Belgian Ecclesia Brussel - LeuvenThought for today “Not learning to do according to the abominations of some nations” (May 01)
9 When thou comest to the land which Jehovah thy God gave to thee, thou shalt not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.
10 There shall not be found in thee him causing his son or his daughter to pass through in fire, divining divinations, practicing magic, and taking omens and a sorcerer,
11 And charming a spell, and asking of a necromancer, and a wizard, and seeking to the dead.
12 For every one doing these things is an abomination to Jehovah and on account of these abominations, Jehovah thy God destroys them from thy face.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 18:9–12). (1876). American Publishing Company.
Before the people entered the land, Moses made it clear how they were not to hear from God.In the previous chapters, we have seen how God gave the Ten Words or Ten Commandments and how Moses warned them against paganism. Earlier, he had said to the people not to worship those gods of the people around them, because they had to worship only the One True God.
5 Thou shalt not worship to them, and thou shalt not serve them: for I am Jehovah thy God, a jealous God, striking the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and to the fourth, to them hating me;
6 And doing kindness to thousands to them loving me and to them watching my commands.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain: for Jehovah will not cleanse him who shall take his name in vain.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Ex 20:5–7). (1876). American Publishing Company.
Around them, they saw man-made gods of wood and how people bowed down to them, but how the people of God did find their God.
14 For thou shalt not worship another God: for Jehovah, his name is Jealous; he is a jealous God.
15 Lest thou shalt make a covenant to those dwelling in the land and they committed fornication after their gods, and sacrificed to their gods, and call to thee, and thou didst eat from his sacrifice;
16 And thou didst take from his daughters to thy sons, and they committed fornication after their gods, and they made thy sons commit fornication after their gods.
17 Thou shalt make to thee no molten gods.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Ex 34:14–17). (1876). American Publishing Company.
28 And ye served there gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which shall not see, and shall not hear, and shall not eat, and shall not breathe.
29 And thou sought from thence Jehovah thy God, and thou didst find, for ye shall seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 4:28–29). (1876). American Publishing Company.
Moses had asked the people who left Egypt with him to keep remembering their Saviour.
18 And remember Jehovah thy God; for he gave to thee strength to make wealth in order to set up his covenant, which he sware to our fathers, as this day.
19 And it was, if forgetting, thou shalt forget Jehovah thy God, and thou wentest after other gods, and served them and worshipped to them, I testified against you this day, that perishing, ye shall perish.
20 As the nations which Jehovah destroys before you, so shall ye be destroyed, because ye will not hear to the voice of Jehovah your God.
The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues (J. E. Smith, trans.; Dt 8:18–20). (1876). American Publishing Company.
Here again, we find Moses issuing another stern warning against worshipping false gods. This time He is quite specific about child sacrifice and all aspects of the occult. Israel is to be a no-go area for the black arts of witchcraft and spiritism. On the contrary, the whole nation is to live in the light of God’s word.
They had to remember that anyone who practices divination, or tells fortunes or interprets omen, is not to be found among God’s people (v 10). In the ancient world, there were many ways to come to know what would happen. Many attempted to know the future, such as the outcome of a battle or of an illness.
Augury (deriving from the official Roman augur), belomancy or divination, was first systematised by the Chaldeans. The Greeks were addicted to it; and among the Romans no important action of state was undertaken without the advice of the augurs.
Belomancy attempted to interpret the way that arrows would fall when they were shaken out of a quiver. Hepatoscopy (only once mentioned in the Bible) was interpreting the configurations of the liver of a sacrificial animal. There was also a type of divination called oleomancy, the practice of divination by pouring oil into water and observing the resulting patterns. Some would attempt to discern divine messages by reading the flight patterns of birds or cloud formations.
Behind all these efforts at sorcery, divination, and communicating with the dead is the desire to know, and thereby control, the future. Interestingly, these practices are not forbidden because they do not work. Rather, the Bible records cases in which the magicians of Egypt were able to duplicate some of the plagues and in which King Saul learned the outcome of a battle by consulting Samuel’s ghost.
The issue is that the people are not looking to God for what they seek. God assigned prophets to communicate to his people clearly and unambiguously, in ways that did not require strange and esoteric methods. Today we have His completed Word in the Bible. When the people of God go to these other methods, they are trying to circumvent God, and it is another form of unfaithfulness to Him.
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