D'varim/Deuteronomy
CHAPTER 27
1. Then Moshe, along with the elders of Israel, gave the people orders, saying, "Guard carefully the whole commandment that I am giving you today.
Elders: not necessarily the oldest, but the most experienced, who have been chosen because they can be the best guides. As Moshe prepares to die, here is another way he ensured that the nation would remain in order. Those whom the individual Israelites knew more directly now stood in clear solidarity with what he said, saying, “That’s right; guard the commands!” These leaders of 10, 50, 100, and 1,000 had been established many years before this, so now that Moshe has told them he is not going into the Land with them, although Y’hoshua will be the new leader, they will now be scattered throughout the whole Land, and access to Y’hoshua will not be as easy as access to Moshe had been in the wilderness camp. It is therefore important that the people change their focus from the words of Moshe to the instructions of their leaders, though all was, of course, based on his instruction. Among returning Israel today, there is a great hesitancy both to be led and to be looked to for leadership, because of the culture that surrounds us. But we have to get past this, because if everyone did what was right in his own eyes, we would not stay in the Land very long. The pattern established here shows that we need leaders who are somewhat “pushy” in commanding us to keep the Torah and who set an example by their own lives. Of course this means there is an expectation on leaders to walk a straight path, but that is what Israel needs. Acts 15 uses “Moshe” as an idiom for the Torah which he wrote, so today’s leaders must be seen to be standing with Moshe as well. By rising to the occasion and being leaders and examples to all Israel, we keep Moshe alive. Then the Torah will then back them up as well, “standing” on their behalf. These words are as much for today as they were for this time over 3,000 years ago. Moshe is only dead if we “kill off” his words. If his teaching is alive in our lives, his energy still affects the world. Despite much teaching to the contrary, in YHWH’s opinion we can live according to the Torah. Though surrounded by many others, Moshe says “I am giving”, because they are one united voice. The Northern Kingdom is waking up to our identity, but bickering about things with little importance keeps us separate, and in such a scenario the rebellious can easily play one leader against another. When we all have the same message, we give them no foothold. Guard: literally protect with a hedge, and pay careful attention. Make sure these commands are adhered to. The Hebrew word for “commandment” is related to the word for “army”, so these are our marching orders. Imagine how unsuccessful an army would be if all the officers gave conflicting commands. We must pray and invest ourselves in what will again line us up with the simplicity of the Torah, not so many opinions stated as facts. Do not wait for the Messiah to unite us; we have a part to do now to make sure we are all marching together, so we will not maximize the minimal and minimize the maximal.
2. "And this is how it will be in the day when you cross the Yarden into the Land which YHWH your Elohim is giving to you: you must set up large stones, and whitewash them with lime.
Large stones: Just how large would depend on the elders’ judgment, based on who was available to carry them and how much weight each could carry. The flow of Torah leaves such details flexible, to be determined according to the need of the era or season. Whitewash: or coat with plaster, so the uncut stones (v. 6) could be written upon. (v. 3, 8) In ancient times—actually for thousands of years--to make the plaster required heating the limestone to over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit until it is brittle, crushing it, and mixing it with water. Or they may have used local clay as the plaster.
3. "And you shall write on them all of the words of this instruction when you cross over, so that you may enter the Land that YHWH your Elohim is giving you--a Land that flows with milk and honey, just as YHWH the Elohim of your ancestors has promised you.
All the words: Whether this refers to just the ten commandments, or the rest of the specifics expounded on throughout the rest of the Torah—the purity laws, property laws, instructions for the Sabbath and Festivals, etc.—would again depend on what the elders determined was the necessary extent at this time. They might have only needed to write, “Love YHWH your Elohim with all your heart, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” (“The rest is commentary”, as Hillel said.) But with several million people present, the whole Torah could be written fairly quickly. In one form or another, whether minimal or maximal, the Torah is posted at the entrance to the Land. And on another level, the Torah forms the boundary within which anyone who says he is part of Israel must live. Otherwise, we have not fully entered into YHWH’s Land. Today we can only partially go to the Holy Land, because only some of its population is holy; the Torah is not on all of its gates. The Torah is actually meant to be its gate. It determines our priorities, whom we marry, what we eat, etc., for the purpose of setting us apart to Him. As individuals, we cannot keep the whole Torah, but as a community we can. (30:14; Yirmeyahu/ Jer. 11:1ff) Such stones were always set up as a reminder or recognition of something that took place at that site. They are a picture of the living stones that all Israel is to be. The word for “stones”(ebenim) is related to both the Hebrew word for “build” (banah) and the word for “sons” (banim), because our children are the building-blocks of the household and of all Israel—like “living stones”. Our job is to cover them and etch the Torah into them. If they wish to cut them deeper into themselves, that is up to them, but it is our responsibility to show them the true boundaries of YHWH’s words—what they really include (such as the true definition of what food is) and what they do not (such as men’s morals)—so that they will not put the emphasis on the wrong things or think they can alter the rules. When you cross over: A river is the perfect place to get stones that we can be reasonably sure have never been altered by iron tools. (The Temple Institute recently collected stones from a remote part of the Dead Sea for this reason.)
