Bible Commentaries

EBAL AND GERIZIM

‘Gerizim to bless … Ebal to curse.’

Deuteronomy 27:12-13

I. Our redemption is by an act of God’s mighty grace and strength.—We cannot add to it or detract from it, we must simply accept it. But our enjoyment of the land of blessedness is dependent on our obedience. The milk and honey of that land will only flow for those who not only write the laws out plainly, but who obey and do all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. There must be the altar and whole stones for burnt offering, setting forth our entire surrender, and there must be the feeding on the peace-offering for satisfaction and strength. What a marvellous moment that is in the history of the soul, when it first awakes to realise that it has become the Lord’s, not only by the purchase of His blood, but of its own choice. There is at first the deep silence, and then the intense listening for the voice of the Lord, and then the diligent obedience.

II. In every heart there are the mountains of Ebal and Gerizim, which echo back the blessings and curses of conscience. Conscience is the judgment seat of God, the great white throne in miniature. But there is no likelihood of the consecrated heart infringing any of the commands of God with which it is familiar, because it is armed with a jealous fear, and is kept by the grace of the Holy Ghost. However, it is well to bring our consciences to the test of God’s truth, as a chronometer to be synchronised by Greenwich time, that we may not unknowingly be contravening our Father’s will.

Illustration

(1) ‘Only the curses are mentioned here. Is the reason—that those who are under the law are under the curse; that sinners can never win blessing by their obedience; that we must wait for Christ to come and sit on the Mount of Beatitudes, pronouncing His blessings? It is well for us to test ourselves by these enumerated items. We may be yielding to more evil than we realise; and it is well solemnly to ask ourselves whether we are incurring God’s displeasure by walking carelessly in any of these respects. We may not be exposed to God’s curse, which expended itself on our Substitute, but we may be losing our peace and power.

Almost beneath the shadow of Gerizim (“this mountain”—John 4:20) Jesus sat, over fourteen centuries afterwards, on Jacob’s well, talking with the woman of Samaria.’

(2) ‘Charles Kingsley says: “God does not curse thee; thou hast cursed thyself. God will not go out of His way to punish thee; thou hast gone out of His way, and thereby thou art punishing thyself. Just as by abusing thy body thou bringest a curse upon it, so by abusing thy soul. God does not break His laws to punish drunkenness or gluttony. The laws themselves punish. Every fresh wrong deed, and wrong thought, and wrong desire of thine, sets thee more and more out of tune with those immutable and eternal laws of the moral universe, which have their root in the absolute and necessary character of God Himself.”’

(3) ‘Jehovah was the God of a lofty morality. He made His will known through His laws. All law, civil as well as religious, was divinely ordained. To break any law, therefore, was not a crime against man, but a sin against God. He was at work in the daily life of His people, and at every moment they had access to Him through the priestly oracle. The Mosaic precepts breathed a spirit of true piety and humanity far transcending anything found in other ancient religious codes. Certain distinctive features, then, belong to the religion founded by Moses, and mark it off from pagan religions. By Israel God is known not merely as powerful, but as ready to help; as the one and only God, and therefore known not as a mere local deity, like the Canaanitish Baals; as the holy and righteous Judge; as the spiritual God, who cannot be worshipped by images. In actual practice, however, the ancient Israelites fell far short of realising the religious ideal set before them by Moses, and seldom offered a pure and undivided homage to Jehovah.’