Deuteronomy 18:9-14 When you are come into the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.… 1. Different names are here assigned to persons dealing in the arts of magic. "One that useth divination"; professing to gain power and knowledge more than human. "One that practiseth augury" or covert arts. "An enchanter": the original suggesting the serpent, and implying the practice of charming serpent, yet always connected with the arts of divination. "A sorcerer": the Hebrew word signifying one who mutters incantations, but only in the bad sense of seeking help from others than God. "A charmer": a word which suggests binding as with the spell of enchantment. "A consulter with a familiar spirit": the English phrase signifies spirits who stand in such a relation to the performer that they come at his call. Of course it is pretended that these spirits are other and greater than human. The original Hebrew (Ob) comes down to us in the African "Obe-man," who still follows the same profession, by means of similar arts. "A wizard" is one who claims superhuman wisdom, the old English accurately translating the Hebrew; the distinctively wise one. The word is restricted in usage to superior wisdom gained by the arts of magic. "A necromancer": precisely the spiritist of modern times, or rather of all time, who claims to have communion with the spirits of dead men. 2. This analysis of the original words may aid toward some just conception of the associated ideas which cluster round the magic arts of the Hebrew age. Their name and their arts are legion. Think of so many classes — professions — of men and women naturally shrewd, sharp, cunning; practising upon the superstitions and fears of the million; working upon their imagination, haunting them with the dread of unknown powers, bringing up to them ghosts from the invisible world, claiming to give auguries of the future, playing in every way upon their fears and hopes, to extort their money or to make sport of their fears or to gratify their own or others' malice. A system so near akin in spirit and influence to idolatry, which so thoroughly displaces God from the hopes and fears of men, and which seeks so successfully to install these horrible superstitions in His place — a system, which perverts the powers of the world to come to subserve ungodliness, and which practically rules out the blessed God from the sphere of men's homage, fears, and hopes — this system has always been worked by wicked and never by good men, has always subserved all, iniquity, but piety and morality never — this has been a master-stroke of Satan's policy, and one of the most palpable fields of his triumph through all the ages. (H. Cowles, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. |
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