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CHAPTER XIV.

DEUT.XXVII.1-26.

758. D.xxvii.1-8.

And Moses, with the elders of Israel, commanded the people, saying, Keep all the commandments, which I command you this day. And it shall be on the day, when ye shall pass over Jordan into the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee, that thou shalt set thee up great stones, and plaster them with plaster. And thou shalt write upon them all the words of this Law, when thou art passed over, that thou mayest go in unto the land, which Jehovah thy God giveth thee, a land that floweth with milk and honey, as Jehovah, the God of thy fathers, hath promised thee. Therefore it shall be, when ye be gone over Jordan, that ye shall set up these stones, which I command you this day, in Mount Ebal, [Sam. 'Gerizim,' LXX. 'Ebal'], and thou shalt plaster them with plaster. And there shalt thou build an altar unto Jehovah thy God, an altar of stones; thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them. Thou shalt build the altar of Jehovah thy God of whole stones; and thou shalt offer burnt-offerings thereon unto Jehovah thy God; and thou shalt offer peace-offerings, and shalt eat there, and rejoice before Jehovah thy God. And thou shalt write upon the stones all the words of this Law very plainly.

759. The Samaritan Pentateuch has the following addition after E.xx.17, that is to say, immediately after the Ten Commandments :

And it shall be, when Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, whither thou goest to possess it, then thou shalt set thee up great stones; and thou shalt plaster them with plaster, and shalt write upon the stones all the words of this Law. And it shall come to pass, when ye are passed over Jordan, that ye shall put these stones, which I command you this day, upon Mount Gerizim. And thou shalt build thee an altar to Jehovah thy God, an altar of stones; thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them. Thou shalt build the altar of Jehovah thy God of whole stones; and thou shalt offer burnt-offerings thereon unto Jehovah thy God; and thou shalt sacrifice peace-offerings, and shalt eat there, and rejoice before Jehovah thy God. That mountain is on the other side Jordan, by the way where the sun goeth down, in the land of the Canaanites, which dwell in the

champaign, (properly, desert, Arabah,) over against Gilgal, beside the plain of Moreh, near Sichem,'

In short, the second passage is almost identically the same with the first, except that it has Mount Gerizim as the place, where the stones of the Law were to be set up, instead of Mount Ebal.

760. The following are the particulars, more precisely, in which the passage in Deuteronomy differs from that in the Samaritan Pentateuch after E.xx.17:

(i) In v.2, for ‘It shall be when Jehovah thy God shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, whither thou goest to possess it,' the Deuteronomist writes, 'It shall be on the day when ye shall pass over Jordan unto the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee.'

(ii) In v.3, after 'the words of this Law,' he has added, when thou art passed over, that thou mayest go in unto the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee, a land that floweth with milk and honey, as Jehovah thy God hath promised thee.'

(iii) In v.4, he has changed 'Mount Gerizim' into 'Mount Ebal,' and repeated superfluously the command, ‘Thou shalt plaster them with plaster,' already given in v.2.

(iv) He has omitted the last sentence of the Samaritan passage, and inserted it, slightly modified, in D.xi.30.

761. Upon this point, KENNICOTT writes as follows, Diss.i.p.96 : It must have appeared strange, surprisingly strange, during the reader's perusal of the preceding remarks, that it is not more clearly expressed what this Law, thus to be engraved, was,—that a point of so much importance should not have been, somewhere or other, very accurately noted, and very particularly circumscribed by Moses, partly for the more secure direction of Joshua, and partly to render this awful transaction more 'intelligible through future ages. But all this surprise ceases-all this puzzle is unravelled—all this uncertainty is at once removed-if we allow the authority of the Samaritan Pentateuch, if we will but grant that there may have been in the Hebrew text a certain passage, which is now found in all the copies of the Samaritan Text and Version, and which is also found, exactly as in the Samaritan Pentateuch, in that Arabic version of it, in the Arabic character, which has been before mentioned, and which is a very valuable, because a very literal, version. For in E.xx, as soon as the Tenth Commandment is concluded, we read in the Samaritan Pentateuch the five following verses-' And it shall be, &c.' [as above.]

Here, then, according to this truly venerable copy of the Book of Moses, all is clear. The whole is perfectly regular, and in harmonious proportion. We have seen the several circumstances, concurring to render it highly probable that the

Ten Commandments constituted the Law, which was to be engraved. And, as it can scarcely be conceived that such a point could have been quite omitted by Moses, it makes greatly for the honour of the Samaritan Pentateuch, to have preserved so considerable a passage. Why the ancient Jews should omit this passage, can be a matter of no doubt at all with those, who mark the honour it does to Mount Gerizim. And, therefore, the same men who corrupted D.xxvii.4, have but acted with uniformity, if they have also corrupted E.xx, omitting Gerizim in the latter instance just as honestly as they altered it in the former.

But that some few verses did formerly follow after the Tenth Commandment in E.xx.17, and before v.18, we have not only the authority of the Samaritan Pentateuch, (which, together with the several foregoing confirmations, may be thought satisfactory,) but we have also the authority of an ancient Syrian MS., which contains a version of the O.T., and is catalogued in the Bodleian Library, 3,130. Between v.17 and v.18, at the very place where the passage is now found in the Samaritan Pentateuch, in this Syriac MS., though translated from a Hebrew copy, there is left, in the middle of the page, a vacant space, just equal to the five verses expressed in the Samaritan. And no such vacant space is left anywhere else through the whole MS., excepting a space somewhat larger in Ecclus.xxvii and one somewhat less in 2Macc.viii. The inference from this very remarkable circumstance I leave to the learned reader.

