יהושע ח׳:ל׳-ט׳:ב׳

אז יבנה וגו'. פרשה זו כתובה מוקדם ומאוחר, שמיום שעברו את הירדן עשה כן:

Then [Yehoshua] built. This parasha is not in chronoligical order, [for Yehoshua built the altar] on the day they crossed the Jordan river.⁸Since the following verse states that he built the altar as Moshe had commanded them, we must conclude that this verse describes events that occured before the conquest of Yericho.

ויכתב שם על האבנים. הן הנה האבנים האמורים למעלה, לאחר מעשה זה קפלו הסיד מעליהם והביאום הגלגל:

And there he wrote on the stones.⁹There are different opinions as to what Yehoshua wrote on the stones. Some say that he wrote only Seifer Devorim which is itself the repetition of the Torah, as Moshe taught the Bnei Yisroel in the last year of the forty years in the wilderness—Seifer Devorim is referred to as מִשְׁנֵה תּוֹרָה, which means the repetition or copy of the Torah, which are the exact words used in this verse. Others say that he only wrote the Ten Commandments as they are recorded in Seifer Devorim (5:6-18). Most commentators maintain that Yehoshua wrote the entire Torah from beginning to end, and that it was a literal copy of the Torah. There are the same stones mentioned above.(4:20) After the altar was built, they scraped off the whitewash¹⁰There are different opinions concerning how it was written. According to Rabbi Yehudah it written directly on the stones, and later whitewashed as the verse states, “you are to write on them—and coat them with whitewash.” (Devorim 27:3,4.) Rabbi Shimon said that if they were whitewashed on top of the writing no one would be able to read it, which would defeat the purpose of the commandment. According to him the whitewash was put on first, to make the stones easier to write on and easier to read. (See Maseches Sotah 35). and brought them to Gilgal.¹¹See Devorim 27:2 and Rashi’s comments there.

לברך את העם ישראל בראשונה. להקדים ברכות לקללות, ברוך האיש אשר לא יעשה פסל ומסכה:

To bless the people of Yisroel first. To pronounce the blessings before the curses,¹²When all the tribes were assembled (as described in Devorim 27:12,13,) the Levi’im began to recite the blessings and the curses. Although the Torah mentions only the curses, each curse was actually preceded by a corresponding blessing. (See Rashi to Devorim 27:12). “Blessed is the man who will not make a statue or a molten image.”