4. "That is, when you have transitioned across Yarden, you shall set up these stones (about which I am giving you orders today) on Mount Eyval, and plaster them with lime,
Round stones need mortar to fit together. The same lime as used for plaster might have been used for mortar. The mortar in YHWH's temple is our love and commitment to one another. Yahshua said men would know that we are his because of this love--because it makes us into one structure. Mt. Eyval is 3,084 feet (940 meters) above sea level, and is on the north side of the city of Sh’khem (called Nablus by the Arabs today). So they had to take these stones out of a river and carry them up a mountain. These do not appear, then, to be the same as the twelve stones (Y’hoshua 4) set up at the place of crossing (Beyth-Abarah), for those still seem to have been in place at the time Yochanan had his immersion site there. (Yochanan 1:28) They may have been picked up at the same time, however. At the very least, they are from the same source.
5. "and build there an altar to YHWH your Elohim--an altar [made] of stones. You shall not wield an iron [implement] upon them.
The rules are the same as for the sanctuary altar. It would be very hard to write legibly on round stones until they are plastered over. An altar cannot be made of just one stone standing alone; that was a common form of pagan worship. It parallels what the Church has done by making “Jesus” the sole focus and an object of worship, when he kept saying that he was not here to do his own will but his Father’s. He is the cornerstone, but not a stand-alone. Instead, we must all have the Torah in common. The mortar is our love and commitment to one another. Yahshua said men would know that we are his because of this love--because it makes us into one structure, even when we do not naturally fit together. This altar has been located by archaeologists, and is largely intact. May we be so blessed as to not only see the archaeological site, but restore it so that this command can be fulfilled in our day as well.
6. "You shall construct YHWH your Elohim's altar of undamaged stones, and on it you shall offer ascending [offerings] to YHWH your Elohim.
Undamaged stones: those that have not been reshaped by human tools. A chisel (v. 5) often cracks the stone, making it useless. But an iron tool cannot wield itself; this must be done by the hands of men, so this is figurative of the fact that YHWH does not want any of His people ruined by the teachings of men. When men carve their fears into us, as with Dante’s Inferno, we end up with doctrines like “Hell”, which depict YHWH as more cruel than He is, and are based on ignorance of idioms about the features of the Land of Israel (the Valley of Hinnom and the Dead Sea, once called the “Lake of Fire” because of the seepage of bitumen to the surface, where lightning would set it ablaze). The Temple was built of stones that were cut, though not on site at the Temple Mount. In every case--here, in the Tabernacle, both Temples, and the Maccabean rededication, the altar was built and/or in use before the rest of the Temple was. Thus it represents "forerunners" in the restoration of Torah to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel, who because of the trail they are blazing, may be required to be more strictly pure in doctrine and practice, in order to be an example to others who may follow later. These people become a place for others to come to draw near to YHWH, for the offerings cooked on it are not called “sacrifices” in Hebrew, but “drawings-near”. But we have had men’s doctrines carved into us; what do we do to become fit to be altar stones? Get back into the water—an idiom for Torah—to have our edges smoothed out again. An altar is not where the slaughter takes place, but where the meat is either consumed or barbecued and where the blood is applied. Ascendings: by building this altar, we are able to take another step higher, again coming closer to YHWH.
7. "You shall also offer peace offerings, and eat there, and rejoice in the presence of YHWH your Elohim.
