. Three days. A week on a good run. Then you're back where you started, a little more ashamed than last time.

Underneath it all, a quiet verdict forms: Something's wrong with me. Other people change. I don't.

This week, Deuteronomy took that verdict head on.

The week we just walked

We spent five mornings on the plains of Moab with Moses, days before Israel crossed the Jordan.

On Monday, God rewrote the covenant Israel had shattered: cut two more stones, and I'll write the same words again(Deuteronomy 10:1-2). Jewish tradition remembers that the broken pieces were carried in the ark right beside the new tablets.

On Tuesday, Moses showed them a land unlike Egypt, a land that "drinks water by the rain from heaven," under God's eyes from the beginning of the year to the end (11:10-12).

On Wednesday came the year of release: debts canceled, servants sent out with their arms full, and a doubled command, open, you shall open your hand (15:8).

On Thursday, the king was told to copy God's law by hand and read it daily, "that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers" (17:20).

On Friday, a farmer carried his firstfruits to God and confessed, My father was a perishing Aramean (26:5).

The shape under the whole law

Read quickly, Deuteronomy 12-25 can feel like a junk drawer of ancient rules. Worship, tithes, debts, judges, kings, witnesses, weights and measures.

In 1979, Stephen Kaufman published a study showing that these chapters follow the order of the Ten Commandments, one commandment at a time. Chapter 12 deals with worship (no other gods, no images). Chapter 13 guards God's Name. Then come the Sabbath laws, and that's where the year of release sits: the seventh year is the Sabbath, stretched across the calendar. Next come the laws of authority, judges, priests, prophets and the king, under honor your father and your mother. After that the code moves through murder, adultery, theft and false witness, and it ends with coveting: two sets of weights in a bag, one to buy with and one to cheat with.

Scholars debate exactly where each line falls, but the pattern has held for more than forty years.

So the laws we walked through all week weren't new rules stacked on top of the Ten. They were the second stones, unfolded into the field, the courtroom, the market and the palace. And when every commandment has been walked out, the law code closes in chapter 26 with a farmer saying thank you.

Love, in the language of kings

When Moses says love the LORD your God, Israel heard the vocabulary of kings.

In 1963, the Assyriologist William Moran showed that across the ancient Near East, love was treaty language. In the 1300s BC, Canaanite kings writing to Pharaoh in the Amarna letters used love to mean loyalty. A vassal who loved the great king kept faith and kept the terms.

That language lasted for centuries. In 672 BC, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon made his vassals swear to love his son Ashurbanipal as they loved their own lives.

A tablet in a temple floor

In 2009, archaeologists at Tell Tayinat, in southern Turkey, found a copy of that very oath in the innermost room of a temple. The excavators believe it stood on display there as a sacred object, set before the god. The oath itself curses anyone who would destroy or alter the tablet.

Israel's covenant had its own resting place. The tablets lay inside the ark, and the book of the law was set beside it (Deuteronomy 31:26), in God's own dwelling in the middle of His people.

That treaty world reached Jerusalem, too. Esarhaddon's building inscription names the western kings who served him, and one of them is Manasseh, king of Judah.

But listen to what no Assyrian oath ever said: "Heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the LORD your God... yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers" (Deuteronomy 10:14-15). The Hebrew verb, chashaq, means to be attached, bound, drawn to someone. Esarhaddon demanded love. Israel's Great King gave His first.

The hardest sentence in Deuteronomy

An oath can command loyalty. It can't create desire. Twenty years after Esarhaddon's oath, Ashurbanipal's own brother in Babylon rose against him.

Moses knew Israel's heart would do the same. Just past this week's chapters, he looks at a people who'd seen plagues, a parted sea, manna and water from rock, and says:

"But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear" (Deuteronomy 29:4).

Then God tells Moses, "I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land" (31:21).

God rewrote the stones with His eyes wide open. The second stones weren't a gamble on Israel. They were a commitment from God.

And He built the answer into the furniture. The tablets sat inside the ark and the book beside it, a witness against a stubborn people. Above both sat the mercy seat, where the high priest sprinkled atoning blood once a year (Exodus 25:21; Leviticus 16:14-15). The law below accused. The blood above covered.

A promise spoken to exiles

Then comes the promise, and where Moses sets it matters. Deuteronomy 30 opens "when all these things come upon you... among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you." That's exile. The promise is spoken to a people who've already failed, already scattered, already at the bottom.

And to them: "The LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live" (30:6).

Set the Hebrew side by side. In 10:16, u-maltem et orlat levavkhem: you circumcise the foreskin of your heart. In 30:6, u-mal Adonai Eloheikha et levavkha: the LORD your God will circumcise your heart. The verb is the same, mul, "to cut." The only thing that changed is who's holding the knife.

That's why you can't make yourself change. Not because you're uniquely broken. Because nobody can.

Same words, new surface

Jeremiah picked up the promise: "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah... I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts" (Jeremiah 31:31, 33). God doesn't promise a new law. He says torati, "My law." The new covenant doesn't change what's written. It changes where it's written. Notice too who received the promise first. God has never stopped loving the people He set His heart on, and those of us from the nations are grafted into their root, never planted in its place (Romans 11:17-18, 29).

Ezekiel named the surgery: "I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:26-27). The covenant had been written on stone, and the people's hearts had turned to stone. So God writes on flesh.

Then the Son of God walked into the wilderness for forty days, the way Israel had walked it for forty years. Deuteronomy 8:2 says that wilderness was meant "to know what was in your heart." Three times Yeshua was tested, and three times He answered from Deuteronomy (Matthew 4:1-11). The wilderness asked what was in Israel's heart, and the answer broke them. It asked what was in His heart, and the answer was perfect love.