That the Samaritan Text should be condemned as corrupted merely for having more in it than the Hebrew, no man of learning will maintain. Certainly, the Jews might omit, as easily as the Samaritans might insert. And I presume that it has been, and will be hereafter more fully, proved, that several whole passages, now in the Samaritan, but not in the Hebrew Pentateuch, are not interpolations in the former, but omissions in the latter.

762. In addition to the above remarks of KENNICOTT We may observe:

(i) If the Samaritans introduced the passage after E.xx.17, in order to do special honour to their sacred Mount Gerizim, they must have copied it from the passage in Deuteronomy already existing, only changing Ebal into Gerizim.

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(ii) But in that case they would not surely have omitted the very characteristic expression, a land that floweth with milk and honey,' which occurs in the latter, v.3.

(iii) There was a reason why, after the Captivity, when such hostility existed between the Jews and Samaritans, and the latter had built their opposition Temple on Mount Gerizim, the Jews should have corrupted the Text of these Scriptures, as KENNICOTT Supposes.

(iv) But there was no reason why any Jewish writer, living in any age before the Captivity, should not have chosen the splendid Table-Mountain* of Gerizim (326.i), in the very centre of the land of Canaan, and visible afar off, as the site on which the stones should be set up, containing the record of God's covenant with Israel, in sight, as it were, of all the people of the land.

(v) And we actually find Gerizim chosen--and, as we shall see (770), probably, by the Deuteronomist himself-as the Mount of Blessing, xxvii. 12, on which Joshua himself was to take his stand, with the principal tribes of Levi, Judah, Joseph, and Benjamin; whereas Ebal was to be the Mount of Cursing, v.13, on which the inferior tribes were stationed.

763. There seems, therefore, every reason to believe that KENNICOTT'S suggestion is well founded, viz. that

(i) The passage D.xxvii.2-8 has been copied by the Deuteronomist from the passage which stood originally in the Hebrew MS. after E.xx.17;

(ii) He has inserted in it the phrase 'a land that floweth with milk and honey,' which is one of his favourite phrases (793, iv.);

(iii) The later Jews have altered in v.4 the name Gerizim, which the Deuteronomist wrote, into Ebal, and have struck out also altogether the original passage after E.xx.17.

764. Hence we can explain the origin of the expression' all

* It seems doubtful if LUDOLF's description of the fertility of Gerizim and comparative barrenness of Ebal, quoted from KENNICOTT in (326.ii), can be altogether relied on. ROBINSON Writes, Bibl. Res. iii. p. 96: Mounts Gerizim and Ebal rise in steep rocky precipices immediately from the valley on each side, apparently some 800 feet in height. The sides of both these mountains, as here seen, were to our eyes equally naked and sterile; although some travellers have chosen to describe Gerizim as fertile, and confine the sterility to Ebal. The only exception in favour of the former, so far as we could perceive, is a small ravine coming down opposite the western end of the town, which, indeed, is full of fountains and trees. In other respects, both mountains, as here seen, are desolate, except that a few olive-trees are scattered upon them.'

the words of this Law,' v.3,8, which in the context, in which they now stand, can only, as KNOBEL says, be referred

not to the blessings and curses,' nor to the law of Deuteronomy' only, but to the whole Mosaic Law, though the writer means only the actual prescriptions of the Law, according to the Jews, 613 in number, and not, at the same time, all narratives, warnings, admonitions, speeches, reasonings, &c.

But to engrave on stones even the blessings and curses,' if by this is meant the matter in D.xxvii.15-xxviii.68, would have required an immense amount of labour and material,- much more the whole Law of Deuteronomy, or the 613 precepts.

SCOTT says on this point:

Some expositors think that the whole book of Deuteronomy was written on these plastered stones, and that they were twelve in number, according to the tribes of Israel; others restrict the writing to the preceptive part of it; others to the Ten Commandments only; while many are of opinion that the latter part of this chapter alone is meant. Indeed, as the stones were placed on Mount Ebal, whence the curses were denounced, it is probable that these were added. But we may conclude that at least the Ten Commandments, and the great outlines of the whole Law, were likewise inscribed in the most legible manner.

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765. Applied, however, as the direction appears to have been in its original position, only to the Ten Commandments,' the ‘ten words,' E.xxxiv.28, which are expressly called the Law, nino, hatTorah, E.xxiv.12, (not ‘a Law,' E.V.) the phrase 'all the words of this Law' is quite intelligible. The Deuteronomist appears to have transferred the direction from the end of the Ten Commandments to the end of (what may be considered to be) his expansion of the Ten Commandments, without observing that in that connection it was incongruous and impracticable, as, in fact, he never really contemplated its being actually carried out.

766. KNOBEL is of opinion that-

In v.5-7(a) we have an older notice, retouched by the Deuteronomist, while the rest is pure Deuteronomistic matter.

He does not, however, give his reason for this. Certainly, the command is given in v.5,6, to build an altar of stones, of whole stones-thou shalt not lift up any tool upon them,' which seems more suited to the age of the older document, where it is