Nevertheless, alongside the commandments [which are motivated by a precedent divine saving event in history] there are a certain number of cases where the reception of the blessings of salvation is in actual fact conditional, and made dependent upon Israel’s obedience. But even with those imperatives which are motivated by final clauses (“do this, that you may remain alive, that it may be well with you, that you may enter the land”), Deuteronomy’s great offer of grace is not itself in any way annulled and a legal way of salvation proclaimed. Even those cases which seem to make salvation conditional, and dependent upon Israel’s achievement, are prefaced by a declaration of Jahweh’s election and his love.
-Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, Volume 1: The Theology of Israel’s Historical Traditions (Trans. D. Stalker; Edinburgh: Olver and Boyd, 1962), 230.
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