In the 1950s, when scholars first mapped the Hittite suzerain-vassal treaty form onto the biblical text. The passage that first jumped out to scholars matching this conditional covenant format was not immediately Exodus 19-24 or the Book of Deuteronomy.

Rather Joshua 24 stood out as a clear example of a suzerain-vassal treat, of a people receiving a set of conditions from a king to live loyally (or experience the consequences) and their commitment to be loyal.

Every element of the ancient treaty structure appears there in sequence:

Once you see the structure in Joshua 24, you see it everywhere in scripture. (Surprising places this conditional covenant format structure has been discovered include king Benjamin’s speech, Abinadi’s speech to the court of king Noah, Doctrine & Covenants 42; Doctrine & Covenants 59; and Doctrine & Covenants 136.)

The reader who has spent weeks inside the covenant framework throughout Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy is now going to watch it operate in real time.