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Verse 10- "All who rely..." Comments: This verse when misunderstood from its larger context will invariably lead the reader to the incorrect conclusion that Paul is advocating complete and mitzvah-by-mitzvah (commandment-by-commandment) Torah submission for everyone wishing to attain right-standing with the Almighty. That the 1st century Judaisms did not advocate a view which required complete Torah obedience before one could be counted as a covenant member is attested to in the later rabbinic compilations that survived the destruction of the Temple. Put simply, no one in Paul’s day thought that a person could practically walk out each and every single commandment. Nor did anyone in Paul’s day believe that God expected such obedience of Isra'el. No, such a notion finds its home among ignorant ideology and theology borne out of ignorance to the Laws of God and the Ways of God. Our verse is a contrast to the previously statement made in verse 6 where Avraham is said to have been considered righteous on the basis of his faith. By comparison, those who do not imitate Avraham, but instead seek to circumvent God’s method of declaring a person righteous actually fall into the trap of legalism. When Sha'ul uses a statement like “all who rely on observing the law” he is referring to two positions: Firstly, he is speaking to those who believed that covenant status was extended by God due to ethnic status, whether native-born or convert. Such individuals, instead of living within the blessing of HaShem, were in reality found to be the object of God’s curse, because instead of submitting to God’s way of making a person righteous, they were said to be setting up their own way of righteousness, a charge leveled against unbelieving Isra'el by Sha'ul himself in Romans 9:31, 32-10:3. Secondly, he is teaching against any superstition notions that God extends covenant status to the individual who simply avails himself of Torah obedience outside of genuine faith in the giver of the Torah. This is proven by the conditional clause, “All who rely on…” To what would the individual be relying upon for righteousness? It must be either his ethnic status or his Torah observance. Paul would have argued against either view. The phrase “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law" is lifted from Deuteronomy 27:26, indicated by the familiar “for it is written.” Paul is going to prove his argument—that lasting covenant membership is granted to those exercising faith—directly from the Torah itself. The reference here by Sha'ul however is neither a direct quote from the Masoretic Hebrew text, or a direct quote from the Greek Septuagint (LXX). He may be paraphrasing the general meaning of the verse for his readers. The meaning is nevertheless captured by Sha'ul: the covenant member to be, as well as the existing covenant member, must follow after all that God has spoken to do. Picking and choosing which commandments are relevant and which ones aren’t is not left to the covenant member. Only God is allowed to determine which commandments might if ever fall into disuse and which ones will not. But even more to the point of Sha'ul’s argument here is the historical reality that each and every covenant member bound himself to pursue the “Righteous One” promised by the Torah! The very thing that a covenant member was expected to do was to exercise faith in God and in his Messiah to come, who by Sha'ul’s writing had already arrived! The individual who failed to reach this conclusion ultimately found himself a candidate for being “cut off” (Hebrew=karat) by God himself due to his lack of faith. In stating that the one who denies genuine faith lives under a curse, Paul opts for the Greek word katavra, katara, which conveys the notion of a spoken curse, a clear reference to God’s words as pronounced in our Torah passage of Deuteronomy, i.e., the Book of the Law.