CHAPTER 13

13:1. This verse complements 12:31a: Israel may worship God only in the ways He commands, no less and no more. It may not abolish His commandments or add to them. It would do both of these if it adopted any of the Canaanites’ abominable practices. For further discussion see Comment to 4:2.

INSTIGATION TO WORSHIP OTHER GODS (vv. 2–19)

This section deals with three cases in which individuals urge their fellow Israelites to worship other gods. In the first case, the proposal is made publicly by one who claims prophetic authority and backs up his claim by a sign that seems to authenticate it (vv. 2–6). In the second, it is made in secret by a close relative or friend (vv. 7–12). In the third, the proposal has reportedly succeeded and an entire city has been led to worship another god (vv. 13–19).

These cases reflect the concept that God is Israel’s king and that worshiping other gods is high treason. There are close parallels to these provisions in laws against sedition in ancient treaties and similar texts. These laws, which require that acts of agitation against the sovereign be reported and punished, correspond to this chapter in many details. For example, they deal with instigators who may be prophets or relatives of the witness; they paraphrase the instigators’ proposal in terms such as “Come let us join another [king]”; they warn against concealing the instigators (cf. vv. 2–3, 7, 9); and they also deal with rebellious cities.

The theme of the chapter is expressed in terminology that appears in all three units. Each proposal is paraphrased in virtually identical terms as “Come let us worship other gods,” whom, the text comments, the Israelites have never “experienced” (vv. 3, 7, 14), and each is characterized as an attempt to make Israel stray from the Lord or His path (vv. 6, 11, 14 [“subverted” in v. 14 is literally “made stray”]). The verb shamaʿ, “hear,” “heed,” also appears in all three units. In the first two, it is part of the admonition not to heed the instigator (vv. 4, 9), and it frames the third unit, beginning with “If you hear” a report of apostasy and ending with the promise of renewed favor for “heeding” God (vv. 13, 19).

Each paragraph gives reasons for the prescribed punishment. The first two explain why the instigator is punished (vv. 6, 11), and all three state the effect intended by the punishment (vv. 6, 12, 18). With these statements, Moses seeks to explain the laws and motivate the people to obey them, even when it might be painful for them to do so. Most of the reasons would be appropriate to all three cases, but the text makes do with one or two for each. Its aim was not to provide an encyclopedic justification for each punishment, but to present one or two reasons that would suffice to demonstrate its appropriateness in each case. Together, the three reasons add up to a theory of punishment: to remove evil from the community, to deter wrongdoing, and to protect the community’s relationship with God.

These cases are a natural sequel to chapter 12, which includes the command to uproot Canaanite polytheism as soon as Israel enters the promised land. Chapter 13 prescribes what is to be done if anybody tries to reestablish polytheism. Although 13:1 is the conclusion of chapter 12, it is also an apt introduction to the rest of chapter 13 (note the call to “obey all His commandments” at the end of chap. 13). Those who would urge Israel to worship other gods in addition to the Lord would in effect be adding to His commandments or subtracting from them (see Comment to 4:2). In fact, the first case is apparently one in which the instigator falsely prophesies that the proposal is a new commandment from God (see v. 6). Clauses about not adding or subtracting often refer to prophets, scribes, and messengers who must faithfully report what they have been told. The placement of 13:2–6 after 13:1 implies that 13:1 was also understood as a warning against the falsification of God’s message by prophets who would claim that He has said more or less than He really said.

The simple case of individuals who worship other gods appears later, in 17:2–7. That case would fit well here, but, because it also contains rules of judicial procedure, it appears in a separate section dealing with that subject (16:18–17:12). See Excursus 13.

INSTIGATION BY A PROPHET OR A DREAMER (vv. 2–6)

The first case is one in which the instigator’s proposal is hard to resist because he seems to have divine authority for what he proposes. Moreover, from verse 6 it appears that he even claims that the proposal comes from the Lord Himself, not another god. The law puts a rational limit on the authority of prophecy and miracles. It indicates that the prohibition against worshiping other gods is an absolute, eternally binding principle, and that even prophecies and seemingly miraculous proofs to the contrary are to be disregarded. Keeping in mind that a prophet is God’s envoy (see Comment to v. 2), it is noteworthy that in a Hittite treaty, the suzerain tells his vassal that when he sends him messages, if there is a discrepancy between the written text of a message and the oral version given by his envoy, the written message is authoritative and the envoy is not to be believed. Here in Deuteronomy the discrepancy is between the written text of the Decalogue and the oral claims of the false prophets.