Peace offerings: from the same root word as "undamaged” stones (v. 6), so there is a play on words; the term means “complete”. Wholeness is indeed what we want to offer up to YHWH. After all the trouble it takes to carry the stones, find limestone, mix the mortar, build the altar, and plaster it over, we get to put it to use, having a party with plentiful meat and bread to celebrate who we are, who YHWH is, and what He has done. This type of offering is spontaneous, not mandated, but when we feel a need to give, we should not ignore it. We never know what doors we may open by responding to that urge. They are always offered with bread, showing that this is a community meal of thanksgiving and celebration with the people of YHWH. Many are clamoring for the rebuilding of the Temple, but first must come the altar, the place for laying self aside.
8. "Then you shall write all the words of this instruction on the stones in a thoroughly plain manner."
The problem is that with use or age, the words would fade, or the plaster would crumble or be eroded away by wind and rain, exposing the bare rocks again until we no longer know what they bore witness to. So the writing would have to be renewed often as a built-in memory aid. It is incumbent on each generation to “re-cover” that to which the words bore witness so we can continue to fulfill our side of the covenant. This way they are no longer only the words of our forefathers; it is our commitment as well. Plain: from the same word for a well, which is full of water, another picture of the Torah. This way we have access to water where we can have our rough edges rounded off again. But the root word means to be distinct or clear--that is, “write it large and keep it simple enough for everyone to understand”; it should not be overspiritualized or other-worldly. One should not need a Ph.D. or be a lawyer to understand it. Of course there are deeper levels on which to understand it, but if we are not carrying it out literally, we are not doing the Torah. The depth should make it simpler, not more complicated, or we are digging in the wrong place. It is available for all to read, not hidden away as the Catholic Church did so that it could control how much people could hear; Jews, on the other hand, always encouraged literacy so the whole community could read the Torah. It was given to a people who had been slaves and were again learning to be shepherds. To get back in a position to hear it at its simplest and clearest, maybe we would do well to spend time with sheep, dress like our ancient ancestors did, eat goat cheese and olives, and get in touch with the natural, unpaved desert they walked on. All: Thus, other than some visions of what the tabernacle was to look like, Moshe did not receive any instruction other than what was written down. Oral tradition does give us some of the “how-to’s” that Scripture does not detail, but it does not have the same authority; if it is given that, it actually freezes the halachah (way to walk) at one point in history, while it was meant to remain fluid so that each community in each generation could interpret the authoritative Word in the ways most suitable for their particular needs. People who have not been shaped only by the water of the Word itself, but were once carved by men’s doctrines to fit their agendas, can let themselves be put back into the "river" of the Water of the Word and the edges washed away so they can be suitable to be part of this altar as well. Thankfully, it need not take as long with a human heart as with a stone. (Compare Y’hezq’el 36:25-27, which is written specifically for the House of Israel, who did profane His name, but whom He is giving another occasion to set it apart before the rest of the world.)
9. Then Moshe and the Levitical priests said to all of Israel, "Be quiet and listen, O Israel: This day you have become the people of YHWH your Elohim.
Now it is the priests and Levites, rather than the elders, who are saying the same thing as Moshe. They are the ones who are the teachers, and who judge cases too hard for the other elders. Be silent: or "Shut up and pay attention!" Forget your own opinions, which only demonstrate our foolishness. Do not say a word, so you will not miss anything. We need to also practice inward quietness, silencing our thoughts so we can clean our own lives out of His vessel. People today have great difficulty with this, not because they have “attention-deficit disorder”, but because they have never been disciplined enough to calm their minds. Over-stimulation leads to very short attention spans, even though studies have shown that “multitasking” actually slows efficiency, contrary to today’s logic. Even when we stop talking outwardly, most of us keeping a conversation going in our heads, and have a hard time truly listening to what others are saying, let alone YHWH’s still, small voice:
10. "So you shall listen to [and obey] the voice of YHWH your Elohim and carry out His orders and His enactments, which I am laying upon you this day."
We can keep making excuses or talk about what we do not agree with, or we can simply obey and thereby know His heart, as far as the Creator of the universe can be known, and learn what He is really saying. One thing is certain; we will not hear His voice properly if we are not spending time reading and studying His instruction (torah). That is His first and foremost message to any of us. There is more than enough to fill a lifetime’s worth of learning there. Only as we hear and let His words be carved into us and in turn carve them into our children can we put ourselves in the order they describe.
Commentary on
Parashat Ki Thavo'
"Everyone must get Stoned"
--or at least Plastered
