The Liturgy of the Curse Text: Deuteronomy 27:11-26
Introduction: The Great Divide
We live in an age that despises sharp lines. Our culture wants to blur every distinction, erase every boundary, and sand down every edge. We are told that tolerance is the supreme virtue, which means we must tolerate everything except intolerance. We are told to be inclusive, which means we must include everyone except those who believe in exclusive truth. The modern mind wants a God without wrath, a law without teeth, and a world without consequences. In short, it wants a universe without Mount Ebal.
But God is a God of glorious distinctions. He is the one who separated light from darkness, land from sea, and clean from unclean. And here, on the threshold of the Promised Land, He commands Israel to participate in a massive, open-air liturgical drama that establishes the great moral divide of the universe. He commands them to stand on two mountains, Mount Gerizim for the blessing, and Mount Ebal for the curse. This is not some quaint tribal ritual. This is God embedding the fundamental structure of reality into the very geography of the land and the corporate life of His people. This is covenant renewal on a grand scale.
A covenant is a solemn bond, sovereignly administered, with attendant blessings and curses. God always sets before His people two ways: the way of life and the way of death. Obedience leads to blessing, life, and flourishing. Disobedience leads to cursing, death, and ruin. There is no third way, no neutral ground, no demilitarized zone. You are either on Gerizim or you are on Ebal. And the choice is not made in some hidden corner of the heart. It is to be declared, publicly, with a loud voice, for all to hear.
This passage is deeply offensive to the modern therapeutic mindset, which cannot imagine a good God pronouncing curses. But these curses are not the arbitrary outbursts of a celestial tyrant. They are the loving warnings on the side of the cliff. They are the skull and crossbones on the bottle of poison. They are the guardrails that keep a nation from driving headlong into destruction. And as we will see, this great mountain of cursing is not God's final word. It is the necessary preparation for the gospel, for it is only when we understand the curse we are under that we can truly appreciate the One who became a curse for us.
The Text
11 Moses also commanded the people on that day, saying, 12 “When you cross the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. 13 For the curse, these shall stand on Mount Ebal: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. 14 The Levites shall then answer and say to all the men of Israel with a loud voice, 15 ‘Cursed is the man who makes a graven image or a molten image, an abomination to Yahweh, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and sets it up in secret.’ And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’ 16 ‘Cursed is he who dishonors his father or mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 17 ‘Cursed is he who moves his neighbor’s boundary mark.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 18 ‘Cursed is he who leads a blind person astray on the road.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 19 ‘Cursed is he who perverts the justice due a sojourner, orphan, and widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 20 ‘Cursed is he who lies with his father’s wife because he has uncovered his father’s skirt.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 21 ‘Cursed is he who lies with any animal.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 22 ‘Cursed is he who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 23 ‘Cursed is he who lies with his mother-in-law.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 24 ‘Cursed is he who strikes his neighbor in secret.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 25 ‘Cursed is he who takes a bribe to strike down innocent blood.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’ 26 ‘Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
(Deuteronomy 27:11-26 LSB)
The Solemn Assembly (vv. 11-14)
Moses sets the stage for this great covenant renewal ceremony. The nation is to be physically divided, standing on two opposing mountains.
"When you cross the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people... For the curse, these shall stand on Mount Ebal..." (Deuteronomy 27:12-13)
The tribes descended from Leah's sons and Rachel's sons, the sons of the free women, are largely gathered on Mount Gerizim, the mountain of blessing. The tribes descended from the sons of the concubines, along with Reuben (who lost his birthright) and Zebulun, stand on Mount Ebal, the mountain of cursing. This is a living tableau. The entire nation is to see and hear the terms of their existence in the land. This is not a private affair. God's law is public, objective, and binding on all.
The Levites, as the covenant ministers, are to stand and proclaim the curses with a loud voice. Notice that the text here only records the curses. The blessings are detailed in the next chapter, but the emphasis here is on the solemn warnings against disobedience. Why? Because Israel's great temptation, and ours, is to presume upon the grace of God. It is to imagine that we can have the blessings of the covenant without the obligations of the covenant. God disabuses them of this notion right at the start. The road to blessing runs through obedience, and the detour of disobedience leads directly off the cliff of the curse.
The Twelve Curses: Exposing Secret Sins (vv. 15-25)
What follows is a list of twelve curses, a representative list of sins that strike at the heart of covenant life. A striking feature of many of these sins is their secret nature. This ceremony is designed to drag what is done in the dark out into the light.
"‘Cursed is the man who makes a graven image... and sets it up in secret.’ And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’" (Deuteronomy 27:15 LSB)
The first curse is against secret idolatry. This is the foundational sin, the violation of the first and second commandments. To make an idol is to attempt to manage God, to shrink Him down to a manageable size, to worship a god of your own making rather than the God who made you. To do it in secret is to add hypocrisy to idolatry. It is to maintain a public face of piety while your heart is whoring after other gods. God's law searches the heart, the secret places.
And to every curse, the people must respond, "Amen." This is not a grim, reluctant muttering. "Amen" means "so be it," or "this is true." It is a corporate, public affirmation of the justice of God's law. By saying "Amen," each person is agreeing with God's verdict. They are saying, "Yes, the man who does this deserves to be cursed. This standard is righteous, and I place myself under it." This is a radical act of submission. It is the opposite of the modern spirit that says, "Don't judge me." Here, the people are commanded to judge, and to agree with God's judgment.
The subsequent curses cover the foundational relationships of society. Disrespect for parents (v. 16), which is the breakdown of all authority. Moving a neighbor's boundary marker (v. 17), which is a sneaky form of theft that undermines property and inheritance. Leading the blind astray (v. 18), which is a particularly cruel form of malice, taking advantage of the most vulnerable. Perverting justice for the sojourner, orphan, and widow (v. 19), which is the abuse of power against those who have no earthly protector. These are not just individual sins; they are social sins that rot a nation from the inside out.
Then we have a series of curses against gross sexual immorality: incest and bestiality (vv. 20-23). These sins blur the created distinctions that God has established, erasing the lines between human and animal, and between the holy relations of family and forbidden lusts. These are sins that defile the land itself.
Finally, the list concludes with curses against secret violence and corruption. Striking a neighbor in secret (v. 24) and taking a bribe to kill the innocent (v. 25). These are sins that destroy trust and turn a community into a collection of suspicious, fearful individuals. God is establishing a society where justice, integrity, and righteousness are the public norms, and He is teaching His people to agree with His standards out loud.
The All-Encompassing Curse (v. 26)
The final curse is the capstone. It gathers up all the previous curses and extends the principle to the entire law of God.
"‘Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’" (Deuteronomy 27:26 LSB)
This is the verse that corners everyone. If you thought you had escaped the previous eleven, this one catches you. It is not enough to refrain from a few specific, heinous sins. The standard is comprehensive obedience. To "confirm the words of this law" means to establish them, to uphold them, to live them out consistently. The standard is perfection. And if you fail at any point, you fall under the curse.
This is precisely the verse the Apostle Paul picks up in his letter to the Galatians. "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, 'Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them'" (Galatians 3:10). Paul's point is that the law, by its very nature, reveals our sin and condemns us. It shows us the standard, and it shows us how far short we fall. Mount Ebal is not just a geographical location in ancient Israel; it is the spiritual condition of every single human being outside of Christ. We are all born on the mountain of the curse.
By making the people say "Amen" to this final curse, God was teaching them the gospel in advance. He was leading them to a place of honest confession. He was forcing them to admit that, by this standard, they were doomed. They could not save themselves. They needed a savior. The law is a schoolmaster, and the final lesson it teaches is our desperate need for grace. The thunder from Mount Ebal is meant to drive us to the cross on Mount Calvary.
From Ebal to Calvary
So what do we do with this terrifying chapter? Do we despair? No, we rejoice. Because what happened on Mount Ebal was a prophecy of what would happen on another hill, outside Jerusalem.
Every "Amen" that the Israelites shouted in that valley was a confession of their own guilt. They were agreeing to the justice of their own condemnation. And in the fullness of time, God sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to stand in that valley for us. He lived the life of perfect obedience that we have failed to live. He confirmed every word of the law by doing it. He alone could have stood on Mount Gerizim and received the blessing by right.
But He did not. Instead, He went to the cross. And on the cross, He took the full, concentrated, unmitigated force of Mount Ebal upon Himself. Paul says it plainly: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree'" (Galatians 3:13). He became the idolater, the disrespectful son, the thief, the cruel man, the corrupt judge, the sexual deviant, the murderer. He took every one of these curses into His own body on the tree.
He heard the curse against the secret idolater, and He who was publicly shamed cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He heard the curse against the one who dishonors his father, and He who always honored His Father was dishonored by all. He heard the curse against the one who strikes his neighbor in secret, and He was struck openly for the secret sins of us all.
And when He had absorbed the entire curse, when He had exhausted the wrath of God against our sin, He cried out, "It is finished." The debt was paid. The curse was lifted. And because He took our place on Mount Ebal, we, through faith in Him, are now free to stand on Mount Gerizim and receive the blessing. Not because we have earned it, but because He earned it for us.
Therefore, we can now look at the law of God, not with terror, but with delight. We can say "Amen" to its goodness, not as those who are crushed by its demands, but as those who have been redeemed from its curse. And we strive to obey it, not in order to escape Ebal, but out of gratitude that Christ has already carried us to Gerizim. Our obedience is not the frantic scrambling of a condemned man, but the joyful response of an adopted son.