2–3. The clauses of these two verses should be understood in the following order: “If there appears among you a prophet or a dream-diviner saying, ‘Let us follow and worship another god whom you have not experienced,’ and he gives you a sign or a portent, even if the sign or portent that he named to you comes true …”

2. Prophecy and dreams are two of the regular means by which God communicates with man in the Bible (see 1 Sam. 28:6).

prophet Hebrew naviʾ. The prophet is God’s spokesman or envoy (see 18:18). This is indicated by the fact that prophetic speeches frequently begin with “Thus says the LORD,” since “thus says so-and-so” is the standard formula with which messengers introduce the words of those who send them. The prophet’s role as spokesman is reflected in Exodus 4:16 and 7:1, where Aaron is alternately termed Moses’ naviʾ and spokesman (lit., “mouth”). The cognate term nabiu, referring to a type of prophet or diviner, appears in a West-Semitic letter from Mari, Syria. Literally, naviʾ probably means “proclaimer,” to judge from Akkadian and Arabic cognates in which the root n-b-ʾ means “call,” “proclaim,” and “announce.”

dream-diviner A person—either a prophet or a lay person—who claims to have received a message from God in a dream. The translation “dream-diviner” implies a functionary who regularly seeks and receives revelation through dreams. However, the Hebrew means simply “a dreamer” (lit., “one who dreams a dream”) and does not necessarily have professional connotations.

It is not clear whether the prophet and dreamer here are people who had already performed these roles legitimately in the past and had now become corrupted, or new and false claimants to these roles. In practice the law would undoubtedly have been applied to both.

gives you a sign or a portent As Moses did in Exodus. Hebrew ʾot and mofet refer to portentous signs shown by the prophet to demonstrate that his message really comes from God. The terms refer to marvels beyond human capability, such as a staff turning into a snake, which could only have been brought about by supernatural power (Exod. 4:1–9). As indicated by verse 3 (“comes true”), such signs are usually announced in advance. God armed Moses with such marvels to convince the Israelites and Pharaoh that He had really spoken to him. Similarly, the altar at Bethel broke apart to authenticate the words of a prophet, and the shadow on the steps of a sundial receded to authenticate a prophecy by Isaiah. Such signs are used only when those addressed by the prophet find it difficult to believe him or stubbornly refuse to do so. A prophecy calling for the worship of another god would, or should, meet such resistance, since it contradicts God’s teachings; but if the prophet produced a sign which seemingly could not occur without God’s help, the people might feel compelled to believe him.

The reliance on signs to authenticate a prophet corresponds to the way that messengers were tested in the ancient world. In an Akkadian letter, King Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria (1800 B.C.E.) says that he interrogated an envoy from the Gutians and trusted him on the basis of “signs” (Akk. ittati) in what he said. The signs in that case were not supernatural wonders but convincing information contained in the messenger’s answers.

3. saying What follows is not a literal quotation of the prophet’s proposal but Moses’ pejorative paraphrase of it. An instigator would not use the vague and disparaging phrases “another god, whom you have not experienced” but would identify a specific god. See also verses 7 and 14. For the meaning of “whom you have not experienced,” see Comment to 11:28. For a similar pejorative paraphrase by Moses, see Comment to 29:18.

let us follow Literally, “walk after.” Since this idiom frequently expresses loyalty to a king, by paraphrasing the prophet’s invitation as calling for “walking after” another god, Moses indicates that it is tantamount to proposing treason against the Lord. See Comment to 4:3.

4. the LORD … is testing you By allowing the sign to come true. Moses does not explain why God will test Israel, but counters the false prophet’s argument that the sign proves his prophecy true. For the concept of God testing Israel, see Comment to 8:2; for the issue of false prophecy, see 18:20–22.

whether you really love the LORD … with all your heart and soul That is, whether your loyalty to Him is undivided. See Comments to 6:5.

