Deuteronomy 13:13
Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known; Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;
The word rendered withdrawn means in Greek to apostatize. Apostasy signifies rebellion, withdrawal, turning away, despising, and proving untrue, like a false-hearted companion toward one with whom lifelong union was solemnly promised. It is the backsliding characteristic of the professed church since apostolic times and for ages before the Christian era. The verse describes that apostasy in men going out from among their own people and withdrawing the inhabitants of their city to serve other gods which they have not known.
It warns against false prophets who withdraw people to serve other gods, even when they work signs and wonders. The standard by which such prophets are tested is the law of God, and any prophet who leads away from that law is false. The chapter lays down directions for convicting workers of miracles of sorcery and putting them to death. The Jewish leaders tried to apply those directions to the apostles in the Sanhedrin after the healing, when the healed man stood alive before them so the miracle could not be denied, in hope of convicting them of sorcery. Peter's answer, dictated by the Holy Spirit, left the learned Sanhedrin with nothing to say and stopped the prosecution.
Breaking the first two precepts of the Ten Commandments by turning people to serve other gods brings the transgressor under the curse for disobeying God's law. The verse shows one case where breaking God's moral law brought death at the hand of the civil magistrate, the same death penalty attached to Sabbath-breaking and to most of the moral precepts. The moral law including the Sabbath formed part of the civil law of Israel, so God joined punishments by the magistrate to its violations, pointing forward to the final retribution of the ungodly. Infliction of those civil death penalties was suspended by Christ's decision that only those without sin should cast the first stone. Christ did not thereby set aside the real penalty of the law, which is death as the wages of sin, nor weaken the command that was broken, and a sinless Being will yet arise to punish, when the hailstones of His wrath desolate the earth.