Deuteronomy 27:5

And there shall thou build an altar to the Lord thy God,.... On the same mountain, though not of the same stones.

And there shalt thou build an altar unto the LORD thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them. There shalt thou build an altar ... of whole stones.

Deuteronomy 27:5 And there shalt thou build an altar unto the LORD thy God, an altar of stones: thou shalt not lift up [any] iron [tool] upon them.Ver. 5. Thou shalt build an altar.] For burnt offerings, &c. God teacheth them thereby, that righteousness, impossible to the law, was to be sought in Christ, figured by that altar and those sacrifices. Thus the moral law drove the Jews to the ceremonial, which was their gospel, as it doth now drive us to Christ, who is indeed "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth."

(5) An altar of stones.—Rashi propounds the theory that these stones were taken from Jordan. But there is nothing to countenance this theory in the words of the text.

1–8. Erection of Stones for the Inscription of the Law, and of an Altar Moses and the elders charged the people to keep the commandment (1); when they cross Jordan they shall set up stones and, whitening them, shall thereon write the Law (Torah) (2 f.); they shall do this on Mt ‘Ebal (4), and build an altar (of the form enjoined in E, Exodus 20:24 f.) for burnt and peace offerings, eating and rejoicing before God (5–7), and writing on the stones very plainly (8).—The passage is a compilation from different sources. First, in Deuteronomy 27:2-4; Deuteronomy 27:8, Deuteronomy 27:2 f. and Deuteronomy 27:4; Deuteronomy 27:8 are doublets (cp. Dillm., Westphal, Berth., Marti). With deuteron. phrases both command the same thing, the erection of stones to bear on a white surface an inscription of the Law; but the former prescribes this to be done immediately (Deuteronomy 27:3) on the crossing of the Jordan, the latter on Mt ‘Ebal. Here, then, is another indication of more than one edition of the Code with different supplements. Deuteronomy 27:1 fuses the introductions to these two supplements: Moses charged the elders, and Moses charged the people (see below). Second, in Deuteronomy 27:5-7 the command to build an altar on ‘Ebal seems inconsistent with D’s law of the One Altar, and therefore it is usually taken as the revision by a deuteronomic editor (note the phrases in 7 b) of a command in E (see the small print above on chs. 27–30). This only mitigates the difficulty, if Deuteronomy 27:5-7 be really inconsistent with ch. 12. Yet, whoever placed 5–7 here, must have felt no inconsistency; probably because he argued that at the time fixed for the erection of an altar on ‘Ebal Israel would not have gotten that rest from all their enemies round about, which D fixes as the date after which the law of the One Altar was to come into operation (Deuteronomy 12:10). Because the text is uncertain and the passage has been touched by more editors than one, we can infer nothing from the changes between the Sg. and Pl. forms of address in this passage. Steuern. offers with reserve the following analysis. ‘The Editor appears first to have expanded Deuteronomy 27:5-7 [a fragment older than D] with 2 b, 3 a and thereby identified the altar-stones with the stones on which the law was written, as in Joshua 8:30 ff.; hence he also repeated 3 a in Deuteronomy 27:8. Another has further identified these stones with those Deuteronomy 27:2 a á and so added besides Deuteronomy 27:1-2 a á, 4 a.’

5. And there shalt thou build an altar — The altar was to be built upon Ebal, the mountain from which the curses were to be proclaimed. Thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them — Comp.