Heart of Egypt

Deuteronomy 11:3
the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country;

The eleventh chapter begins: Love the LORD your God...
Love Yahweh. That command has come up often in this book. That would be a study in itself, but I think it is a new motif for Deuteronomy, along with the heart. Seeing it over and over, in different contexts, I find more shape to it. It is not just words, a feeling to conjure. I love God the way I love other things or people, by taking steps to have Him in my life, by thinking about Him, by trying to please Him.
This chapter in a sense actually elaborates on the concept of loving God. The first verse continues with: keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands...
Then comes the sequence of which the heart verse is a part. Moses asks the people to remember that their children did not see the great exit from Egypt, with all its miracles, the acts of God that would define the Jewish nation from then until this very day.
This verse uses heart to mean the vital, inner or chief part of anything; the center; core. In the vital, chief part of Egypt, in its very core, God struck with swift, surgical power, taking from every parent his firstborn, while the Hebrews were protected by a swash of blood painted on their houses. The blood: a symbol primitve and profound, more than a symbol because an animal died to provide it, a symbol that pointed straight to the ultimate solution for the human problem: the blood of Jesus, the blood of God.