On the night He was betrayed, He lifted the cup: "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood"(Luke 22:20). Paul ties the thread off: "circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit" (Romans 2:29), and you are "a letter from Christ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Corinthians 3:3).

You couldn't change your own heart. So He gave you His.

Seven mornings

So what do you do with this? Not more white-knuckle effort. You stop trying to be your own Surgeon.

Tonight, name the one change you've failed to make again and again. Say it out loud to God, and then say: I can't change my own heart. You promised You would. Do it.

Then, for the next seven mornings, before you touch your phone:

1. Like the king, copy one verse by hand. Start with Deuteronomy 30:6. Pen and paper, slowly.
2. Like the farmer, say your confession out loud. I was perishing, and God rescued me.
3. Like the year of release, open your hand to one person that day. A debt canceled. A gift given. An hour handed over.

Then watch what the Spirit of God does in a week. Not because you finally tried hard enough. Because you finally let Him do what He said He would.

Take the sticky note off the mirror tonight. The goal was never wrong. The method was. The LORD your God will circumcise your heart. He starts the moment you say, I can't.

Watch the full Sunday Summation and Deepening, and every weekday teaching, on YouTube. If this helped you, like the video and subscribe with the bell on, so the next episode finds you: youtube.com/@DrShawnMichaelGreener

More teaching, the full archive, and the free study guide: TrueWordFaithforLife.com

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

© 2026 Dr. Shawn M. Greener. All Rights Reserved. Free to copy and share as a devotional, provided this copyright notice and a link to TrueWordFaithforLife.com travel with every copy.

STUDY GUIDE

The Heart No Law Could Reach

A Study Guide to Deuteronomy 10-26

For Small Groups, Sunday School, and Bible College

Dr. Shawn M. Greener | True Word, Faith for LIFE! | Sunday Summation and Deepening, Days 125-129

© 2026 Dr. Shawn M. Greener. All Rights Reserved.

PERMISSION TO COPY AND SHARE. This study guide is a gift to the Body of Messiah. You're encouraged to copy, print, photocopy, and distribute it for personal devotion, small groups, Sunday school classes, Bible studies, and classroom teaching, free of charge, provided every copy includes this copyright notice and a credit to TrueWordFaithforLife.com. It may not be sold or republished commercially without written permission.

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

Small group (one 90-minute session or four 45-minute sessions). Read the Big Idea aloud, skim the five threads, then spend most of the time in Parts Three and Four and the Seven Mornings practice. Use the Group questions.

Sunday school (five weeks).

Bible college (seminar unit, one to two weeks). Assign the primary readings, the starred bibliography entries, and one of the research assignments in Part Eight. The footnotes are written as launching points for further research.

Watch first, if you can. The full teaching and the five weekday episodes behind it are free on YouTube: youtube.com/@DrShawnMichaelGreener. Please like and subscribe so your group can follow the series together.

THE BIG IDEA

Deuteronomy 12-25 unfolds the Ten Commandments into daily life, and every command aims at the heart. Yet Moses knew Israel lacked the heart to keep them (Deut 29:4), and God renewed the covenant knowing it (31:21). The book's answer is not greater human effort but a promise spoken to exiles: "The LORD your God will circumcise your heart" (30:6). The same verb moves from Israel's hand (10:16) to God's. That promise runs through Jeremiah's new covenant, which keeps the same Torah but writes it on a new surface, to Yeshua the Messiah, who kept Deuteronomy's demand perfectly and inaugurated the new covenant in His blood.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this study, participants should be able to:

1. Describe Deuteronomy's covenant structure and its relationship to ancient Near Eastern treaty forms.
2. Explain the proposal that Deuteronomy 12-25 follows the order of the Ten Commandments, and locate this week's passages within it.
3. Trace five recurring threads through Deuteronomy 10-26: divine initiative, memory, the hand, the vulnerable, and the heart.
4. Explain the treaty background of "love," the significance of the Tell Tayinat discovery, and what makes Israel's covenant distinct.
5. Articulate the movement from command (10:16) through diagnosis (29:4; 31:21) to promise (30:6), including the exilic setting of the promise.
6. Trace the promise of a new heart through Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 to its fulfillment in Yeshua.
7. Practice one concrete, daily discipline rooted in the text.

PRIMARY READINGS

Deuteronomy 5:6-21; 8:1-3; 10-26; 29:2-4; 30:1-20; 31:16-29; Exodus 25:10-22; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:25-27; Matthew 4:1-11; Luke 4:16-21; 22:14-20; Romans 2:28-29; 10:5-13; 11:17-29; 2 Corinthians 3:1-6; Galatians 3:13; Hebrews 9:1-14.

KEY TERMS

PART ONE: BACKGROUND, DEUTERONOMY AS A COVENANT DOCUMENT

Deuteronomy is shaped like a covenant treaty between a great king and a subject people. Scholars have long noticed that its outline tracks the treaties of the ancient Near East:[^7]

Notice where this week sits. Deuteronomy 10-26 crosses the hinge of the whole book, from the general stipulations (love, loyalty, the heart) into the specific stipulations (debts, kings, courts, harvests). The specific laws are the general love worked out in ordinary life. That's why the heart keeps surfacing even in chapters about loans and grain.

A note on the scholarly debate. Meredith Kline aligned Deuteronomy with second-millennium Hittite treaties; Moshe Weinfeld and others emphasized close parallels with seventh-century Neo-Assyrian oaths, especially the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon.[^8] Both sets of parallels are real. For this study, the important point is the one both camps share: Israel heard its covenant in the vocabulary of kings and treaties, and Adonai presented Himself as the Great King.

