Deuteronomy 11:26-29

Anticipation of a Blessing and Cursing Ceremony

11:26 Take note – I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: ¹  11:27 the blessing if you take to heart ²  the commandments of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, 11:28 and the curse if you pay no attention ³  to his ⁴  commandments and turn from the way I am setting before ⁵  you today to pursue ⁶  other gods you have not known. 11:29 When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are to possess, you must pronounce the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal. ⁷ 

Joshua 8:33-34

8:33 All the people, ⁸  rulers, ⁹  leaders, and judges were standing on either side of the ark, in front of the Levitical priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord. Both resident foreigners and native Israelites were there. ¹⁰  Half the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and the other half in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the Lord’s servant had previously instructed to them to do for the formal blessing ceremony. ¹¹  8:34 Then ¹²  Joshua read aloud all the words of the law, including the blessings and the curses, just as they are written in the law scroll.

Jude 1:7

1:7 So also ¹³  Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring towns, ¹⁴  since they indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire ¹⁵  in a way similar to ¹⁶  these angels, ¹⁷  are now displayed as an example by suffering the punishment of eternal fire.

¹ sn A blessing and a curse. Every extant treaty text of the late Bronze Age attests to a section known as the “blessings and curses,” the former for covenant loyalty and the latter for covenant breach. Blessings were promised rewards for obedience; curses were threatened judgments for disobedience. In the Book of Deuteronomy these are fully developed in 27:1–28:68. Here Moses adumbrates the whole by way of anticipation.

² tn Heb “listen to,” that is, obey.

³ tn Heb “do not listen to,” that is, do not obey.

⁴ tn Heb “the commandments of the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

⁵ tn Heb “am commanding” (so NASB, NRSV).

⁶ tn Heb “walk after”; NIV “by following”; NLT “by worshiping.” This is a violation of the first commandment, the most serious of the covenant violations (Deut 5:6-7).

⁷ sn Mount Gerizim…Mount Ebal. These two mountains are near the ancient site of Shechem and the modern city of Nablus. The valley between them is like a great amphitheater with the mountain slopes as seating sections. The place was sacred because it was there that Abraham pitched his camp and built his first altar after coming to Canaan (Gen 12:6). Jacob also settled at Shechem for a time and dug a well from which Jesus once requested a drink of water (Gen 33:18-20; John 4:5-7). When Joshua and the Israelites finally brought Canaan under control they assembled at Shechem as Moses commanded and undertook a ritual of covenant reaffirmation (Josh 8:30-35; 24:1, 25). Half the tribes stood on Mt. Gerizim and half on Mt. Ebal and in antiphonal chorus pledged their loyalty to the Lord before Joshua and the Levites who stood in the valley below (Josh 8:33; cf. Deut 27:11-13).

⁸ tn Heb “All Israel.”

⁹ tn Or “elders.”

¹⁰ tn Heb “like the resident alien, like the citizen.” The language is idiomatic, meaning that both groups were treated the same, at least in this instance.

¹¹ tn Heb “as Moses, the Lord’s servant, commanded to bless the people, Israel, formerly.”

¹² tn Or “afterward.”

¹³ tn Grk “as.”

¹⁴ tn Grk “the towns [or cities] surrounding them.”

¹⁵ tn Grk “strange flesh.” This phrase has been variously interpreted. It could refer to flesh of another species (such as angels lusting after human flesh). This would aptly describe the sin of the angels, but not easily explain the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. It could refer to the homosexual practices of the Sodomites, but a difficulty arises from the use of ἕτερος ({etero"; “strange,” “other”). When this is to be distinguished from ἄλλος (allos, “another”) it suggests “another of a different kind.” If so, would that properly describe homosexual behavior? In response, the language could easily be compact: “pursued flesh other than what was normally pursued.” However, would this find an analogy in the lust of angels (such would imply that angels normally had sexual relations of some sort, but cf. Matt 22:30)? Another alternative is that the focus of the parallel is on the activity of the surrounding cities and the activity of the angels. This is especially plausible since the participles ἐκπορνεύσασαι (ekporneusasai, “having indulged in sexual immorality”) and ἀπελθοῦσαι (apelqousai, “having pursued”) have concord with “cities” (πόλεις, poleis), a feminine plural noun, rather than with Sodom and Gomorrah (both masculine nouns). If so, then their sin would not necessarily have to be homosexuality. However, most likely the feminine participles are used because of constructio ad sensum (construction according to sense). That is, since both Sodom and Gomorrah are cities, the feminine is used to imply that all the cities are involved. The connection with angels thus seems to be somewhat loose: Both angels and Sodom and Gomorrah indulged in heinous sexual immorality. Thus, whether the false teachers indulge in homosexual activity is not the point; mere sexual immorality is enough to condemn them.

¹⁶ tn Or “in the same way as.”

¹⁷ tn “Angels” is not in the Greek text; but the masculine demonstrative pronoun most likely refers back to the angels of v. 6.