Deuteronomy 10:16-19

The form of address changes to Pl., and a qualification is made of the great statement just given. Though God has elected (for reasons of His own) to love Israel's fathers and to choose their posterity after them out of all peoples to be His peculiar people, He is not one that regards persons, but as He takes the part of the helpless within Israel so He loves also the foreigner resident among them, and therefore Israel must love the foreign sojourner, having themselves been sojourners in Egypt. No doubt all this is more or less relevant to the main theme of the discourse, but it is outside it, and as its introduction is coincident with the change to the Pl. address, the passage must be considered as a later addition, or additions (for Deuteronomy 10:18-19 is still a further departure from Deuteronomy 10:16-17). The same idea, that Israel cannot count on God's partiality for them if they continue to be stiffnecked, had been already put by Amos in a more striking form, Amos 3:2, you only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will visit on you all your iniquities. Cp. John 8:31-45; and Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Galatians 2:6, in which the argument of this passage is developed.