Deuteronomy 13:16, commentary and pictures

The verse commands that all the spoil of a condemned city be gathered into the midst of its street and burned with fire, the city and all its spoil every whit, as an offering to the Lord, and that it remain a heap forever and never be rebuilt. That burning and permanent heap is the consequence of breaking the first two commandments. It belongs to the warning against false prophets, showing that even those who work signs and wonders must be tested by the law of God and that any prophet who leads away from that law is false.

It prescribes death at the hand of the civil magistrate for violation of the moral law, which including the Sabbath formed part of the civil code of the Hebrew nation with the same death penalty affixed to most of its precepts. Those death penalties shadowed forth the final retribution of the ungodly. The infliction of such penalties by men was suspended by Christ's decision that those without sin should cast the first stone, but the real penalty of the law, the wages of sin, was not set aside and the violated precept was not weakened, and a sinless Being will yet arise to punish men when the hailstones of His wrath desolate the earth.

The verse uses for ever of a city burned with fire to be a heap forever and never be built again, showing that everlasting, eternal, and forever take their duration from the person or thing to which they relate and must be understood in a limited sense when applied to what will come to an end. Therefore everlasting fire for the wicked does not mean endless torment but a complete, terminating punishment, because the wicked will come to an end, die, and be no more.