Devarim 27:11 - 29:8 (third triennial)
Today’s portion includes one of the most visual and downright bizarre sections of the Torah: The Blessings and the Curses. Moses orders that, after the Israelites have crossed the Jordan, six tribes will stand on Mount Gerizim and six tribes on Mount Ebal, with the Levites standing in the valley between them. When the Levites shout a curse, the people on Mount Ebal respond “Amen” and when they shout a blessing the people on Mount Gerizim respond “Amen.” It’s a striking visual, but what does it mean?
The first eleven curses are actually laws, and the twelfth is a curse for those who were already cursed by breaking the first 11 laws, so really its a double-curse. This is followed by 15 verses of blessings for those who obey God and faithfully observe the divine commandments and 52 verses of curses for those who do not.
And some of these curses are really disturbing, such as:
“And as יהוה once delighted in making you prosperous and many, so will יהוה now delight in causing you to perish and in wiping you out.”
“יהוה will afflict you at the knees and thighs with a severe inflammation, from which you shall never recover.”
“You shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but none will buy.”
“And she who is most tender and dainty among you, the afterbirth that issues from between her legs and the babies she bears; she shall eat them secretly, because of utter want.”
“The life you face shall be precarious; you shall be in terror, night and day, with no assurance of survival.”
"Deuteronomy" is derived from the Greek term for "repetition of the law" and this portion reflects Leviticus 26, which includes: “If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit. You shall eat your fill of bread and dwell securely in your land. I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down untroubled by anyone. But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments, if you reject My laws and spurn My rules, so that you do not observe all My commandments and you break My covenant, I in turn will do this to you: I will wreak misery upon you—consumption and fever, which cause the eyes to pine and the body to languish; you shall sow your seed to no purpose, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set My face against you: you shall be routed by your enemies, and your foes shall dominate you. You shall flee though none pursues.”
In 1943, a German scholar named Martin Noth argued that Deuteronomy, along with the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings, formed a unified "Deuteronomic history" which were written during the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BCE to explain successes and failures as the result of faithfulness or disobedience. These blessings and curses can be applied to a person or to an entire society. They are also reflected in the story of Jonah, which we will read on Yom Kippur.
Walter Brueggemann notes that curses were often used to bind treaties in the ancient world: if you break your promises, these are the bad things that you can expect. Here, the curses are transformed from a political context to a theological one. “A self-conscious Israelite community may have borrowed a covenant form deliberately to offer its covenant with YHWH as a radical alternative to alliance with Assyria.” In other words, even after being defeated, with no land and no power, Deuteronomy was a middle finger to the victors, showing the Israelites would worship no one but God.
Amy Frykholm notes that in the middle of the curses, verse 47 provides a completely different interpretation: “Because you would not serve your God יהוה in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything, you shall have to serve—in hunger and thirst, naked and lacking everything—[your] enemies.”
“When we don’t live in joy and gratitude, when we become stingy and mean, the goodness of God becomes blocked and distorted—in us, through us. From the simple failure to heed joy comes deprivation—and deprivation spreads. The slavery from which you were delivered, the text says, will return to you along with all that came with it: the labor, the plagues, the suffering.”
She also notes that some of the first things to be blessed (and cursed) are “your basket and your kneading bowl.” “Humans took the elements of earth, water and fire and created civilisation…so if your blessings start with bread and the implements of bread, then you are very close to the essence of your civilisation. Such a blessing draws our attention to the mundane, to the basic work of survival within the human family. Daily actions and daily choices have consequences far beyond their seeming simplicity.”
The book of Joshua, the first book of the prophets, immediately follows Deuteronomy. In Joshua 8, after he slaughters the entire town of Ai and impales the king on a stake, he builds an altar on Mount Ebal. He then gathers the Israelites in the valley, half facing Mount Gerizim and half facing Mount Ebal, and reads the words of the blessing and the curse from Deuteronomy. I feel like Moses would have been disappointed.
https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/2001/10/01/deuteronomy-abingdon-old-testament-commentary/
https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/blessings-and-curses
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