Deuteronomy 29:10,11

Ye stand The Heb. is stronger, and probably reflexive: ye have taken your stationor position.

all of you This comprehensiveness, and the exhaustive definition by which it is followed are striking. Not only the representatives of the people your heads, your judges (which read for tribesthere is only the difference of one letter unless we read with LXX and Syr. heads of tribes, for LXX has judgesas well after elders), your elders and your officers(for all of which except elderssee Deuteronomy 1:13; Deuteronomy 1:15 f., and for eldersDeuteronomy 16:18; Deuteronomy 19:12; Deuteronomy 21:2 f., etc.); and not only all the men of Israel, your little ones and 1 [149] your wives, but also thy gçr … from the gatherer (not hewer) of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water(Joshua 9:21 ff.) appear before Jehovah to take the covenant. Cp. the Sabbath law, Deuteronomy 5:14, covering sons, daughters, servants and thy gçr; Deuteronomy 31:12, men, women, little ones and thy ger; the assembly which received the law under Joshua, Joshua 8:33; Joshua 8:35, gçrand home-born, womenand little ones; and the covenant renewed under Nehemiah, Nehemiah 10:28, all the temple-servants, wives, sons, daughters, every one that had knowledge and understanding(see further Jerusalemi. 435 ff.). On the phrase in the midst of thy campcp. Deuteronomy 2:14 f., Deuteronomy 23:14.

[149] So Sam. and Syr.

The conception of the gçras a proselyte and as under the covenant, and the mention of the temple-drudges may be taken (as by many critics) for signs of the late date of the whole passage. Or since their introduction is coincident with a change of address to the Sg., it is possibly a later gloss on the rest. Yet again the Sg. of 11 bmay be due to the attraction of the Sg. in Deuteronomy 29:12 f., in which its use by a writer otherwise employing the Pl. may be explained on the ground that he is addressing the whole nation as one party to the Covenant; while in Deuteronomy 29:14 he resumes the Pl., because there he is addressing the individuals of the present generation in distinction from others not present. Here then is a case on which the changes between Sg. and Pl. are reasonably explicable as by the same writer and on logical grounds. Steuern. and Marti's proposal to consider the whole of the Sg. clauses as an addition is thus unnecessary.