Today you are making this agreement with the LORD: he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways. And today the LORD is making this agreement with you: you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you. The technical term for the two sided “agreement” between God and the people is covenant. The covenant we are most familiar with is marriage where both spouses commit themselves to be together “for better and for worse until death us do part.” The covenant between God and the people is slightly different since it is not an agreement between equals. It is fitting for the people to commit themselves to “walk in God’s ways.” After all, God commanded it. God voluntarily surrenders something of the divine perogative in order to make the Jewish people “peculiarly his own.” (I can never pronounce that word.) With the coming of Jesus we have all been “adopted” (as St. Paul puts it) into the people of God with a bond that can never be broken.
