Asbury Bible Commentary – D. Covenant Ritual of Commitment Upon Entering the Land (27:1-26)
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D. Covenant Ritual of Commitment Upon Entering the Land (27:1-26)

D. Covenant Ritual of Commitment Upon Entering the Land (27:1-26)

Ch. 27 describes two things that were important for Israel’s formal entrance into the land that Yahweh was giving them. First, the words of this Torah, which Moses had delivered and expounded to them, were to be written down (v.3). Certainly this included the Ten Words and the instructions for Israel contained in chs. 12-26. So ch. 27 appropriately records the inscription of the covenant stipulations. But the readers and the hearers of the Torah were to understand these covenant stipulations within the framework of love and holiness that the writer had carefully woven into the various individual commands. To fail to do so would be to remove the heart and soul of the Torah itself and turn it into a mere legal document based on do’s and don'ts, within the context of power politics of the ancient Near Eastern suzerain and his vassals.

The Hebrew construction in v.8 uses the word bā'(')ēr found in Dt 1:5. There it was noted that the word describes what Moses was doing as he re-presented in Moab the covenant he received at Horeb. In any case, the repetition of the word in 27:8 describing the writing of the law “on these stones” seems to assert that the hortatory sections, the motive clauses, added to the Torah by Moses were the exposition and were to be recorded on the plastered stones. The motive clauses were originally in the laws when Moses spoke them, and the Hebrew may indicate that they were put on the plastered stones in Moab. So Israel was to read the Torah in the spirit of these hortatory aspects; they should not have misused it by making it only a legalistic code. It was never that.

Moses, the priests, and the Levites were to declare: “You have now become the people of the Lord your God. Obey the Lord (vv.9-10). The curses listed in vv.15-26 are representative of various laws given to Israel in the earlier parts of the book.