Today, I am reading and commenting on Deuteronomy 18-20.
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Moses told the children of Israel that they were not to learn to follow the abominable practices of the nations they would find in the land. As I started to gather my thoughts about this I was struck by the way Moses phrased that. He did not say, “you shall not follow the abominable practices of those nations.” He said, “you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.” It was not enough that they not follow the practices which Moses was about to summarize. They were not even to learn how to follow the practices. Every time I read this, and similar passages elsewhere in the Bible, I am struck by the practices which are lumped together here. Most of these lists begin by forbidding anyone in the land to sacrifice their children as a burnt offering*. The list also contains multiple different ways of seeking knowledge about the future and what actions to take going into that future.
However, scattered among those are a few other practices which are not always clearly defined. It mentions that no one is to be a sorcerer, a charmer, or a necromancer. Initially, I thought I had seen something in these less than clearly defined words. Then when I looked at the meanings of the Hebrew words used here, I learned that the list contains references to multiple different ways used in the ancient world to gain knowledge through what we would now call divination magic. Things like astrology, cutting open an animal and making predictions from what is seen in its entrails, reading omens (making predictions based on things which happened such as birds flying overhead), etc.. In the same way, the Hebrew listed several different ways in which people sought guidance from the dead (hence referencing mediums, necromances, and “one who inquires of the dead.”). Finally, we have two other practices forbidden to the Israelites: sorcerer, and charmer. A sorcerer was one who made potions intended to effect others. Sometimes those would be subtle poisons, but they might also change their behaviors, or they might be intended to give the drinker special powers (such as greater strength or speed). A “charmer” was one who attempted to use magic to change the emotions and behaviors of others.
Moses concludes the section about not learning to follow the practices of the people living in the land by telling them not to listen to fortune tellers or diviners. Then he transitions into telling them that God will raise up a prophet like him, like Moses from among them (the wording makes it clear that Moses specifically means that the prophet God will raise up will be a descendant of Jacob). Most people today read this as a prophecy concerning the coming of the Messiah. We Christians say that it refers to Jesus. The basis for saying this refers to Jesus comes from several New Testament passages which I am not going to go into at this time. However, there is also a verse, Deuteronomy 34:10, which says, “And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face,…” Having shown how this prophecy by Moses was fulfilled in Jesus, I want to look at a little more of what it tells us. Reading this today, I realize that it says more than I realized. We can use what it says to identify those who falsely claim to be the prophet like Moses, to be the Messiah. If they speak words which God has not commanded them to speak, or if they speak in the name of other gods, they are not the Messiah. I think the latter is pretty clear, but not always.
There have been prophets who have claimed to speak in the name of God, but when we look at how they describe God we see that the god in whose name they are speaking is NOT the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. One example of this are Mohammed the prophet of Islam. The Bible clearly tells us that God is our Father, that He has made us His children. Yet Mohammed tells us that God is no one’s father, that no one can approach the god he preaches as anything other than as a slave. Another example of this is Joseph Smith of the Church of Latter Day Saints. The Bible clearly teaches that God has always been God as an eternal being who created all that is and Jesus is with Him, has always been with Him, and is Him (while being distinct from Him). Joseph Smith taught that God was a human being before he became God and that we were all born to him through his relations with his wives, who have been with him since before the creation of the world. There are many other prophets who have arisen through history who preach in the name of a god who is not the same as the God of the Bible.
Finally, we have those prophets who speak presumptuously, who say things which God did not say to them. Some of these were men to whom God had spoken in the past, who become arrogant and begin to speak that which God has not told them. We can tell that they are not speaking on behalf of God when something they say will happen does not happen. This is an important lesson we must all keep in mind. We must learn to distinguish between what God has told us and what our minds have told us. I look at the world and see things which I expect to happen. Even when my predictions come to pass, I must not confuse my own thoughts with God’s thoughts.
*The actual phrasing was “makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire.” It feels like that phrasing was chosen for a reason. Why doesn’t it just forbid child sacrifice? I believe that it does so because those who “passed their children through the fire” did not consume the flesh of their children as the Israelites, and others of that day, did with the animals they sacrificed. So, if the passage had just said not to sacrifice children, they would have said, “Well, this is something different.” I am not sure about that interpretation, but that’s what I believe currently.
I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.
