Deuteronomy 11:28

And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Deuteronomy 11:28. Other gods which ye have not known — With which you have no acquaintance, and of whose power, and wisdom, and goodness, you have no experience, as you have had of mine.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

11:26-32 Moses sums up all the arguments for obedience in two words, the blessing and the curse. He charged the people to choose which they would have. Moses then appointed a public and solemn proclamation of the blessing and curse, to be made upon the two mountains of Gerizim and Ebal. We have broken the law, and are under its curse, without remedy from ourselves. In mercy, the gospel again sets before us a blessing and a curse. A blessing, if we obey the call to repentance, to faith in Christ, and newness of heart and life through him; an awful curse, if we neglect so great salvation. Let us thankfully welcome these glad tidings of great joy; and let us not harden our hearts, but hear this voice of God while it is called to-day, and while he invites us to come to him upon a mercy-seat. Let us be diligent to make our calling and election sure.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The sense is: "Keep the covenant faithfully, and so shall your own and your children's days be multiplied as long as the heaven covers the earth." The promise of Canaan to Israel was thus a perpetual promise, but also a conditional one.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

26-32. Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse—(See on [125]De 27:11).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Which you have no acquaintance with, nor experience of their power or wisdom or goodness, as you have had of mine.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God,.... Accursed in body and estate, in basket and store; in their families, flocks, and herds; within doors and without; in city, and country; going out, or coming in; in this world, and that to come, if divine goodness prevent not; see Deuteronomy 28:15.

but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day; which the law he gave them, and repeated to them, directed them to walk in:

to go after other gods, which ye have not known; to serve and worship the gods of other nations, strange gods, which neither they nor their fathers knew anything of, or ever received any good thing from; and which indeed are no gods, and nothing in the world, as an idol is.

Geneva Study Bible

And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not {k} known.

(k) He reproves the malice of men who leave that which is certain to follow that which is uncertain.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 28. - Other gods, which ye have not known; in contradistinction to Jehovah, the revealed God, made known to them by word and deed. Deuteronomy 11:28

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Concluding summary. "I set before you this day the blessing and the curse." The blessing, if (אשׁר, ὅτε, as in Leviticus 4:22) ye hearken to the commandments of your God; the curse, if ye do not give heed to them, but turn aside from the way pointed out to you, to go after other gods. To this there are added instructions in Deuteronomy 11:29 and Deuteronomy 11:30, that when they took possession of the land they should give the blessing upon Mount Gerizim and the curse upon Mount Ebal, i.e., should give utterance to them there, and as it were transfer them to the land to be apportioned to its inhabitants according to their attitude towards the Lord their God. (For further comment, see at Deuteronomy 27:14.) The two mountains mentioned were selected for this act, no doubt because they were opposite to one another, and stood, each about 2500 feet high, in the very centre of the land not only from west to east, but also from north to south. Ebal stands upon the north side, Gerizim upon the south; between the two is Sichem, the present Nabulus, in a tolerably elevated valley, fertile, attractive, and watered by many springs, which runs from the south-east to the north-west from the foot of Gerizim to that of Ebal, and is about 1600 feet in breadth. The blessing was to be uttered upon Gerizim, and the curse upon Ebal; though not, as the earlier commentators supposed, because the peculiarities of these mountains, viz., the fertility of Gerizim and the barrenness of Ebal, appeared to accord with this arrangement: for when seen from the valley between, "the sides of both these mountains are equally naked and sterile;" and "the only exception in favour of the former is a small ravine coming down, opposite the west end of the town, which is indeed full of foundations and trees" (Rob. Pal. iii. 96, 97). The reason for selecting Gerizim for the blessings was probably, as Schultz supposes, the fact that it was situated on the south, towards the region of the light. "Light and blessing are essentially one. From the light-giving face of God there come blessing and life (Psalm 16:11)." - In Deuteronomy 11:30 the situation of these mountains is more clearly defined: they were "on the other side of the Jordan," i.e., in the land to the west of the Jordan, "behind the way of the sunset," i.e., on the other side of the road of the west, which runs through the land on the west of the Jordan, just as another such road runs through the land on the east (Knobel). The reference is to the main road which ran from Upper Asia through Canaan to Egypt, as was shown by the journeys of Abraham and Jacob (Genesis 12:6; Genesis 33:17-18). Even at the present day the main road leads from Beisan to Jerusalem round the east side of Ebal into the valley of Sichem, and then again eastwards from Gerizim through the Mukra valley on towards the south (cf. Rib. iii. 94; Ritter, Erdkunde, xvi. pp. 658-9). "In the land of the Canaanite who dwells in the Arabah." By the Arabah, Knobel understands the plain of Nabulus, which is not much less than four hours' journey long, and on an average from a half to three-quarters broad, "the largest of all upon the elevated tract of land between the western plain and the valley of the Jordan" (Rob. iii. p. 101). This is decidedly wrong, however, as it is opposed to the fixed use of the word, and irreconcilable with the character of this plain, which, Robinson says, "is cultivated throughout and covered with the rich green of millet intermingled with the yellow of the ripe corn, which the country people were just reaping" (Pal. iii. 93). The Arabah is the western portion of the Ghor (see at Deuteronomy 1:1), and is mentioned here as that portion of the land on the west of the Jordan which lay stretched out before the eyes of the Israelites who were encamped in the steppes of Moab. "Over against Gilgal," i.e., not the southern Gilgal between Jericho and the Jordan, which received its name for the first time in Joshua 4:20 and Joshua 5:9; but probably the Gilgal mentioned in Joshua 9:6; Joshua 10:6., and very frequently in the history of Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha, which is only about twelve and a half miles from Gerizim in a southern direction, and has been preserved in the large village of Jiljilia to the south-west of Sinjil, and which stands in such an elevated position, "close to the western brow of the high mountain tract," that you "have here a very extensive prospect over the great lower plain, and also over the sea, whilst the mountains of Gilead are seen in the east" (Rob. Pal. iii. 81). Judging from this description of the situation, Mount Gerizim must be visible from this Gilgal, so that Gerizim and Ebal might very well be described as over against Gilgal.

(Note: There is much less ground for the opinion of Winer, Knobel, and Schultz, that Gilgal is the Jiljule mentioned by Robinson (Pal. iii. 47; and Bibl. Researches, p. 138), which evidently corresponds to the Galgula placed by Eusebius and Jerome six Roman miles from Antipatris, and is situated to the south-east of Kefr Saba (Antipatris), on the road from Egypt to Damascus. For this place is not only farther from Gerizim and Ebal, viz., about seventeen miles, but from its position in the lowland by the sea-shore it presents no salient point for determining the situation of the mountains of Gerizim and Ebal. Still less can we agree with Knobel, who speaks of the village of Kilkilia, to the north-east of Kefr Saba, as the name itself has nothing in common with Gilgal.)

The last definition, "beside the terebinths of Moreh," is intended no doubt to call to mind the consecration of that locality even from the times of the patriarchs (Schultz: see at Genesis 12:6, and Genesis 35:4).