Ben Witherington reposted on his blog a solid interview with Professor Sandra L. Richter on the relevance of the Old Testament. After reading the excellent interview, I went to Amazon to investigate her book, The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament. I browsed the "search inside this book" feature and copied the following two insightful paragraphs.
On the Old Testament concept of the "love of God," and especially in Deuteronomy, Dr. Richter writes: (my underlining)
William Moran wrote an important article “The Ancient near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” CBQ 25 (1963): 77-85 Here Moran demonstrated that the word love in ancient Near East treaty documents (and by extrapolation in the book of Deuteronomy) was political terminology having to do with covenant loyalty—not any sort of sentimental or emotional posture toward the covenant partner. In light of this, consider Rom. 9:13: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” Gallons of ink have been spilt over this passage! Could the resolution to this difficult language perhaps be found in covenant terminology? In other words, rather than this passage communicating that God has despised Esau and his offspring, perhaps ‘love’ and “hate” were intended to communicate something akin to: ‘Jacob I have chosen as Isaac’s heir and therefore heir to Abraham’s covenant; Esau I have not chosen as heir.' Note 19. p. 240
On the sacrifices brought by people in ancient Israel she writes:
W.S. LaSor, D.A. Hubbard and F.W. Bush offer a helpful summary of the various categories of Mosaic sacrifice in Old Testament Survey, 2nd ed (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 83. It is important to realize that out of the eight categories listed, only one involved the complete holocaust of the sacrificial victim. In contrast to what most Christians typically imagine, the bulk of the sacrificed animal was normally returned to the worshipper so that he and his family might feast together in God’s presence. In other words, the act of sacrifice was usually a time of joyous fellowship with one’s family and one’s God at the holy site. These holy days were truly “holidays.” In fact, throughout the law code of Deuteronomy, which is focused on proper worship of Yahweh at the central holy site, the repeated command is to ‘eat’ and to ‘rejoice’ in Yahweh’s presence (Deut 12:7, 12,18; 14:26; 16:11,14; 26:10-11; 27:7). God was not interested in taking from these people the little they had; rather, he was interested in them bringing a portion of what he had given them into his presence so that he might enjoy their joy with them.” (p. 250)
This reminds me of some pages I read years ago in C.S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms. In chapter 5, "The Fair Beauty of the Lord," Lewis wrote: