ויצו משה וזקני ישראל את העם, Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people, etc. Why did Moses single out this paragraph to mention the elders of Israel? Moses referred to what is spelled out by our sages in Berachot 19 that when the desecration of G'd's name is at stake there is no room for worrying about the respect or honour due to one's rabbi. We base this principle on Proverbs 21,30: "there is no wisdom, insight, or counsel which prevails against G'd." Moses, the Chief Rabbi of the Israelites, decreed that the elders too issue the same command to the people. [I believe the author means that normally Moses would consult with the elders and leave it to their own wisdom to communicate the Torah insights they had learned from him to the people in their own time and in their own words. In this instance, when a renewed commitment to Torah was required by a generation most of whom had not been alive at the revelation, Moses acted in what appears like a somewhat autocratic manner for the reasons mentioned. Ed.] Moses used the word שמר, because it refers to negative commandments, and the rule that one does not bother to give honour to elders applies when we need to make sure that negative commandments are not violated in public.

למען אשר תבא אל הארץ "in order that you may enter the land, etc." Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra explains this to mean that when you commence to observe His commandments, i.e. to inscribe the stones, (and this is the first commandment), you will enter the Holy Land by dint of this merit. Nachmanides understands the words: "in order that you will enter" as a commandment to inscribe the entire Torah on these stones at the time the Israelites would cross the Jordan [as opposed to Ibn Ezra who wrote that only the actual commandments had to be inscribed on these stones. Ed.] I do not believe that either one of these two explanations does justice to the plain meaning of our verse. Another thing we have to explain are the words כאשר דבר ה׳ אלוקי אבותיך לך, "as the Lord the G'd of your fathers has said to you." The Torah should have written the word לך, to you, immediately after the words כאשר דבר, and we would have entertained no doubt about who had said this to the Israelites.

However, the Torah had to consider the fact that previously Moses had told the Israelites that the fact that they would enter the Holy Land was not due to their own merits (compare 9,5), but to the wickedness of the Canaanites residing in that land at that time. Another reason given by the Torah at that time for the Israelites entering and taking possession of the land was the promise G'd had made to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In view of all this, the Torah here had to state that fulfilment of a commandment would be a factor in the Israelites entering the Holy Land due to their own מצוה-input. The positioning of the word לך at the end of the verse is an arbitrary decision by Moses, the author of our verse. The meter of the whole verse is as follows: "in order that your entry into the land which the Lord your G'd gives to you in accordance with what He said to your forefathers will be one which you are entitled to by your own merit, so that you do not have to rely on the covenant G'd made with your ancestors."

וענו הלוים, and the Levites will "answer," etc. Actually, the meaning is that the Levites will commence speaking whereas the people will respond by saying "Amen." Onkelos translates the word וענו by writing ויתיבון, "the Levites will sit down." According to Onkelos these words would be in response to the Torah mentioning in verses 12 and 13 that these tribes would "stand" on the mountains to listen to the curses and blessings respectively. Targum Yonathan ben Uzziel translates the word וענו as ויכרזון, "the Levites will proclaim." I find this difficult, seeing the Torah added that they would speak קול רם, "in a loud voice." Why would the word וענו merely duplicate the meaning of קול רם? Perhaps what Yonathan ben Uzziel meant was that not only the recital but also the proclamation should be in a loud voice.

וענו כל העם ואמרו אמן, and the entire people are to respond by saying "Amen." In this instance the Torah was not satisfied to write ואמר כל העם as it did with respect to all the other ten curses listed here. The Torah wanted to make certain that the Israelites were required to respond (not merely say). Had the Torah not written the word וענו at this point we might have thought that it was the Levites who had to say the words ואמר כל העם, "and the entire people are to say."

ארור מקלה אביו ואמו, "Accursed is anyone who degrades his father or his mother." It is important to examine why Moses selected that only people guilty of non-observance of these eleven out of a total of 613 commandments were deserving to be publicly declared as being accursed? Are there not some more severe violations, such as the violation of commandments dealing with incest which would qualify no less for the treatment we see here accorded to the violators of these eleven commandments? Is it not difficult to consider adultery as less serious than moving a boundary stone, for instance?

Perhaps the Torah here enumerates only sins which are normally committed in secret, or which will not be revealed by their victims. This may be the reason why the Torah speaks of ושם בסתר, "and emplace it in secret" (verse 15 where the sin is idolatry). If that sin would be committed in public the sinner would not merely be accursed but he would be executed and the Israelites themselves would be charged with seeing to it that he does not get away with his sin. The same consideration may apply to someone who degrades his father or mother. The Torah speaks of people who do this in private where the hand of the law cannot reach them. This is why Moses wants to make it plain that they will be accursed by the heavenly tribunal. The same consideration applies to someone who moves boundary stones or fences in a manner which is hard to detect. Not only that, who can prove who has moved the boundary? How are we going to convict the culprit? Similarly, the son-in-law who sleeps with his (consenting) mother-in-law is untouchable by the terrestrial courts so that the Torah has to demonstrate by this means that such people are not immune to the consequences of their actions. The reference to someone who strikes his fellow in secret, i.e. where there are no witnesses, is another such example of offences which cannot be adjudged by a terrestrial court seeing that the evildoer will deny having hit the other fellow, or he may not even be accused of doing so if he acted under cover of darkness or wore a mask, for instance.

The reason the Torah inserted the offence of sleeping with a beast between the sin of sleeping with the wife of his father or the sin of sleeping with his sister, is to suggest that commission of either sin is as unlikely as having sexual intercourse with an animal. All three sins represent the most abominable aberration of which one can become guilty.

ארור אשר לא יקים את דברי התורה הזאת, "Accursed is one who does not uphold the words of this Torah, etc." This verse includes both what is spelled out, i.e. the person who fails to observe the commandments mentioned in this paragraph and to thereby undermine the character-building effects of Torah observance, as well as all the other commandments not listed in this paragraph. Our sages in Sotah 37 concentrate on the wording here, i.e. אשר לא יקים…לעשות. Why was it not sufficient for the Torah merely to write לעשות, "to do?" They say that if the Torah had only written the words לא יקים or לעשות, no Israelite would have been able to face G'd. After all, if one does not own a field, for instance, how can one fulfil all the commandments that a farmer has to fulfil? Or, if a person did not own a slave, how could he be expected to treat the slave in accordance with the duties that the Torah imposes on the owner of such a slave? This is why the Torah adds the words לעשות in addition to writing the word להקים, "to uphold," to tell us that unless one has the opportunity to uphold, i.e. to fulfil the commandments of the Torah, one is not subject to the curse pronounced by the Torah through the Levites in this paragraph. It is our duty to make up our minds that we will carry out the commandments when the opportunity arises to do so.