Remark how not only here the curses alone, not the blessings, are recited (as alluded to surely in Gal. 3), but in chapter 28, where the governmental dealings are unfolded, how largely, though in a manner characteristically correspondent, the curses are developed and insisted on compared to the blessings. This stamps necessarily a peculiar character on the relationship between God and the people. It gives to us, accustomed to perfect and unwearied love, a somewhat painful feeling, not as to the rightness of it, but as to being in such a relationship. It is just what ought to be under law, indeed blessing must be always simpler, for the blessing itself, the favor is the great thing, and on a hard state of mind more positive and lower motives must (i.e., may) be brought to bear, but it makes us see what the position of law for man's heart is.