“…and, after crossing over, write this Torah on them, every word — so that you can enter the land Adonai your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as Adonai, the God of your ancestors, promised you.”-Deuteronomy 27:3
So the Israelites have been commanded to write the words of the Torah onto large stones.
How exactly were they going to do accomplish this?
Were they going to chisel the words of the Torah into the stones?
The answer is no.
Instead they were going to coat the large stones with plaster and then inscribe into the wet plaster the words of the Torah.
There’s one point I need to make here.
Although the word “Torah” is a technical term referring to the first five books of Moses, it is also a generic word that just means “teaching” or “instruction”.
Therefore, the instruction here is NOT to literally write out every word contained in the five books of Moses onto these stones.
That would have been impossible because the whole Torah hadn’t yet been completely written at this point in time.
Rather, the Israelites were to inscribe the key points of Moses sermon (mainly the list of blessings and curses) here in Deuteronomy onto these stones.
Writing onto rocks covered with plaster was NOT a common thing in those days and it certainly wasn’t a writing method employed by wandering nomads.
However, writing on plaster was a very common way that important events and edicts were memorialized in Egypt.
Hence, the Israelites would have been totally familiar with this procedure.
And given the large amount of writing that needed to be accomplished, this method (writing on plaster) was a heck of a lot faster than taking a sharp object and chiseling letters onto the hard surface of stones.
Writing the words of the Torah on these huge stones and setting them up at Mount Ebal was not the only work the Israelites had to do.
They were also instructed to build an altar of sacrifice for Hashem.
The details I’m going to share with you may not seem important right now but will be important in the future.
Understand that the stones used to create the altar were to be kept in their natural state and not be altered or sculptured into other shapes using iron tools.
Let me say that again in different words.
The building material for the altar was to consist of ONLY NATURAL STONES the Israelites found lying about on the ground.
Got it?
Another point of noteworthy mention is that Mount Ebal (where the stones were to be erected) and its twin sister Mount Gerizim were the old stomping grounds of good ole Abraham!
This is probably why the Lord chose this location for this historic covenant renewal ceremony.
Mount Ebal is located about three miles north of Mount Gerizim.
And do you know what city lies between these two mountains.
Do you recall the city name of Shechem?
That’s right.
Shechem was located between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim.
However, today Shechem is called Nablus.
Mount Ebal rises to a height of above 1200 feet above Shechem.
This means that from the top of Mount Ebal, not only was the expansive view incredible, but the reverse was also true.
Anything that took place up on that mountaintop was visible to the naked eye from vantage points of every direction located miles away.
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