Discussion.

• Why would God choose a covenant form His people already understood from the political world around them?
• What changes when you read Deuteronomy as a relationship document rather than a rulebook?

PART TWO: THE FIVE THREADS

Thread One: God Moves First

Key texts: 10:1-2; 11:12; 15:15; 17:15; 26:5-9.

Every major command in the unit rests on a prior act of God. He rewrites the tablets before Israel repents of anything new (10:1-2). His eyes are on the land "from the beginning of the year to the end of the year" before Israel sows a seed (11:12). The release of debts and slaves is grounded in "you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you" (15:15). The farmer's confession is a narrative of divine initiative: "we cried... the LORD heard... the LORD brought us out" (26:7-8).

Theologians call this the indicative before the imperative: what God has done grounds what God asks. Deuteronomy 10:12 makes the point with its verb. Where many English versions read "what does the LORD your God require of you," the Hebrew verb is sha'al, the ordinary verb for ask.[^3]

A rabbinic tradition drives the point home. The Babylonian Talmud records that both the whole tablets and the fragments of the broken tablets were placed in the ark.[^9] Berakhot 8b applies it pastorally: honor an elder who has forgotten his learning through no fault of his own, because the broken tablets were kept in the ark alongside the whole. God does not discard what was broken.

Discussion.

• Where in your life have you reversed the order, trying to earn what God has already given?
• How does "ask" rather than "require" in 10:12 change how you hear God's voice?

Thread Two: Remember

Key texts: 15:15; 16:12; 17:19; 24:18, 22; 26:5-10.

The Hebrew verb zakhar is more than mental recall. To remember is to make the past present and let it govern the next action.[^10] Deuteronomy uses memory as the motive for generosity (15:15), for including the vulnerable at the festivals (16:12), and for justice in the fields (24:18, 22). The king's daily reading of the Torah (17:19) is memory built into an institution. The firstfruits confession (26:5-10) is memory spoken aloud in public worship.

The Mishnah describes how later generations brought firstfruits to Jerusalem: villages traveling together, an ox with gilded horns leading the procession, flutes playing, and every worshiper, King Agrippa included, carrying his own basket on his shoulder. It also records that the confession was once recited by each worshiper himself, but because those who could not read were put to shame, the practice changed so that all repeated the words after the priest.[^11] Memory was protected for the poorest worshiper.

Discussion.

• What happens to gratitude when a rescued person forgets the rescue?
• What practices in your week function the way the king's daily reading did?

Thread Three: The Hand

Key texts: 10:3; 11:10; 15:7-11, 13-14; 17:18; 26:4, 8.

The unit is full of hands. Moses carries the second tablets in his hands (10:3). In Egypt, the farmer watered his field "with your foot" (b'raglekha, 11:10), working the irrigation channels with his own body.[^12] God commands, with a doubled verb, patoach tiftach et yadkha, "opening, you shall open your hand" (15:8, 11), and ha'aneik ta'anik, "loading, you shall load him up" (15:14). The king's hand copies the law (17:18). The priest takes the basket from the worshiper's hand (26:4).

Against the open hand stands the "evil eye" of 15:9 (v'ra'ah einkha), a Hebrew idiom for stinginess rather than a curse. It appears in Proverbs 23:6 and 28:22, and Yeshua uses it in Matthew 20:15: "do you begrudge my generosity?" (literally, "is your eye evil because I am good?").[^13]

Behind every human hand stands the divine hand: "the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm" (26:8).

Discussion.

• What is your hand closed around right now?
• Why does Deuteronomy treat stinginess as a problem of the eye and heart before it is a problem of the wallet?

Thread Four: The Ones with Nobody

Key texts: 10:17-19; 14:28-29; 16:11, 14; 17:20; 24:17-22; 26:12-13.

The fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner appear again and again in the unit. The description of God in 10:17-18 is remarkable: the "God of gods and Lord of lords" immediately "executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner." The phrase "God of gods" presupposes a populated spiritual world over which Adonai is supreme, which makes His attention to the powerless all the more striking.[^14] Verse 19 grounds Israel's care in its own story: "for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt."

The year of release contains an honest tension. Deuteronomy 15:4 says "there will be no poor among you" if Israel obeys; 15:11 says "the poor will never cease out of the land." The ideal and the reality stand side by side, and the command that follows is the same in both cases: open your hand.[^15]

The law of the king (17:14-20) belongs to this thread. Unlike Mesopotamian royal ideology, in which the king stood above and apart from his subjects, Israel's king must be "from among your brothers," must not multiply horses, wives, or wealth, and must read the law "that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers."[^16] In Deuteronomy, power is tested by how it treats those beneath it.

Discussion.

• Who are the "ones with nobody" within your reach this week?
• Where do you hold power that no one checks? What would 17:20 look like there?

Thread Five: The Heart

Key texts: 10:16; 11:16, 18; 15:9-10; 17:17, 20; 26:16.

The Hebrew levav (and its shorter form lev) denotes the inner center of the person: memory, reasoning, intention, and will, not emotion alone.[^1] The unit addresses the heart at every turn:

• "Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart" (10:16)
• "Take care lest your heart be deceived" (11:16)
• "Lay up these words of mine in your heart" (11:18)
• "Your heart shall not be grudging" (15:10)
• "That his heart may not be lifted up" (17:20)
• "With all your heart and with all your soul" (26:16)

The command to circumcise the heart (10:16) uses covenant surgery as a metaphor: something must be cut away from the heart itself. It answers the diagnosis of 9:6 and 10:16, "stubborn" (qesheh oref, hard of neck). The rest of the book must answer one question: can a stiff-necked people perform that surgery on themselves?

