(1) Moses and the elders of Israel charged the people, saying: Observe all the Instruction that I enjoin upon you this day. (2) As soon as you have crossed the Jordan into the land that the Eternal your God is giving you, you shall set up large stones. Coat them with plaster (3) and inscribe upon them all the words of this Teaching. When you cross over to enter the land that the Eternal your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Eternal, the God of your fathers, promised you— (4) upon crossing the Jordan, you shall set up these stones, about which I charge you this day, on Mount Ebal, and coat them with plaster. (5) There, too, you shall build an altar to the Eternal your God, an altar of stones. Do not wield an iron tool over them; (6) you must build the altar of the Eternal your God of unhewn stones. You shall offer on it burnt offerings to the Eternal your God, (7) and you shall sacrifice there offerings of well-being and eat them, rejoicing before the Eternal your God. (8) And on those stones you shall inscribe every word of this Teaching most distinctly.
(20) And Joshua set up in Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken from the Jordan. (21) He charged the Israelites as follows: “In time to come, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What is the meaning of those stones?’ (22) tell your children: ‘Here the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry land.’ (23) For the Eternal your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you crossed, just as the Eternal your God did to the Sea of Reeds, and dried them up before us until we crossed. (24) Thus all the peoples of the earth shall know how mighty is the hand of the Eternal, and you shall fear the Eternal your God always.”
(ה) ... וְאַחַר כָּךְ הֵבִיאוּ אֶת הָאֲבָנִים וּבָנוּ אֶת הַמִּזְבֵּחַ וְסָדוּהוּ בְסִיד, וְכָתְבוּ עָלָיו אֶת כָּל דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה בְּשִׁבְעִים לָשׁוֹן, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (שם) בַּאֵר הֵיטֵב, וְנָטְלוּ אֶת הָאֲבָנִים וּבָאוּ וְלָנוּ בִמְקוֹמָן:
(5) ...And afterward they brought the stones as commanded in the Torah, and they built the altar and plastered it with plaster, and they wrote on it all of the words of the Torah in seventy languages, as it is stated: “And you shall write on the stones all the words of this law clearly elucidated” (Deuteronomy 27:8). And they then took the stones from there and came to Gilgal and slept in their lodging place.
And our Rabbis have said [that ‘ba’eir heiteiv’ means] in the seventy languages [of the peoples of the world]. Now, we find in the Book of Tagin (crownlets) that the entire Torah was written on them [i.e., the stones] — from the beginning of Bereshith to in the sight of all Israel — with its crownlets and its flourishes, and from there all the crownlets in the entire Torah were copied. It is likely that either these stones were huge, or it was a miraculous event [for, otherwise, it would have been impossible to inscribe so much on a few stone tablets].
From Parshat Ki Tavo - Etchings on Stone by Rabba Claudia Marbach
The Mishnah in Sotah 7:5 tells us that the text of the Torah was written on the stones in seventy languages. Tosefta Sotah 8:6-7 adds that Rabbi Yehuda says that God inspired every nation to send scribes (notarim, from notarius in Latin) who transcribed the texts into the seventy languages, whereas Rabbi Shimon says that it was the Jews who wrote the whole Torah in those languages. These stones were not just for us but an effort to spread the word of God throughout the world. The Kedushat Levi says that the purpose of the translations was for future Jews living in exile who might not understand the original but yearn to be connected.
The true meaning of these stone engravings, as the stones themselves, has been lost in time. What has not been forgotten is theTorah. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov, (Ukraine 1748-1800), the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, in his book Degel Machane Ephraim on Bereshit, tells us that the Torah is made whole in every generation, when we learn it and interpret it for the needs of our generation.
Set in Stone - Parashat Ki Tavo By Rabbi David Greenstein
Each of these associations is then embellished in some significant way. The stones of the altar are now required to be pristinely natural, without any metal used to hew them. Metal was too much associated with war, and service to God should not be tainted with symbols of conflict. In that sense this altar is meant to be a most primal object, restoring us to a state of natural innocence. (We might recall that it was at the scene of an altar that Cain murdered his brother, Abel.)
But the writing on the stones is different. We seem to be commanded twice to write the words of the Torah on stones. But the second, apparent repetition of this command is slightly different. The difference is the addition of the phrase, “well-explained.” This small addition casts the entire ceremony in a different light. The stones are not just the surface for enacting these unique rituals, rituals that were never to be repeated. Rather, the entire ceremony can be seen as a synopsis of the historical progress of the Jewish people to our days. After looking backward in time and toward lost innocence, the ceremony moves us forward, into the future, into a future, not of innocence, but of responsibility.
The first two elements of the ceremony – the first command to write the Torah and the command to build a sacrificial altar – are backward-looking because they signify known objects and actions. The first command to write the words of the Torah on the stones corresponds to the Sinai stage of Jewish history. Then we offer sacrifices on an altar. This corresponds to the period of the two Temples and the expression of Judaism in sacrificial forms. But the second command to write the Torah on the stones calls upon us to add something entirely new – explanation. This is the kernel of the concept of a living Oral Tradition to accompany the Torah we were gifted at Sinai.