Commentaries:
The reference is to taking bribes that lead to the death of the innocent, most often in a judicial context. Such bribes are by nature “under the counter,” since the cornerstone of any properly functioning jurisprudence is impartiality (Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 10:17-18, I Timothy 5:21; James 2:1, 9). Judges are to be unimpeachably honest, disinterested. This is, of course, in reference to the ninth commandment, forbidding bearing false witness (see Exodus 20:16 and more specifically, Exodus 23:7-8).
Charles Whitaker
Unity and Division: The Blessing and the Curse (Part Four)
Statistically, in the United States the most dangerous place for anyone to be is in the mother's womb! The unborn baby is a living human being who dies a painful death when aborted. By the seventh week of gestation, the fetus has measurable brain waves (see Genesis 25:21-26; Luke 1:41-44), a legal criterion to determine whether a person is alive or dead. God—not the state, not the individual, not the parent—is the Lord of life (Psalm 100:3; Isaiah 44:24; I Corinthians 6:19).
Martin G. Collins
The Sixth Commandment
Looking at the underlying commonality of the Ebal-curses—that they focus on secret sin—we may conclude that the six tribes on Ebal represent those church members whom we could call “wolves in sheep's clothing,” in whom God finds unrepented sin, individuals living a secret life, closeted in some way, hypocrites.
Conversely, we may conclude that the six tribes atop Mount Gerizim symbolize those people in God's church who exhibit sincerity and wholeness of heart, unwavering commitment to keeping the principle inherent to the Feast of Unleavened Bread—and, by extension, living their entire lives—“not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (I Corinthians 5:8).
Those on Gerizim, unlike their fellows on the Mount of Cursing, represent individuals who break their bread with “singleness of heart” (Acts 2:46), fully committed to abandoning all sin, no matter how stubbornly closeted it may have been at one point in their lives, no matter how tenacious its addiction, no matter how much carnal pleasure it might bring. On Gerizim stand, symbolically, those of God's people who, recognizing the damnation of the charade, have firmly rejected living a double-life. Those who so shun sham and find no pleasure in the mask really do stand on the Mountain of Blessing!
Charles Whitaker
Unity and Division: The Blessing and the Curse (Part Five)