Discussion.

• Why do you think God aimed the commands at the heart rather than only at behavior?
• If the heart is the seat of the will, what does it mean that the heart itself needs surgery?

PART THREE: THE ARCHITECTURE, THE SECOND STONES UNFOLDED

In 1979, Stephen A. Kaufman argued that the law code of Deuteronomy 12-25 is arranged according to the sequence of the Ten Commandments as given in Deuteronomy 5.[^17] John Walton developed the proposal further, and Daniel Block's commentary builds on it.[^18] Scholars debate the precise boundaries, but the broad pattern is widely recognized:

Why it matters.

1. The law code is the Decalogue lived out. The "statutes and rules" of chapters 12-25 are not a second, separate law. They are the ten words written on the second stones (10:1-4), unfolded into field, court, market, and palace.
2. The year of release is Sabbath theology. Placing chapter 15 under the fourth commandment shows that release of debts and slaves is Sabbath rest extended to the poor and the indebted. This prepares the reader for Luke 4:18-21 (see Part Five).
3. The king lives under the fifth commandment. Kingship sits among the laws of authority. In Deuteronomy, authority is honored and limited at once; the king must remain "among his brothers."
4. The code ends in worship. After the tenth commandment's section, chapter 26 closes the law with the firstfruits liturgy and a mutual covenant declaration (26:16-19). Obedience culminates in thanksgiving.

Discussion.

• How does seeing the Ten Commandments beneath chapters 12-25 change the way you read "minor" laws like honest weights?
• Why would God place the release of debts under the Sabbath commandment?

PART FOUR: THE THEOLOGICAL CENTER

1. Love as Covenant Language

In a landmark 1963 article, William L. Moran demonstrated that "love" in ancient Near Eastern diplomatic texts functions as covenant terminology: the love a vassal owes his suzerain is loyal, exclusive, and expressed in obedience.[^19] His evidence reached back to the fourteenth-century BC Amarna letters, in which Canaanite rulers writing to Pharaoh use "love" for political loyalty.[^20] Deuteronomy's command to "love the LORD your God" (6:5; 10:12; 11:1, 13, 22) carries the force of covenant loyalty.

The clearest later parallel is the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon (672 BC), in which vassals swear to love the crown prince Ashurbanipal as they love their own lives.[^21]

2. The Tablet in the Temple: Tell Tayinat

In 2009, excavators at Tell Tayinat (ancient Kunalia, in the Hatay province of southern Turkey) discovered a copy of Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty in the inner sanctum of a temple. The excavation team and the tablet's editor, Jacob Lauinger, concluded that the tablet was set up and displayed there as an object of veneration.[^22] The treaty text itself curses anyone who would alter, destroy, or remove the tablet.

Two observations follow:

• Treaties were housed before the gods. The Tayinat find confirms a practice long inferred from the texts: covenant documents were deposited in sanctuaries. Israel's tablets rested in the ark (10:2, 5), and the book of the law was placed beside it (31:26). Israel's Great King housed His covenant in His own dwelling, in the midst of His people.
• The treaty world reached Judah. Esarhaddon's own building inscription lists the western kings who served him, among them "Manasseh, king of Judah."[^23] Judah's kings knew the vocabulary of loyalty oaths firsthand.

3. The Great King Who Loves First

Here Deuteronomy breaks the pattern. Assyrian treaties demand love; they never present the emperor's love for the vassal as the ground of the relationship. Deuteronomy does exactly that: "Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them" (10:15; cf. 7:7-8). The verb chashaq describes attachment and desire.[^2] Israel's love is a response to a prior love.

4. The Limit of Commanded Love

A treaty can require behavior, but it cannot create desire. The Assyrian succession arrangement unraveled when Ashurbanipal's brother Shamash-shum-ukin, king of Babylon, revolted against him (652-648 BC).[^24]

Moses names the same limit in Israel. After forty years of signs and provision he says: "But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear" (29:4; Hebrew 29:3).[^25] The phrase lev lada'at, "a heart to know," identifies the deficit precisely. The problem is not information or experience. It is the heart.

God's own words confirm that He renewed the covenant knowing this: "For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give" (31:21). Moses adds, "For I know how rebellious and stubborn you are" (31:27). The second stones were not a wager on Israel's reliability; they were a commitment grounded in God's.

5. The Furniture of Grace

The physical arrangement of the ark preaches the same theology. The tablets of the covenant were placed inside the ark (10:2, 5; Exod 25:16). The book of the law was set beside it "as a witness against you" (31:26). Above it rested the kapporet, the mercy seat, where atoning blood was applied on the Day of Atonement (Exod 25:21-22; Lev 16:14-15).[^26] The law beneath testifies against Israel; the blood above covers them. Hebrews reads the ark and the mercy seat as a pattern pointing forward to Messiah's own atoning blood (Heb 9:4-5, 11-14).

6. A Promise Spoken to Exiles

Deuteronomy 30:1-10 is set after covenant failure: "when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse... and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you" (30:1). The promise is addressed to a people already scattered.

Then the decisive move: "And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live" (30:6).

Compare the Hebrew:

The verb is the same (mul, to circumcise, to cut). The surgery is the same. The surgeon changes.[^27]

Summary statement for teaching: The command shows you the heart you need. The promise gives you the heart you cannot make.

Discussion.

• How does Moran's insight change the way you hear "love the LORD your God"?
• What does the Tell Tayinat tablet add to your picture of the ark and the book of the law?
• Why is it significant that God renewed the covenant knowing Israel would break it (31:21)?
• Why does it matter that the promise of 30:6 is spoken to exiles rather than to the faithful?

