Deuteronomy13chapter 13

Deuteronomy 13:1-2

The test given here runs opposite to the one at 18:22, where a word that fails to come to pass marks a prophet the Lord did not send. Here the sign or the wonder does come to pass and the prophet is still refused, on the ground of what he says next, let us go after other gods. Barnes sets the two cases beside each other and states the rule that follows, that the revelation already given judges the sign rather than the sign judging the revelation. A dreamer of dreams is a separate claim from a prophet's, since Numbers 12:6 has God speaking by vision and by dream, and the phrase falls three times in this chapter.

Deuteronomy 13:3

The false prophet is described as something God is doing, for the Lord your God proveth you, and that word falls only here in the book. What is being tested is stated in the terms of 6:5, whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with might left out. Clarke reads the permission as a trial of faith, on the ground that a man who knows God by experience is not carried off by a wonder. Jesus warns at Matthew 24:24 of false christs and false prophets shewing great signs and wonders, which is the same combination of a working sign and a wrong object.

Deuteronomy 13:4-5

Cleave unto him closes verse 4, and the word falls three times in the book, at 11:22, here, and 30:20 in the last charge. Verse 5 gives the ground of the sentence, that the prophet spoke to turn you away from the God who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, so the offence is handled as treason against a rescuer rather than as an error of opinion. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee is the first of six occurrences of that formula in Deuteronomy, running on through 17:7, 19:19, 21:21, 22:21 and 24:7. Paul closes his own case of discipline at 1 Corinthians 5:13 with the same words.

Deuteronomy 13:6-8

The enticer is now inside the house, and the list runs brother, son, daughter, the wife of thy bosom, and a friend which is as thine own soul, the phrase 1 Samuel 18:1 uses of Jonathan and David. The mother appears only to tighten the word brother, which the older expositors take as naming the nearest tie in the list. Henry observes that the temptation is put secretly, since the whole case assumes concealment is possible. Verse 8 then forbids five things in one line, consenting, hearkening, pitying, sparing and concealing, and it is the last of them that makes an ordinary man a party to the case.

Deuteronomy 13:9-11

The accuser's own hand goes first, and 17:7 states the rule this clause assumes, that the hands of the witnesses are upon him first and afterwards the hands of all the people. Acts 7:58 shows the same procedure still running at the death of Stephen, where the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of Saul. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the passage as a judicial sentence carried out in public, since what was done in secret could not be proved by one informer without a hearing. Verse 11 gives the purpose, that all Israel shall hear, and fear, a formula the book uses four times, here and at 17:13, 19:20 and 21:21.

Deuteronomy 13:12-14

The third case is a whole city, and the men who move it are called the children of Belial, the one place the King James keeps that word in this book. Belial means worthlessness, as Barnes notes, and it returns of the men of Gibeah at Judges 19:22 and of Eli's sons at 1 Samuel 2:12 before Paul uses it as a name for the adversary at 2 Corinthians 6:15. Verse 14 puts three acts before any action is taken, enquire, and make search, and ask diligently, and the report then has to be found true and the thing certain. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the enquiry as the magistrate's duty, and Jewish writers assigned the trial of an apostate city to the great sanhedrin.

Deuteronomy 13:15-16

The sentence is the ban that 7:2 and 20:16-17 lay on the cities of Canaan, now turned on an Israelite city, and Joshua 6:21 and 6:24 show what that order looked like carried out at Jericho. It shall be an heap for ever answers Joshua 8:28, where Ai is left an heap for ever by the same treatment. Clarke gives the reason the older commentators give, that one city left in idolatry would carry the rest. The historical books record no city condemned under this statute, and the nearest case in form is Judges 20:48, where Israel burns the cities of Benjamin over the outrage at Gibeah rather than over other gods.

Deuteronomy 13:17-18

The cursed thing is the devoted spoil of verse 16, and Joshua 7:1 has Achan taking of it and the anger of the Lord kindling against all Israel, which is this verse read from the other end. The chapter that has ordered three executions ends on mercy, compassion and multiplying, and the multiplying is the oath sworn to the fathers at Genesis 22:17. Verse 18 closes with doing that which is right in the eyes of the Lord thy God, the one place the book puts it in those words. Judges 21:25 ends its own book with the phrase turned around, every man doing that which was right in his own eyes.