The southern of the two mountains facing each other across the valley of Shechem, and the one the BLESSING is set on at Deuteronomy 11:29. Deuteronomy gives the pairing without a reason, a liturgy, or a date; Deuteronomy 27 supplies the ceremony and Joshua 8 performs it, neither yet on these pages. ★ It outlived the book. Gerizim is the holy mountain of the Samaritans to this day, the site of their Passover, and the Samaritan Pentateuch reads GERIZIM at Deuteronomy 27:4 where the Masoretic Text reads Ebal — one of the sharpest textual disagreements between the two traditions, since it decides which mountain the first altar in the land was built on. This project follows the Masoretic Text and notes the variant rather than adopting it, per the standing rule that variants are reported and not silently preferred. Excavations on the summit have uncovered a substantial Hellenistic-period sacred precinct, so the mountain's cultic use is archaeologically attested independently of the dispute about its origin.