Scripture Daily

Context No. 1200 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 18:6-16: in context

6If a Levite comes from any of your gates out of all Israel where he lives, and comes with all the desire of his soul to the place which the LORD shall choose, 7then he shall minister in the name of the LORD his God, as all his brothers the Levites do, who stand there before the LORD. 8They shall have like portions to eat, in addition to that which comes from the sale of his family possessions. 9When you have come into the land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of those nations. 10There shall not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who tells fortunes, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, 11or a charmer, or someone who consults with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer. 12For whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. Because of these abominations, the LORD your God drives them out from before you. 13You shall be blameless with the LORD your God. 14For these nations that you shall dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery and to diviners; but as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you so to do. 15The LORD your God will raise up to you a prophet from among you, of your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him. 16This is according to all that you desired of the LORD your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, “Let me not hear again the LORD my God’s voice, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I not die.”

Moses lays down two things side by side. First, a firm prohibition: when you enter the land, do not learn the abominable practices of its nations, no one who sacrifices a child in the fire, no diviner, fortune-teller, sorcerer, charmer, medium, or necromancer, for all who do these things are detestable to God. You are to be blameless before the LORD, not consulting sorcerers and diviners as the nations do. And then the promise: the LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me, from among your brothers; to him you shall listen.

The two halves belong together. God forbids his people the whole apparatus of occult practice, the diviners and mediums and fortune-tellers the surrounding nations used to try to know the future and manipulate the unseen, and he does it not merely to restrict them but because he has something better to give. The nations grope after the hidden through sorcery; Israel is not to, because God will raise up a prophet, a true voice through whom he himself will speak. The prohibition and the promise answer each other: do not run to the mediums, because I will give you my own word through the prophet. Behind the forbidden practices lies a real human hunger, to know what is coming, to reach the unseen, to have guidance, and God does not mock that hunger; he redirects it to himself. The ultimate fulfillment is Christ, the Prophet like Moses, the one to whom the Father says, listen to him. The whole passage says: you do not need the diviner's tricks, because God has spoken and will speak, finally and fully in his Son. Turn from the counterfeit access to the unseen, because God offers the real thing, his own word.

Do I turn to counterfeit ways of grasping the unseen or controlling the future, when God forbids them precisely because he offers something better, his own word, finally spoken in Christ the Prophet to whom I am to listen?

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