5. Follow none but the LORD … worship none but Him In contrast to what the false prophet urges. Moses is reiterating God’s basic demands, as in 6:13–14 and 10:20.

On the idiomatic meaning of “follow,” see Comment to verse 3. In talmudic literature the exhortation to “follow the Lord” was interpreted midrashically to express one of the cardinal principles of Jewish ethics, “following in God’s ways,” doing as He does by performing acts of kindness such as clothing the naked, visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, and burying the dead.

6. This verse explains why the false prophet is executed and the effect intended by his death.

because he urged disloyalty to the LORD Rather, “because he uttered falsehood [Heb. dibber surah] about the LORD.” The prophet is guilty of false prophecy, a capital crime (see 18:20). It is not certain that dibber sarah ever means “urge disloyalty” in the Bible. There are, however, several passages where it clearly means “utter falsehood.” When describing the speech of prophets, it means to claim falsely that God said something. Since the prophet in question has urged the worship of other gods, his falsehood “about the LORD” must have been a claim that He authorizes their worship. That the Torah has such a claim in mind is also implied by 17:3, where God denies that He ever commanded Israel to worship the heavenly bodies; the need to deny that He made such a command seems to imply that someone might claim that He did.

The reasoning that might lead a worshiper of the Lord to think that He desires the worship of other beings in addition to Himself is explained by Maimonides in his theory of the origin of paganism:

In the days of Enosh [Gen. 4:26], the people [reasoned]: “Since God created these stars and spheres to guide the world, set them on high and allotted to them honor, and since they are ministers who minister before Him [see Comment to 4:19], they deserve to be praised and glorified, and honor should be rendered them; and it is the will of God … that men should aggrandize and honor those whom He aggrandized and honored, just as a king desires that respect should be shown to the officers who serve Him, and thus honor is shown to the king.” [The people then began to honor these objects in order] to obtain the Creator’s favor.… Their error and folly consists in imagining that this vain worship is [God’s] desire.

Maimonides’ comment refers to the worship of natural phenomena. Ramban suggests that even the worship of foreign gods might be rationalized in a similar way: “The prophet mentioned here utters prophecies in the name of the LORD saying, ‘The LORD sent me to say that you are to worship [Baal] Peor since he was associated with Him in the work of creation, or he is the greatest of all the gods in His service, and He wants you to worship him.’ ” See also Comment to 4:2.

If our understanding of dibber sarah is correct, the law does not refer to a prophet of another god, but to a prophet of the Lord who advocates the worship of additional gods. Perhaps the text assumes that proposals made in the name of other gods would not be credible and were not a serious danger. The real danger would come from a prophet who seemed loyal to the Lord and argued in effect that worshiping other gods was compatible with loyalty to Him. This would remove the stigma from polytheism and pave the way for a polytheistic YHVH-ism like that practiced by Ahab and Manasseh, who worshiped the Lord and other gods simultaneously. It goes without saying that prophets of other gods who advocated their worship by Israelites would be subject to execution, as were the prophets of Baal in the days of Elijah and Elisha.24

to make you stray This is a second reason for executing the instigator. Urging apostasy, the religious equivalent of sedition, is also a capital crime (see v. 11).

who freed you from the land of Egypt and who redeemed you from the house of bondage This allusion to the beginning of the Decalogue is the opposite of “whom you have not experienced” (v. 3): unlike false gods, the Lord has proved Himself to Israel. This underscores the gravity of the prophet’s sin, since the Lord’s redemption of Israel from bondage established its obligation to worship Him alone (see 5:6–7).

Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst This expression appears several times at the close of instructions for punishing a criminal. In every case but one it refers to capital punishment. It expresses the view that the punishment removes a palpable evil from the people’s midst. The precise meaning of the verb rendered “sweep” (baʿer) is not certain (“burn,” in a figurative sense, is a possibility), but its connotations are graphically illustrated in 1 Kings 14:10: “I will sweep away the house of Jeroboam utterly, as dung is swept away.”