PART FIVE: FULFILLMENT IN YESHUA

The new covenant promised to Israel. Jeremiah 31:31-34 announces a new covenant "with the house of Israel and the house of Judah," "not like the covenant that I made with their fathers... my covenant that they broke." God says, "I will put my law (torati) within them, and I will write it on their hearts." The content is the same Torah; the surface is new. The promise is made to Israel first. Gentile believers share in it by being grafted into Israel's olive tree, not by replacing Israel (Rom 11:17-24), "for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Rom 11:29).[^28]

The Spirit as the means. Ezekiel 36:26-27 specifies the mechanism: a new heart, a new spirit, the heart of stone (lev ha'even) replaced with a heart of flesh, and God's own Spirit placed within His people to cause them to walk in His statutes. The covenant written on stone meets hearts that have become stone; the Ruach HaKodesh writes on flesh.

The faithful Israelite. In Matthew 4:1-11, Yeshua spends forty days in the wilderness and answers each temptation from Deuteronomy (8:3; 6:16; 6:13). Deuteronomy 8:2 states the purpose of Israel's wilderness: "to know what was in your heart." Where Israel's heart failed during forty years, the Son's heart is proved true. He alone loved God with all His heart, soul, and strength (cf. Matt 22:37).[^29]

The year of release fulfilled. In Luke 4:18-21, Yeshua reads Isaiah 61:1 (with a phrase from Isaiah 58:6) and announces "release" (aphesis) to captives, the same Greek word the Septuagint uses for the release of Deuteronomy 15. Read alongside Part Three, the Sabbath release of the law code finds its fulfillment in Him: "Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."[^4]

The curse borne. Deuteronomy 21:22-23 declares that one hanged on a tree is under God's curse. Paul cites it in Galatians 3:13: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us."[^30]

The firstfruits raised. Paul calls the risen Messiah "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Cor 15:20), drawing on the firstfruits sheaf of Leviticus 23:10-11.[^31]

The covenant in His blood. At the final Passover, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20) explicitly identifies Yeshua's death as the inauguration of Jeremiah's promise.

The near word. Paul reads Deuteronomy 30:12-14 ("the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart") as fulfilled in "the word of faith that we proclaim": confession of Yeshua as Lord and belief that God raised Him from the dead (Rom 10:6-9).[^32]

Heart circumcision by the Spirit. "Circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter" (Rom 2:29). "You are a letter from Christ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Cor 3:3). Paul joins Exodus's tablets of stone with Ezekiel's heart of flesh.

Summary statement for teaching: You could not change your own heart, so He gave you His.

Discussion.

• Why does it matter that Jeremiah's new covenant keeps "My law" rather than replacing it?
• Why does it matter that Yeshua answered temptation specifically from Deuteronomy, and that Deut 8:2 frames the wilderness as a test of the heart?
• How does Romans 11 guard against reading the new covenant as God abandoning Israel?

PART SIX: TRANSLATION TENSIONS

PART SEVEN: PRACTICE, SEVEN MORNINGS

Tonight, name the one change you've failed to make again and again. Pray: "I can't change my own heart. You promised You would. Do it."

For the next seven mornings, before touching your phone:

1. Copy one verse by hand, as the king did (17:18). Begin with Deuteronomy 30:6. Suggested sequence: 30:6; 10:15; 11:12; 15:15; 17:20; 26:5; Jeremiah 31:33.
2. Speak your confession aloud, as the farmer did (26:5-10): "I was perishing, and God rescued me."
3. Open your hand to one person, as in the year of release (15:8): a debt canceled, a gift given, an hour handed over.

For groups: Begin the next meeting by having each person share one verse they copied and one hand they opened.

PART EIGHT: DISCUSSION QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Group (small group and Sunday school)

1. What change have you tried and failed to make? How did repeated failure shape what you believe about God's view of you?
2. Which of the five threads struck you most, and why?
3. Look at the Ten Commandments table in Part Three. Which placement surprised you?
4. Moses says Israel saw forty years of miracles and still lacked "a heart to understand." Why don't experiences alone change us?
5. God renewed the covenant knowing Israel would fail (31:21). What does that say about how He relates to you?
6. Read Deuteronomy 10:16 and 30:6 aloud. What changes when "you" becomes "the LORD"?
7. How does Yeshua's use of Deuteronomy in Matthew 4 encourage you?
8. Which part of the Seven Mornings practice will be hardest for you?

Bible College Seminar

1. Evaluate Kaufman's proposal that Deuteronomy 12-25 follows the order of the Decalogue. Where are the boundaries strongest and weakest? What hermeneutical difference does the structure make?
2. Evaluate the strengths and limits of reading Deuteronomy through Hittite versus Neo-Assyrian treaty forms. What is at stake for dating and interpretation? How does the Tell Tayinat discovery bear on the question?
3. Moran argued that covenant "love" in Deuteronomy is loyalty expressed in obedience. Does that reading exhaust the meaning of ahavah in 10:12-15? Consider chashaq in 10:15.
4. Trace the heart-circumcision motif across Deut 10:16; 30:6; Lev 26:41; Jer 4:4; 9:25-26; Ezek 44:7, 9; Rom 2:28-29; Col 2:11.
5. Analyze Paul's use of Deut 30:12-14 in Rom 10:6-9. Is Paul's reading continuous with Moses' meaning?
6. Discuss the theological significance of Deut 31:21, 26 alongside Heb 9:4-5.
7. How should a Hebraic, covenantal reading of Deuteronomy shape the Church's posture toward the Jewish people in light of Romans 9-11?

