Microsoft Word - Deuteronom 18 - magie _NICOT_.docx

1011 There follows a comprehensive list of the types of religious and magic functionaries who were to be forbidden in Israel. The exact significance of all the terms employed is now uncertain,1 but the emphasis of the list is to be found in its character as a blanket prohibition of all types of divination, magic, and consultation with the spirit world, such as would be typical of the religion of the Canaanites.2 One who causes his son or his daughter to be burned in the fire (see 12:31 and commentary)the context indicates that the reference is not simply to child sacrifice, but to the offering of a child with the particular purpose of determining or discerning the course of events. That is, the sacrifice would have a magical intention. One who practices divination, one who practices soothsaying, or one who interprets omensvarious methods of divining (i.e., employing supernatural means to discover the course of future events) are prohibited. Magic was also to be forbidden; as distinct from divination, [Page 261] magic was intended to influence events or persons by the use of supernatural methods. The methods to be forbidden were sorcery and the use of magic spells (v. 11), though the distinction between the two methods is not clear in this context. Finally, various types of consultation with the world of spirits (again with the purpose of knowing, and perhaps determining, the future) are to be forbidden. One who inquires of a ghostthe reference is to the kind of person who would conjure up and consult any ghost (see Sauls consultation with the witch at Endor, 1 Sam 28:814). Familiar spiritsome practitioners

1For useful philological comments, see S. R. Driver, Deuteronomy, pp. 22326; G. A. Smith, The Book of Deuteronomy, pp. 231f. 2The Ugaritic texts from Ras Shamra provide a few clues relating to these topics in ancient Canaan. There may be an allusion to divining by birds in CTA 19.1.3236 (UT, 1 Aqht, 3236). Recent finds of liver models indicate the practice of divination by hepatoscopy; see M. Dietrich and O. Loretz, Beschriftete Lungen- und Leber-modelle aus Ugarit, Ugaritica 6 (1969), pp. 16569. Some texts contain magical incantations. The recently discovered text RS 24.244 contains magical incantations against snakes; see Ugaritica 5 (1968), pp. 564572, and M. C. Astour, Two Ugaritic Serpent Charms, JNES 27 (1968), pp. 1336. consulted only known or particular spirits. Necromancy is also a form of prediction, by means of communicating with the dead.

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This seems to have been the motivation behind the Moabite kings sacrifice of his son: see 2 K. 3:2627.

The root used for divine (qsm) is not always used negatively in the OT; here it is foreign forms of divination that come in for strong condemnation. See the discussion in J. Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture (31953, repr. 1963), pp. 124f.; H. H. Rowley, Ritual and the Hebrew Prophets, Myth, Ritual and Kingship (1958), p. 247.

Cf. A. Guillaume, Prophecy and Divination among the Hebrews and Other Semites (1938).

Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, 1976, pp. 260-261.