Deuteronomy 13:17, commentary and pictures

Deuteronomy means repetition of the law, a rehearsal of the wonderful things God had done for His people and of some of the chief laws connected with Israel. It was given by Moses before Israel crossed the Jordan into the promised land. Its purpose was to recall the lessons taught during forty years of wandering in the wilderness. It was to impress the sacred importance of God's holy law and the necessity of keeping it.

The verse belongs to the warning against false prophets, so that even those who work signs and wonders are to be tested by the law of God, and any prophet who leads away from that law is false. The laws God gave to Israel show wonderful working and superiority when the conditions surrounding Israel are understood. The verse commands Israel to keep none of the condemned things from the city devoted to destruction. Removing them from possession is connected with the Lord turning from fierce anger, showing mercy and compassion, and multiplying Israel as sworn to their fathers.

Breaking the first two commandments brings the transgressor under the curse, as one example of the consequence of willfully disobeying God's law. The passage of which the verse is part shows that breaking the moral law carried death at the hand of the civil magistrate, the same penalty affixed to breaking the Sabbath, because the moral law embracing the Sabbath formed part of the civil code of the Hebrew nation. The penalties to be inflicted by the magistrate that were joined to the law foreshadow the final retribution of the ungodly. Infliction of those penalties was suspended by Christ's decision that those without sin should cast the first stone, but He did not set aside the real penalty of the law, the wages of sin, nor weaken the precept that had been broken, and a sinless Being will yet arise to punish when the hailstones of His wrath desolate the earth.