Research and writing assignments (Bible college)

• Exegetical paper (2,500-3,500 words): Deuteronomy 10:12-22 as a summary of covenant theology. Engage Tigay, Block, and Craigie.
• Structural paper (2,500 words): The Decalogue as the architecture of Deuteronomy 12-25. Engage Kaufman, Walton, and Block.
• Comparative paper (2,500 words): "Love" in the Amarna letters, the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon, and Deuteronomy. Use Moran, Parpola and Watanabe, Lauinger, and Weinfeld.
• Biblical theology paper (3,000 words): From stone to heart: the trajectory from Deut 10:1-5 and 30:1-6 through Jer 31:31-34 and Ezek 36:26-27 to 2 Cor 3:1-6.

LEADER'S NOTES

• Shame is in the room. Many participants carry years of failed attempts at change. Keep the emphasis on God's promise, not renewed effort. Recovery groups will recognize the theme: honest change begins by admitting we cannot fix ourselves.
• The exile setting is good news. Emphasize that Deuteronomy 30:6 is spoken to people who have already failed. That is the hope for anyone who thinks they've gone too far.
• Power can be a wound. Thread Four and the law of the king may stir memories for those who have lived under abusive authority. Emphasize that God wrote limits on power because He sees and defends those beneath it.
• Money can be tender. In discussing the year of release, avoid pressing anyone to disclose financial details. Keep the focus on the posture of the hand.
• Keep Israel's place clear. When teaching the new covenant, read Jeremiah 31:31 and Romans 11:17-29 together, so no one leaves thinking God has set aside His covenant people.

NOTES

[^1]: Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, trans. Margaret Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), in his chapter on lēb/lēbāb. Wolff argues that the Hebrew heart is predominantly the organ of reason, memory, and decision rather than emotion, which is why Deuteronomy can command the heart. See also Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), s.v. "לֵבָב," which catalogs the senses of inner person, mind, will, and moral character.

[^2]: Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, s.v. "חָשַׁק." The verb denotes attachment and desire; it appears in Deut 7:7 and 10:15 of God's love for Israel and elsewhere of a man's desire for a woman (Gen 34:8; Deut 21:11). The intimacy of the verb is part of the point: God's covenant love is not merely administrative.

[^3]: Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, s.v. "שָׁאַל." The participle sho'el in Deut 10:12 is the common verb for asking. The ESV and NASB render "require," reflecting the covenant obligation; the Complete Jewish Study Bible renders "ask." Barry Rubin, ed., Complete Jewish Study Bible, trans. David H. Stern (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2016), Deut 10:12. Both renderings are defensible; the teaching point is that the command arrives in the voice of a Father, not a creditor.

[^4]: Alfred Rahlfs and Robert Hanhart, eds., Septuaginta, rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006), Deut 15:1-2, where the seventh-year release is rendered aphesis. The same noun translates the jubilee "liberty" of Lev 25:10. In the New Testament aphesis becomes a standard term for the forgiveness of sins (e.g., Matt 26:28; Eph 1:7) and appears twice in Luke 4:18, where Yeshua's reading combines Isa 61:1 with a phrase from Isa 58:6. The lexical bridge is solid; how much Luke intends the Deuteronomic release specifically, as opposed to the jubilee of Leviticus 25, is a matter of interpretive judgment, and both backgrounds point the same direction.

[^5]: Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), comment on 17:18. The Hebrew mishneh haTorah hazot means "a copy of this teaching." The Septuagint's to deuteronomion touto, "this second law," gave the book its Greek, and then English, name. The Hebrew name of the book is Devarim, "Words," from its opening line.

[^6]: Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, s.v. "אָבַד." The participle oved can mean "perishing," "lost," or "straying." Modern translations favor "wandering." Targum Onkelos and the Passover Haggadah read the phrase as "Laban the Aramean sought to destroy my father," treating oved as transitive. See Bernard Grossfeld, The Targum Onqelos to Deuteronomy, The Aramaic Bible 9 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988), on 26:5; and Tigay, Deuteronomy, comment on 26:5, who discusses the grammatical difficulty of the transitive reading. Every reading lands in the same place theologically: Israel began in weakness and owed its existence to God.

[^7]: Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963). Kline's outline remains the most cited structural proposal among evangelical scholars. See also Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), whose introduction adopts and refines a treaty-based outline. The table in Part One follows the general consensus of these works rather than any single author's exact divisions.

[^8]: Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), especially his comparison of Deuteronomy's curses and loyalty language with the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon. Weinfeld's work underlies the view that Deuteronomy's present form engages seventh-century Assyrian treaty culture; Kline, Craigie, and Daniel I. Block, Deuteronomy, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), argue for its Mosaic substance and second-millennium affinities. This guide does not require a decision on dating; both camps agree on the treaty conceptuality.

[^9]: Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b; Berakhot 8b; see also Menachot 99a. Citations follow Isidore Epstein, ed., The Babylonian Talmud, 35 vols. (London: Soncino Press, 1935-1948). Rabbinic tradition holds more than one view of how the commandments were distributed on the tablets; the Jerusalem Talmud, Shekalim 6:1, records the opinion that each tablet contained all Ten Commandments, which harmonizes with the duplicate-treaty-copy reading advanced by Kline, Treaty of the Great King, and by Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1986).

[^10]: Brown, Driver, and Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon, s.v. "זָכַר." Biblical remembering frequently issues in action: God "remembers" Noah and acts (Gen 8:1); Israel is to "remember" and therefore obey (Num 15:39-40). Deuteronomy turns this into a pedagogy of covenant life; see Block, Deuteronomy, on 15:15 and 24:18-22.

