Deuteronomy 27

Deuteronomy 27:1-30

Subdivision 3. (Deuteronomy 27:1-26; Deuteronomy 28:1-68; Deuteronomy 29:1-29; Deuteronomy 30:1-20.)The rewards and penalties which actualize the law as such. The law being thus ended, we have now in the next four chapters the rewards and penalties which are its sanctions, -by which it becomes actualized as law. And there are here three sections: —

1. (Deuteronomy 27:1-26.) First, the perpetuity of the law under which they place themselves, and its power and promise are plainly signified by the monument upon Ebal.
2. (Deuteronomy 28:1-68.) Secondly, the blessing and the curse are put before them in emphatic contrast, declared by the Word of One that will not lie.
3. (Deuteronomy 29:1-29; Deuteronomy 30:1-20.) In the third and concluding section we have the recapitulation of the covenant before the Lord, looking on to the predicted restoration of the people in the time to come.
4. The first section is of great significance. It is one of many proofs that not isolated passages, but the whole word here is prophetic, the things that happened unto Israel happened unto them for types. How much was here for faith in a humble and convicted soul to lay to heart, and in which to find most serious, in the end most blessed, lessons! Even if none learned them, there was no less in all of it God’s faithfulness, -His witness to Himself, and which now for us ought to be without a cloud upon it. (1) They are commanded, when they shall have passed over Jordan into the land, to set up great stones on Mount Ebal, plaster them with lime or gypsum, and write upon them all the words of the law. There also they were to build an altar of unhewn stones, and offer burnt-offerings and peace-offerings upon it, and eat and rejoice before God. Mount Ebal, as we already know, and as is again directly stated, is the mountain upon which the curses of the law were to be proclaimed, as upon Mount Gerizim the blessings. How significant of the true power of the law, that it was to stand there permanently identified with the curse and not with the blessing! “As many as are of the works of law are under the curse,” is here the language of the law itself. The Samaritans long afterward strove to reverse this sentence, and their copy of the Pentateuch puts Gerizim here in place of Ebal. Upon Gerizim their schismatic temple stood, a type and prophecy of much legal worship since. But the Old Testament unites in this its witness with the New; and the spiritual Samaritan is still at schism with the law, and a rebel against its sentence. The power of the law is thus lost, for its true power is to destroy self-righteousness, and humble men to the gospel. But side by side with this monument of the law therefore, as if God would not have this connection even then mistaken, they were to build their altar and offer their burnt-offerings and their peace-offerings, and on the dreaded mount itself rejoice before God. They could do so, for this worship was sanctified by the law, the righteousness of the law being maintained by the death of the victim. This for faith completes the testimony. (2) Gerizim and Ebal lay opposite to one another, -the mount of blessing to the south, the mount of cursing to the north, in the middle of the land of Canaan. Ebal, it is said, overtops Gerizim by about a hundred feet, and is the steeper and more barren of the two. Gesenius takes it to mean “stripped of foliage;” while Gerizim also approaches this in meaning, being given as signifying “dwellers in a shorn land.” Between them in the valley lies Shechem, “shoulder,” -the place of obedience (Genesis 12:6, n.), and where Jacob gets so thoroughly tested. (Genesis 33:18.) All this is easily suggestive. The tribes are to stand half on the one mount, half on the other, -not to utter, but to confirm for themselves the blessing and the curse: for the blessing, the children of Leah, and Rachel for the curse, those of the bondmaids, with Reuben, the displaced first-born, and Zebulon, Leah’s youngest son. But in fact, as all commentators notice, the blessings here are significantly never uttered. The law, as witnessed for the second time, is potent only for curse: and under this shadow Israel enter the land. That all this happened unto them for types, who can rightly question? “As the whole ceremony and the special form of the curses are practical, so also the inward peculiar nature of the examples selected. Gross transgressions incur the penalty, but the more secret and refined meet with the curse, in order to show that God will in any case visit such sinners, and to instill into the hypocrite a terror of his works of darkness.’” (Schröder, Von Gerlach.)
5. The blessing and the curse are now taken up by Moses, and spread out before the people’s eyes, especially the curse, which has had long, sad fulfillment for many generations, and needed thus to be set before them for their conviction and turning to God when overtaken by it. It was thus already a prophecy of what the legal covenant would bear as fruit; and it is God’s love to His people that speaks in these terrible denunciations, yet insufficient to turn back the unbelieving generation from the path of ruin. So is it with all the sorrow and evil of life, which God, alas, must so much dwell upon for us because souls are so largely born to Him in sorrow, and by night we see farthest into heaven. The blessing occupies but fourteen verses; the curse, fifty-four. It would carry us much beyond our limits to go into the details. As with him who is at peace with God all things are at peace, so, on the other hand, with the enemies of God, all things are hostile really; not the least so when there is the most fair-seeming prosperity, and gentle breezes and calm skies lure the ship on to destruction.
6. We have now the recapitulation of the covenant, the people standing, as Moses warns them before God, a covenant far-reaching in its effects upon the generations to come; fruitful of blessing, if there were only a heart to respond to Him who had drawn near to them, and who would fain have drawn them near to Himself. but in their condition could not. For this, therefore, and that He may have this witness to Himself, they are pointed forward to a future day. (1) Once more the goodness of the Lord is brought before them as the incentive to obedience. From Egypt onward they had had abundant proofs of His power, as displayed against their enemies, and in tenderness toward themselves. Their clothes had not waxen old, nor the shoes upon their feet: for us the easily read types of better things. Already also they were in possession of part of their inheritance, the pledge of what was still to come. With the knowledge of all this, they stood that day before the Lord to renew their covenant, the whole people, for themselves and for the generations yet to come. (2) If they turned aside from Him, God’s threatenings would be as faithful as His promises. They had seen the abominations of the heathen, and could thus realize the wickedness which had brought down God’s judgment. Let them not awaken it, then, against themselves by following in their steps; otherwise their own posterity and the stranger from a far country should see in the desolation of the land the manifest anger of the Lord against them for sins as manifest; and they would be rooted out of it. (3) And all these things would, in fact, come upon them, both the blessing and the curse. It would be as scattered among the nations, that their hearts would finally return to God, in whole-hearted obedience. Then He would have compassion on them, and gather as He had scattered them. He would circumcise their hearts, and that of their seed (the nation in continuance), so that they should love the Lord their God whole-heartedly and live indeed. Then would the blessing be for themselves, the curses only for their enemies; and He would rejoice over them for good, as He had rejoiced in their past deliverance. But this is of course grace, not law; and the grace of God cannot lack ability to display itself where the heart thus turns to God. (4) Meanwhile, in the law itself was the test for them, a plain thing, not hidden, speaking not from afar off, but very nigh, in the heart and in the mouth. The heart might refuse it, the mouth even disown it; yet, in fact, God had made all as simple as possible, and been as tender to man’s infirmity as He could. Only man himself was to blame, if evil came. It was here indeed that man’s state was fully made known. The test was not useless, but did its work well; and the law was holy and just and good; but it is Christ that is the “end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” (5) Thus the way and the end on both sides had been put before them; and with one more solemn appeal to “choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live,” the exposition of the law comes to an end.