Deuteronomy 17:3

17:1-7 No creature which had any blemish was to be offered in sacrifice to God. We are thus called to remember the perfect, pure, and spotless sacrifice of Christ, and reminded to serve God with the best of our abilities, time, and possession, or our pretended obedience will be hateful to him. So great a punishment as death, so remarkable a death as stoning, must be inflicted on the Jewish idolater. Let all who in our day set up idols in their hearts, remember how God punished this crime in Israel.

And hath gone,.... The Targum of Jonathan adds, after the evil imagination or concupiscence, lusting after other lovers, and forsaking the true God, and departing from his worship: and served other gods; strange gods, the idols of the people, other gods besides the true God; the creature besides the Creator: and worshipped them; by bowing down before them, praying to them, or ascribing their mercies and blessings to them, and giving them the glory of them: either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven: the two great luminaries, and the planets, constellations, and stars, any of them; which kind of idolatry very early obtained, and was in use at this time among the Heathens, and was an iniquity to be punished by the judge, Job 31:26, which sin, though so strictly forbidden, the people of Israel sometimes fell into, 2 Kings 21:3. which I have not commanded: and which is a sufficient reason, in matters of worship, to avoid and abstain from anything, that God has not commanded it; for in things of that nature nothing should be done but what he has ordered, who is a jealous God, and will not suffer any to take upon them to direct what should be done as a religious service and duty; and if any are so presumptuous, they must expect it will be resented; see Isaiah 1:12 and especially with respect to the object of worship, as here, and which relate to things if not forbid expressly, yet tacitly, to do which was an abomination to the Lord.

Deuteronomy 17:3 . The host of heaven — Those glorious creatures, which are to be admired as the wonderful works of God, but not to be set up in God’s stead. By condemning the most specious of all idolatries, he intimates how absurd a thing it is to worship stocks and stones, the works of men’s hands. I have not commanded — That is, I have forbidden. Such negative expressions are emphatical.

Those glorious creatures, which are to be admired as the wonderful works of God, but not to be set up in God’s stead, nor worshipped as gods: see Job 31:26 . By condemning the most specious and reasonable of all idolaters, he intimates how absurd a thing it is to worship stocks and stones, the works of men’s hands. Which I have not commanded, i.e. I have forbidden, to wit, Exo 20 . Such negative expressions are oft emphatical, and imply the contrary, as Proverbs 10:2 17:21 24:23 .

Compare Deuteronomy 13:1 ff. Here special reference is made to the legal forms to be adopted, Deuteronomy 17:5-7 . The sentence was to be carried into effect at "the gates" (compare Genesis 19:1 note) of the town in which the crime was committed; because, as "all the people" were to take a part, an open space would be requisite for the execution. Note the typical and prophetical aspect of the injunction; compare Acts 7:58 ; Hebrews 13:12 .

De 17:2-7. Idolaters Must Be Slain. 2-7. If there be found among you … man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness—The grand object contemplated in choosing Israel was to preserve the knowledge and worship of the one true God; and hence idolatry of any kind, whether of the heavenly bodies or in some grosser form, is called "a transgression of His covenant." No rank or sex could palliate this crime. Every reported case, even a flying rumor of the perpetration of so heinous an offense, was to be judicially examined; and if proved by the testimony of competent witnesses, the offender was to be taken without the gates and stoned to death, the witnesses casting the first stone at him. The object of this special arrangement was partly to deter the witnesses from making a rash accusation by the prominent part they had to act as executioners, and partly to give a public assurance that the crime had met its due punishment.

3 . gone and served other gods ] So Deuteronomy 13:6 ; Deuteronomy 13:13 (7, 14); and 2 (3) with slight variation. sun, moon , etc.] See on Deuteronomy 4:19 . which I have not commanded ] Cp. Deuteronomy 4:19 : which thy God hath assigned unto the peoples . The use of the first person here is remarkable; God Himself takes up the speech, as in Deuteronomy 7:4 and frequently in the prophets: e.g. Jeremiah 7:31 ; Jeremiah 19:5 ; Jeremiah 32:35 .

If such a case should occur, as that a man or woman transgressed the covenant of the Lord and went after other gods and worshipped them; when it was made known, the facts were to be carefully inquired into; and if the charge were substantiated, the criminal was to be led out to the gate and stoned. On the testimony of two or three witnesses, not of one only, he was to be put to death (see at Numbers 35:30 ); and the hand of the witnesses was to be against him first to put him to death, i.e., to throw the first stones at him, and all the people were to follow. With regard to the different kinds of idolatry in Deuteronomy 17:3 , see Deuteronomy 4:19 . (On Deuteronomy 17:4 , see Deuteronomy 13:15 .) "Bring him out to thy gates," i.e., to one of the gates of the town in which the crime was committed. By the gates we are to understand the open space near the gates, where the judicial proceedings took place (cf. Nehemiah 8:1 , Nehemiah 8:3 ; Job. Deu 29:7), the sentence itself being executed outside the town (cf. Deuteronomy 22:24 ; Acts 7:58 ; Hebrews 13:12 ), just as it had been outside the camp during the journey through the wilderness ( Leviticus 24:14 ; Numbers 15:36 ), to indicate the exclusion of the criminal from the congregation, and from fellowship with God.

The infliction of punishment in Deuteronomy 17:5 . is like that prescribed in Deuteronomy 13:10-11 , for those who tempted others to idolatry; with this exception, that the testimony of more than one witness was required before the sentence could be executed, and the witnesses were to be the first to lift up their hands against the criminal to stone him, that they might thereby give a practical proof of the truth of their statement, and their own firm conviction that the condemned was deserving of death, - "a rule which would naturally lead to the supposition that no man would come forward as a witness without the fullest certainty or the greatest depravity" (Schnell, das isr. Recht). (Note: "He assigned this part to the witnesses, chiefly because there are so many whose tongue is so slippery, not to say good for nothing, that they would boldly strangle a man with their words, when they would not dare to touch him with one of their fingers. It was the best remedy, therefore, that could be tried for restraining such levity, to refuse to admit the testimony of any man who was not ready to execute judgment with his own hand" (Calvin).) המּת (Deuteronomy 17:6), the man exposed to death, who was therefore really ipso facto already dead. "So shalt thou put the evil away," etc.: cf. Deuteronomy 13:6.