Deuteronomy 18:9 - Meaning and Application

You would not think Israel needed so much warning, yet they plainly did. They had been blessed with God’s own laws and worship, so it seems surprising that they could ever be tempted by the crude and cruel practices of the Canaanites. But they were in danger of copying the nations around them, even though those nations had been made their captives and subjects. So, after many earlier warnings, they are again told not to do the detestable things those nations did (Deuteronomy 18:9).

Some of those practices are named. One was giving children to Moloch, an idol linked with the sun, by making them pass through fire, and at times actually burning them as sacrifices (Deuteronomy 18:10). God had already forbidden this before (Leviticus 18:21). Another was the use of divination, enchantments, witchcraft, charms, and other hidden arts to try to find out the future. These practices wrongly gave to the devil the power and knowledge that belong to God alone, and they dishonored both God’s wise plan and his care for the world (Deuteronomy 18:10, Deuteronomy 18:11).

It is shocking that such foolish and sinful things could exist in a land where God’s revelation shone so clearly. Yet traces of them still appear even where Christ’s holy religion is known and professed. The powers and schemes of the rulers of this dark world are strong. Those who turn to fortune-tellers, wizards, spell-casters, or familiar spirits should know they cannot have fellowship with God while they are joining themselves to demons.

Israel also had strong reasons not to copy the Gentiles. First, these practices made people hateful to God. The acts were detestable, and those who did them became detestable too (Deuteronomy 18:12). Sin is deeply evil, because it can make a creature the object of its Creator’s holy hatred. Nothing shows the ugliness of sin more clearly than this, that it provokes the God of mercy to detest the work of his own hands.

Second, these same practices had ruined the Canaanites. Israel had seen that ruin and had even been used as God’s instrument to bring it about. So it would be both foolish and wicked for Israel to do the very things for which God had judged those nations so severely. If the land had vomited out the abominations of the Canaanites, should Israel now swallow them again?

Third, Israel had been better taught (Deuteronomy 18:13, Deuteronomy 18:14). Paul uses a similar argument when he tells Christians not to walk as the Gentiles do, because they have not learned Christ in that way (Ephesians 4:17, Ephesians 4:18, Ephesians 4:20). The nations were left to their own sinful desires and their own ways (Acts 14:16), but Israel had not been left that way. The Lord their God had warned them clearly, and they had been instructed in divine truth. Therefore, whatever others might do, they were expected to be blameless with the Lord their God, giving divine honor to him alone and mixing none of the heathen’s superstitious customs with his worship.

One old Chaldee paraphrase also points to God’s gift of the Urim and Thummim, the priestly means of asking God for guidance, as a safeguard against unlawful divination. Those were surely foolish people who would run to the father of lies when they had such a ready way to consult the God of truth.