Deuteronomy 13:6, commentary and pictures

The verse warns that even the closest brother, child, beloved wife, or intimate friend like one's own self may secretly urge a person to go after unknown gods. Such secret enticement is idolatry that breaks the first and second commandments and brings the transgressor under the curse of the law. Under the law given through Moses it was to receive no pity or sparing, but death by stoning at the hand of the civil magistrate. That stoning was the civil penalty of Israel's theocratic commonwealth, shadowing the final retribution of the ungodly, and when that polity ceased the stoning ceased while the moral precept and its divine penalty remain. It stands as the test of prophets and of loyalty, calling for single-hearted service to God with no divided allegiance, so that even if the nearest and dearest entices secretly one must not consent nor listen.

Words and Historical Setting

The verse pictures a brother, a son, a daughter, the wife of the bosom, or a friend who is as one's own soul secretly urging a person to go and serve other gods which neither they nor their fathers have known. The enticer is a close family member or intimate, trusted friend pressing the invitation in secret toward the worship of gods unknown to Israel. The phrase friend which is as thine own soul means a friend who is as one's own self, showing that soul here means self.

It belongs to Moses' repetition of the law given before Israel crossed the Jordan into the promised land. It was spoken after forty years of leading them in the wilderness, when Moses himself could not go over with them. It is part of his rehearsal of the wonderful things God had done for His people and of the chief laws connected with Israel. Its purpose was to bring to remembrance the lessons God had taught them and to impress upon them the sacred import of God's holy law and the necessity of keeping it.

It belongs to the added law made known by the hand of Moses and written in a book, distinct from God's own covenant law written on tables of stone. In that added law it lays down the temporal punishment to be inflicted for transgression of God's law by enticing to serve other gods. Given in B.C. 1451, it is God's prohibition of sun worship under penalty of death. Sun worship was the universal idolatrous worship of that time and for centuries afterward.

Civil Penalty and Moral Law

Secretly urging even a brother, son, daughter, wife or closest friend to go and serve other gods is idolatry that violates the first and second commandments and brings the transgressor under the curse of the law. The law allowed no pity and no sparing for such enticement, but required death by stoning at the hand of the civil magistrate. That same death penalty was affixed to murder, smiting parents, blasphemy, Sabbath-breaking, disobedience to parents, covetousness and theft, and to most precepts of the moral law.

That death was the civil penalty of Israel's theocratic commonwealth, imposed by the magistrate because the Ten Commandments were for the time incorporated into the civil code of the Hebrew nation. It represented and shadowed the final retribution of the ungodly without being the full and real moral penalty to be inflicted by God himself. The stoning penalty was therefore not peculiar to the Sabbath command but belonged equally to the commands against serving other gods and idolatry, so the fourth commandment is no more bondage on that account than the first and second.

Having the death penalty does not make a commandment ceremonial or positive rather than moral, and the penalty itself is no reason to reject the commandment. The death penalty does not cancel the commandment and does not make it dangerous to hold that the commandment is still in force, any more than the death penalties for Sabbath-breaking, for murder, and for cursing father or mother cancel those commandments. When the Jewish polity ceased, that civil stoning penalty ceased with it, while the moral law and its divine penalty, the wages of sin, remain, so the Sabbath commandment stands still in force on exactly the same basis as the other commandments that remain binding without their civil death penalty.

The command to surely kill the enticer stands beside Thou shalt not kill as a special after enactment that reverses the very words of the sixth commandment, the most definite example of a supposed exception to law. It does not relax the sixth commandment or prove it not moral. Those who lay hands on the enticer to put him to death do not break the law but carry out its penalty, typifying the execution of the penalty to be effected by Christ, just as priestly Sabbath offerings typified remission.

The command belonged to Israel as a nation ruled directly by God and surrounded by idolatrous peoples, where such an enticer was a traitor to God and a danger to others' souls. Its penalty was meant to restrain idolatry, protect the nation from being led into practices that would bring its destruction, and serve as a warning to the young. Loyalty to God then required giving evidence against the offender so the community could carry out the prescribed punishment, but the command belonged to Israel's theocratic government, not to Christians as individuals, who have no authority over another person's conscience or relationship to God. Infliction of those penalties was suspended by Christ's decision that those without sin should cast the first stone, but Christ did not set aside the precept or its real penalty, the wages of sin, nor weaken the precept that was violated. A sinless Being will yet arise to punish men, when the hailstones of His wrath desolate the earth.

Testing Loyalty and Application

The verse furnishes a good test by which to try prophets. It belongs to the warning against false prophets and others who would lead Israel away from God, with the law of God as the standard by which such teaching is tested, so that anyone who leads people away from that law is false.

The verse requires single-hearted service, for God can receive no divided allegiance but calls for the best and all there is of a man. There is no room for division of affections or interests. The danger lies not only in love of gold and silver and worldly glory but in undue influence by those near and dear. If a brother, son, daughter, wife of the bosom, or friend as one's own soul entices secretly away from God to serve other gods, one must not consent unto him nor hearken unto him.

The nearest human ties it names, those of spouse and intimate friend, have no place in secret prayer. Secret prayer is alone between Christ and the soul.