Punishment for idolatry
13
📚If a prophet 📖 or a dreamer of dreams 📖 arises among you, and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 📚and the sign or the wonder comes about, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them”, 3 📚you must not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing 📖 you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 📚You must follow the LORD your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you must serve him and cling to him. 5 📚And that prophet or that dreamer of dreams must be put to death, because he has spoken to turn you away from the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage. He has tried to turn you out of the way which the LORD your God commanded you to walk in. So shall you purge the evil from among you.13:5 Such a false prophet is worthy of death because he is opposing the first command of the law (see note Ex 20:2-3). God Himself says that such action is an abomination (v 14).⚜
6 📚If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is like your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods”, which neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 of the gods of the people who are around you, near you or at a distance from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, 8 📚you must not consent to him or listen to him; and your eye must not pity him, and you must not spare him, and you must not conceal him; 9 📚but you must surely kill him. Your hand must be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. 10 📚And you must stone him with stones so that he dies, because he has tried to turn you away from the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. 11 📚And all Israel will hear and fear, and will no longer commit such wickedness as this among you.
13:6-11 The importance of God’s first command in the law is emphasized here. A mother or father was to perform the sad duty of casting the first stone in putting to death a son or daughter who encouraged people to break that law (see note on law at Ex 19:21-25). This was the way of things under the law of Moses. Compare this with the picture of grace given in Luke 15:11-24.⚜
12 📚If you hear in any of your cities, which the LORD your God gives you to live in, someone saying, 13 📚“Certain men, children of Belial, have gone out from among you and drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods”, whom you have not known, 14 📚then you must inquire and search and thoroughly investigate, and then if you see that it is the truth and if it is certain that such abomination is done among you, 15 📚you must certainly strike down the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, completely destroying it and everything that is in it, and its livestock, with the edge of the sword. 16 📚And you must gather all its plunder into the middle of its street, and burn the city with fire and all its plunder, every bit of it, for the LORD your God. And it is to be a heap forever. It must not be rebuilt. 17 📚And none of the accursed thing is to cling to your hand, so that the LORD may turn from the fierceness of his anger and show you mercy, and have compassion on you, and increase your number, as he has sworn to your fathers, 18 📚as you listen to the voice of the LORD your God, to keep all his commandments which I command you this day, to do what is right in the eyes of the LORD your God.
13:12-18 To the one true God idolatry and the worship of false gods are so hateful that He commanded that whole towns and cities in Israel should be destroyed if their inhabitants engaged in such things. God knew that false worship permitted in one town could spread to the whole nation and corrupt it. A cancer in the body must be destroyed or it will destroy the whole body. And God knows perfectly well how to deal with the body of a nation. And such commands as this came out of His great love for the people as a whole. We should clearly understand the intimate connection between God’s anger and His love and holiness. During this age of grace Christians are not, of course, to destroy towns and people. Their work is entirely different (preaching the Gospel of Christ). But at the end of this age God Himself will arise in anger and judge all who have practiced false worship (2 Thess 1:6-9; 2:8-12; Jude 14,15; Rev 16; 21:8). And this He will do for the good of the universe as a whole.⚜