Deuteronomy13chapter 13

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.