Loyalty & gratitude

• Loyalty has about it the force of law – loi. 
• Loyalty is the enforced version of gratitude. 
• Loyalty demands repayment of favors conferred, and transforms debts into legal obligations, the renegging on which can lead to prison and the confiscation of one's property. 
• Loyalty assigns to the ruling authority the power to extract what would otherwise be seen as gratitude. 
• Loyalty moves into the domain of authority what ordinarily belongs in the domain of legitimacy. 

The Bible’s approach repays violations of gratitude by absolving of the divine covenant, not by imposing His authority even more strongly.