Today’s reading: Deuteronomy 13; Revelation 14
Deuteronomy 13 is intense…
We have talked a lot throughout Deuteronomy so far about how Moses just keeps reminding the Israelites over and over again to stay faithful to God and to not start worshipping the gods of the nations when they enter and settle in the land. I’m not sure if a single chapter has passed so far in this book without this admonition, so we know it is incredibly important, but Deuteronomy 13 adds a significant amount of weight to these admonitions.
Moses starts off telling them that even if a prophet shows up who is able to accurately predict a future event to validate their power/authority, if they are leading the people to follow other gods, they are to be put to death. And this honestly does’t strike me as anything unexpected or different from what we have already seen throughout the wilderness wanderings. If someone is in a position of spiritual authority or leadership (or trying to claim such a position), using that position to actively lead people away from God is a big deal and would have the potential to impact a lot of people. So it makes sense to me, and falls right in line with what we have already been reading, that Moses would call for the prophet to be put to death.
But then things get rough… Moses tells them that if even their brother, their son or daughter, their wife, or their best friend tries to get them to serve a different god, they are not to show pity but they shall hand them over to be put to death. More than that, the person who was being enticed, despite their relationship with the person, is to be the first one to cast a stone to kill them. There are no second chances or third strikes in play here. Moses doesn’t tell them to remind the person of the power and works of Yahweh and try to sway them back to faithfulness. They are to have no pity, and are not to conceal this deed, but are to kill even their own wife or child who is seeking to turn them away from Yahweh.
It’s important that we don’t gloss over this or try to soften it. This is a big deal and God meant it to be a big deal. When Israel heard Moses say that if this happens, they were to kill their own flesh and blood, you better believe there was stunned silence. All of the admonitions and warnings that Moses had given made clear it was a big deal, but this would have hit way too close to home for comfort. Imagine if you were there listening to Moses and you knew your son or daughter, or your wife was flirting with another god other than Yahweh on the side. Maybe before you could have just kind of ignored it, but after hearing this, what would you do? You would put a lot of pressure on them to cut it out and keep to Yahweh so that this doesn’t happen to them! And this is the effect God intends for this warning to have. If you are the one serving a different god on the side, He wants you to be afraid to open your mouth and try to spread that poison among His people; if you are the one who knows somebody doing this, He wants you to call on them to stop before it gets them killed; and if you are the one who is faithful to Yahweh, He wants you to stay there and never even consider flirting with a different god.
If a paragraph like this makes you uncomfortable, that’s good, that’s exactly how God wanted His people to feel so they would recognize how significant of an issue this really is.
But this also isn’t where Moses stops. After making this an intensely personal issue, Moses increases the scale. If an entire city is led astray and starts serving a god other than Yahweh, the rest of Israel is not supposed to just round up the ring leaders, but they are to kill every man, woman, and child in that city, pile all of their goods in the middle, and burn the city to the ground. Israel is not to mess around with this, or consider this a mild suggestion. They are God’s people, and His people alone. And if they are to remain in His care, they need to respond in faithfulness to Him.
And I want to reiterate again, just as we already have so many times through this book, that Yahweh is setting a really low bar here. He isn’t giving them a thousand different detailed instructions to follow and condemning them for slightly messing something up (like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day), He is simply calling on them to stay faithful to the God who rescued them from Egypt by great signs and wonders, and who has continued to lead and provide for them up to that very day. Expecting them to not turn to a different god is more than reasonable, and really is not a high bar for Him to be calling for.
So chapter 13 is intense. God intended it to be, and we should see in this just how seriously He takes our faithfulness to Him.
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