Lately I've been feeling sort of grousy and cynical, was in no way ready to be given these verses as my daily reading:
Think! The heavens, even the highest heavens, belong to the LORD, your God, as well as the earth and everything on it. Yet in his love for your fathers the LORD was so attached to them as to choose you, their descendants, in preference to all other peoples, as indeed he has now done. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and be no longer stiff-necked. For the LORD, your God, is the God of gods, the LORD of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who has no favorites, accepts no bribes; who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and befriends the alien, feeding and clothing him.
Again: "so attached to [your fathers] as to choose you ... in preference to all other people" and "the LORD, your God, ... who has no favorites."
What's the orthodox reading, here? The chosen people of God weren't favorites, just ones to whom He was especially attached?
I think the passage is speaking about God's having chosen to reveal himself first to the Hebrew people; he loved the fathers in the sense of being willing to show himself and to name himself ("I am that I am") as the one, true, living deity. Think burning bushes. The Hebrews were the first group to understand that.
God is just to all peoples and deals with them equally, as a good judge would be in a court. But to the Hebrews he was willing to enter into a more intimate relationship so that he could reveal through them more of his personality and his purposes behind the creation. He has loved the Hebrews more than other peoples in the sense of taking extraordinary steps (e.g., the parting of the Red Sea) to nurture and preserve his relationship with them, so that the revelation could continue and culminate in Christ.
I think.