[^11]: Mishnah Bikkurim 3:2-4 (procession, the gilded ox, the flute, King Agrippa carrying his basket) and 3:7 (the change in recitation practice to protect those who could not read). Herbert Danby, trans., The Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). The Mishnah describes Second Temple practice and later idealization; it is valuable as a witness to how Deuteronomy 26 was lived and remembered, not as a description of the Mosaic period.

[^12]: Tigay, Deuteronomy, comment on 11:10, discusses the foot-operated irrigation implied by the phrase, most often understood as the treading open of small earthen dams in irrigation channels. On the theological contrast between Egypt's river and Canaan's rain, and on Baal as the Canaanite storm god credited with rainfall, see Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith, eds. and trans., Stories from Ancient Canaan, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012), which presents the Ugaritic Baal texts in translation.

[^13]: On the "evil eye" idiom as stinginess, compare Deut 15:9; 28:54, 56; Prov 23:6; 28:22; and Matt 6:22-23; 20:15. Christopher J. H. Wright, Deuteronomy, New International Biblical Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), on 15:7-11, treats the passage as a matter of inner disposition as much as economic regulation.

[^14]: Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015). Heiser argues that biblical phrases such as "God of gods" (Deut 10:17; Ps 82:1; 136:2) presuppose a divine council of lesser elohim over whom Adonai is uniquely supreme, rather than functioning as mere superlatives. The pastoral force in Deut 10:17-18 is that the God supreme over every spiritual power spends His attention on the fatherless and the widow.

[^15]: Wright, Deuteronomy, on 15:4-11. On the release of debts in the wider ancient Near East, including Old Babylonian royal misharum edicts such as that of Ammi-saduqa, see Moshe Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Jerusalem: Magnes Press; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995). Weinfeld shows that Mesopotamian releases were royal acts issued at the king's discretion, often at accession, while Israel's release was fixed in the calendar.

[^16]: On the law of the king, see Tigay, Deuteronomy, comment on 17:14-20, and Block, Deuteronomy, on the same passage. For comparison with Mesopotamian royal self-presentation, see the prologue and epilogue of the Laws of Hammurabi in Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed., Writings from the Ancient World 6 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997). Solomon's violations of each limit are narrated in 1 Kgs 10:26-29 and 11:1-4.

[^17]: Stephen A. Kaufman, "The Structure of the Deuteronomic Law," Maarav 1, no. 2 (1978-1979): 105-58. Kaufman argued that the individual laws of Deut 12-25 are grouped and ordered according to the sequence of the Decalogue in Deut 5, with transitional laws at the seams between sections. The section boundaries in the Part Three table follow Kaufman's proposal; other scholars draw some boundaries differently, especially in chapters 19-25, but the broad correspondence has been widely accepted.

[^18]: John H. Walton, "Deuteronomy: An Exposition of the Spirit of the Law," Grace Theological Journal 8, no. 2 (1987): 213-25. Walton refines Kaufman's proposal by grouping the commandments by theme and showing how each section of the law code expounds the "spirit" of its commandment. Block, Deuteronomy, also organizes his treatment of chapters 12-25 in conversation with the Decalogue structure.

[^19]: William L. Moran, "The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25, no. 1 (1963): 77-87. Moran drew on the Amarna letters and treaty texts to show that "love" denotes loyal, covenantal service. Later scholars have nuanced his thesis to make room for affective dimensions of covenant love; Deut 10:15's chashaq is a strong example of that affective dimension on God's side.

[^20]: William L. Moran, ed. and trans., The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). The letters, dating to the mid-fourteenth century BC, preserve correspondence between Egyptian pharaohs and rulers across Canaan and Syria. Their vocabulary of "love" between overlord and vassal shows that covenant love language was current in the Levant centuries before Esarhaddon, and well within the horizon of the Mosaic period.

[^21]: Simo Parpola and Kazuko Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, State Archives of Assyria 2 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988), no. 6, the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon. Copies were discovered at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu) in 1955, sworn by rulers of eastern vassal territories. The clause requiring vassals to love Ashurbanipal as themselves is the parallel most often cited alongside Deut 6:5. The treaty also contains curses against anyone who alters, destroys, or removes the tablet.

[^22]: Jacob Lauinger, "Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty at Tell Tayinat: Text and Commentary," Journal of Cuneiform Studies 64 (2012): 87-123. The tablet was recovered in 2009 by the Tayinat Archaeological Project, directed by Timothy P. Harrison of the University of Toronto, in the inner sanctum of a temple (Building XVI). Lauinger argues that the tablet was displayed there as a sacred object. The Tayinat copy shows that the oath was imposed on a western vassal in the Levant, not only on eastern rulers.

[^23]: James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. with supplement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), 291, the building inscription of Esarhaddon (Prism B/Nineveh A), listing twenty-two kings of the west who supplied materials for his palace, including "Manasseh, king of Judah." Ashurbanipal's inscriptions name Manasseh as well (ANET, 294).

[^24]: Amélie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East, c. 3000-330 BC, 2 vols., Routledge History of the Ancient World (London: Routledge, 1995), in her treatment of the reign of Ashurbanipal. Shamash-shum-ukin, appointed king of Babylon under Esarhaddon's succession arrangement, revolted against his brother in 652 BC; the revolt ended with the fall of Babylon in 648 BC.

[^25]: English Bibles number the verse 29:4; the Hebrew Bible, and Jewish translations including the Complete Jewish Study Bible, number it 29:3, because English 29:1 is Hebrew 28:69. The Hebrew reads v'lo natan Adonai lakhem lev lada'at, "but the LORD has not given you a heart to know." Tigay, Deuteronomy, comment on 29:3, notes the rhetorical function of the statement as an indictment of Israel's dullness despite its experience.

