Deuteronómio 29:28 Comentario: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi, Chizkuni & Da'at Zekenim

“Concealed acts concern the Lord our God” [29:28]. The concealed things are for God and the open things are for us. That is to say, the sins that we see Israelites commit, we are obligated to punish them. However, the hidden sins that Israelites commit are for God, since God will punish the concealed sins. Israel are guarantors for each other. Therefore, one should watch who commits a sin in order to punish them, so that the innocent should not be liable.⁹Rashi, Deuteronomy, 29:28.

Another explanation is that there are some commandments that we don’t know the reason why the Holy One commanded them. Therefore it says, “Concealed acts concern the Lord our God” [29:28]. That is, we should do the concealed commandments for God’s sake, because He commanded them.¹⁰Bahya, Deuteronomy, 29:28.

“Overt acts, it is for us and our children” [29:28]. That is to say, the commandments that we do whose reason is written and we understand. We should reveal them and tell their reason to our children, just as the Torah wrote concerning the Exodus from Egypt, “teach them to your children” [11:19]. This means, you should teach the Torah to your children and you should make them knowledgeable about the reason for every commandment, to the extent to which you know the reason.¹¹Bahya, Deuteronomy, 29:28.

הנסתרת לה' אלהינו THE SECRET THINGS BELONG UNTO THE LORD OUR GOD — And if you say, “But what can we do? Thou threatenest the many (the whole community) with punishment because of the sinful thoughts of one individual, as it is said, (v. 17): “Lest there should be among you a man, [or a woman or a family … whose heart turneth away this day from the Lord …]”, and afterwards it states, (v. 21) “And they will see the plagues of that land”. But surely no man can know the secret thoughts of his fellow! Now, I reply: I do not threaten to punish you because of secret thoughts for these belong to the Lord our God and He will exact punishment from that individual; but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children that we may put away the evil from our midst; and if we do not execute judgment upon them, the whole community will be punished. — There are dots on the words לנו ולבננו to suggest that even for the revealed sins (those committed openly), He did not punish the community until they had crossed the Jordan — from the moment when they took upon themselves the oath on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal and had thus become responsible for one another (Sanhedrin 43b; cf. Sotah 37b).