The Law Is Written Where the People Must Answer

Until now Moses has spoken alone. Here, for the first time in the book, the elders stand with him in giving a command, and in verse 9 the priests join as well. The change marks a handover: the men who will still be there after Moses dies are made co-authors of the charge.

“Plaister” is sid, lime plaster, laid on so that ink or paint would take. Writing on plaster is attested nearby: the Deir Alla inscription, found in the Jordan valley in 1967 and written in ink on a plastered wall, names Balaam son of Beor, the prophet of Numbers 22–24.

The purpose clause is striking: write the law “that thou mayest go in”, as though the writing is part of the entry itself. The Mishnah (Sotah 7:5) holds that the words were written on the stones in seventy languages, so that every nation could read them.

Ebal and Gerizim face each other across the valley at Shechem, where Abraham built his first altar in the land (Genesis 12:6–7). The Samaritan Pentateuch reads “mount Gerizim” in this verse, and the Samaritans built their temple on Gerizim; the Hebrew and Greek traditions keep Ebal.

Exodus 20:25 gave the reason: lifting a tool on altar stones pollutes them. The temple of Solomon kept the same rule by dressing its stones at the quarry, so that “neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron” was heard on the site (1 Kings 6:7).

“Whole stones” is shelemot, the same word as the “perfect” weight of 25:15: complete, unshaped. In the 1980s the archaeologist Adam Zertal proposed that a stone structure he excavated on Mount Ebal was this altar; the identification is disputed among archaeologists.

Peace offerings are shelamim, from the same root as the whole stones of verse 6. Burnt offerings went entirely to God; peace offerings were mostly eaten by the worshippers. The mountain named for curses is where the book’s instructions put a feast.

“Very plainly” is baer hetev, explaining well. The verb baer is the one used in 1:5, where Moses “began to declare this law”. The book opened with Moses making the law plain in speech, and here it sets the same task for stones on the far side of the river.

“Take heed” translates hasket, a word found only here in the Old Testament, which means be silent, hush. The command is literally “Be still and hear, O Israel”, a variation on the Shema’s opening. The priests stand with Moses as the elders did in verse 1.

“Obey the voice” is literally “hear the voice”; Hebrew has no separate verb for obedience, and hearing is expected to become doing. The “therefore” ties the command to the identity just given: the people have become his, so they listen to him.

“The same day” pins the next arrangement to the day of this speech, though it will be carried out only after the crossing. Joshua 8:30–35 records the ceremony held after the fall of Ai, some distance into the land.

All six tribes on Gerizim are sons of the two wives: four of Leah, Simeon, Levi, Judah and Issachar, and both of Rachel, Joseph and Benjamin. Levi stands among them here although it received no tribal land, and Joseph counts as one tribe rather than two.

The six on Ebal are Reuben, who lost his firstborn’s place (Genesis 49:4), Zebulun, Leah’s youngest, and all four sons of the handmaids Bilhah and Zilpah: Gad, Asher, Dan and Naphtali. The verb in the Hebrew is “for the curse”, standing to receive and answer it.

The Levites speak while Levi as a tribe stands on Gerizim. The Mishnah (Sotah 7:5) resolved the puzzle by placing the priests and the elder Levites with the ark in the valley between, turning towards each mountain in turn. “With a loud voice” makes it an address, not a rite muttered among priests.

The first curse is also the longest, and the only one where the people “answer and say”; from here on they simply say. “The craftsman” is charash, the smith or carver. Isaiah 44:12–17 mocks the same craftsman who warms himself with half a log and bows down to the other half.

“Setteth light” is maqleh, to treat as light, the opposite of the command to honour, kabbed, literally to treat as heavy, in 5:16. The fifth commandment is recast as a curse on its reverse, and it comes straight after the curse on images, as the commands about parents follow the commands about God in the Decalogue.

The rule was given in 19:14. Babylonian landowners set up inscribed boundary stones, kudurru, which called down the curses of the gods on anyone who moved them. Proverbs 22:28 and 23:10 repeat the ban, the second adding “enter not into the fields of the fatherless”.

Leviticus 19:14 forbade putting a stumbling block before the blind. This curse goes further, from placing an obstacle to steering a blind traveller wrong. The victim cannot identify the culprit, which is why only a curse can reach him.

The same three names as the harvest law of 24:19–21 and the court law of 24:17. Here the offence is bending the verdict itself. The verse is the fifth curse, and it closes the first group, which concerns God, parents and neighbours, before the list turns to sexual offences.

This repeats 22:30 almost exactly, and it is the only curse in the twelve that gives a reason, “because he uncovereth his father’s skirt”. The offence is described as an injury done to the father, whose marriage is invaded.

Exodus 22:19 prescribed death for this, and Leviticus 18:23 and 20:15–16 treat it at length. “Any manner of beast” rules out the defence that one kind of animal was meant and another was not. It is the shortest of the sexual curses.

The verse names a half sister on either side. Abraham had married his father’s daughter, Sarah (Genesis 20:12), long before the law. In 2 Samuel 13:13 Tamar tells her half brother Amnon to ask the king for her, which suggests the rule was not being kept in David’s court.

The mother in law is the wife’s mother. Leviticus 20:14 prescribed burning for a man who takes a wife and her mother. With this verse the four sexual curses close; together they protect the households of a father, a sister and a wife.

A blow struck “secretly” is an assault no witness saw. Rashi, following the rabbis, read it also as slander, striking a neighbour with the tongue behind his back. Secrecy was named in the first curse (verse 15), and the list returns to it near the end.

“Reward” is shochad, a bribe, the word of Exodus 23:8, “the gift blindeth the wise”. It covers the hired killer and the corrupt judge alike, both of whom take money for an innocent life. “Innocent person” is literally innocent blood.

“Confirmeth” is yaqim, to make stand, to uphold. When Josiah read the rediscovered book, the same verb recurs: “to perform the words of this covenant” and “all the people stood to the covenant” (2 Kings 23:3). The twelfth curse brings the number level with the twelve tribes.