[^26]: On the kapporet and its function, see Sarna, Exploring Exodus, in his discussion of the tabernacle and its furnishings, and John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), on sacred space. The Tell Tayinat discovery (note 22) provides direct archaeological evidence of a treaty tablet housed in a sanctuary; Israel's tablets resting in the ark beneath the place of atonement is the biblical expression of that practice, with a decisive theological addition: mercy above the law.

[^27]: Block, Deuteronomy, on 30:6, and Wright, Deuteronomy, on 30:1-10, both note the shift from human obligation (10:16) to divine action (30:6), its setting after exile (30:1-5), and its anticipation of the prophetic new-covenant promises. The heart-circumcision motif also appears in Lev 26:41; Jer 4:4; 9:25-26; Ezek 44:7, 9; Rom 2:28-29; and Col 2:11.

[^28]: The new covenant of Jer 31:31-34 is cited at length in Heb 8:8-12 and 10:16-17. Romans 11:17-24 uses the image of wild branches grafted into a cultivated olive tree and warns Gentile believers against arrogance toward the natural branches; 11:29 affirms the irrevocability of Israel's calling. Any reading of the new covenant that erases Israel contradicts the very text that promises it.

[^29]: The three responses in Matt 4:4, 7, and 10 quote Deut 8:3; 6:16; and 6:13. The forty days of Yeshua's testing echo Israel's forty years (Deut 8:2), and the citations come from the same section of Deuteronomy in which Moses interprets the wilderness as God's test of Israel's heart: "to know what was in your heart" (8:2).

[^30]: Deut 21:22-23 originally concerns the public display of an executed criminal's body. The Temple Scroll from Qumran (11QTemple 64:6-13) applies the "hanging on a tree" law to execution for treason, showing that Second Temple Jews connected the text with forms of execution by hanging. See Yigael Yadin, ed., The Temple Scroll, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983). Paul's citation in Gal 3:13 follows the Septuagint wording with modification.

[^31]: Lev 23:10-11 places the waving of the first sheaf "on the day after the Sabbath." Second Temple interpreters disputed the meaning: the Pharisaic tradition read "Sabbath" as the first festival day of Passover, placing the offering on 16 Nisan (see Mishnah Menachot 10:3 and Babylonian Talmud Menachot 65a-66a), while the Boethusians and Sadducees read it as the weekly Sabbath, placing the offering on Sunday. Under the Johannine chronology (crucifixion on 14 Nisan), both reckonings fall on the day of the resurrection; under the Synoptic chronology, the Sunday reckoning does. Paul's "firstfruits" language in 1 Cor 15:20 does not depend on resolving this calendar debate.

[^32]: Paul's interpretation in Rom 10:6-9 is a celebrated crux. Some interpreters see Paul reading Deut 30:12-14 christologically against its original sense; others argue that Deut 30 itself, following the promise of 30:6, already describes the obedience that flows from a God-given heart, so that Paul draws out the passage's own trajectory. Block, Deuteronomy, on 30:11-14, and Wright, Deuteronomy, on 30:11-20, are helpful starting points.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Starred entries are recommended first reading for Bible college students.

Primary Texts and Translations

Danby, Herbert, trans. The Mishnah. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933.

Epstein, Isidore, ed. The Babylonian Talmud. 35 vols. London: Soncino Press, 1935-1948.

Grossfeld, Bernard. The Targum Onqelos to Deuteronomy. The Aramaic Bible 9. Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016.

Moran, William L., ed. and trans. The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

New American Standard Bible. 2020 ed. La Habra, CA: Lockman Foundation, 2020.

Parpola, Simo, and Kazuko Watanabe. Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. State Archives of Assyria 2. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988.

Pritchard, James B., ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. 3rd ed. with supplement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Rahlfs, Alfred, and Robert Hanhart, eds. Septuaginta. Rev. ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2006.

Roth, Martha T. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. 2nd ed. Writings from the Ancient World 6. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997.

Rubin, Barry, ed. Complete Jewish Study Bible. Translated by David H. Stern. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2016.

Yadin, Yigael, ed. The Temple Scroll. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983.

Reference Works

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

Commentaries

* Block, Daniel I. Deuteronomy. NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012.

Craigie, Peter C. The Book of Deuteronomy. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976.

* Tigay, Jeffrey H. Deuteronomy. JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996.

Wright, Christopher J. H. Deuteronomy. New International Biblical Commentary. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996.

Monographs, Studies, and Articles

Coogan, Michael D., and Mark S. Smith, eds. and trans. Stories from Ancient Canaan. 2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012.

Heiser, Michael S. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015.

* Kaufman, Stephen A. "The Structure of the Deuteronomic Law." Maarav 1, no. 2 (1978-1979): 105-58.

* Kline, Meredith G. Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963.

Kuhrt, Amélie. The Ancient Near East, c. 3000-330 BC. 2 vols. Routledge History of the Ancient World. London: Routledge, 1995.

* Lauinger, Jacob. "Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty at Tell Tayinat: Text and Commentary." Journal of Cuneiform Studies64 (2012): 87-123.

* Moran, William L. "The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy." Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25, no. 1 (1963): 77-87.

Sarna, Nahum M. Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel. New York: Schocken Books, 1986.

Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.

Walton, John H. "Deuteronomy: An Exposition of the Spirit of the Law." Grace Theological Journal 8, no. 2 (1987): 213-25.

* Weinfeld, Moshe. Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

Weinfeld, Moshe. Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East. Jerusalem: Magnes Press; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

Wolff, Hans Walter. Anthropology of the Old Testament. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974.

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