Deuteronomy 13
1 If a prophet or dreamer of dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you, 2 and if the sign or wonder he has spoken to you comes about, but he says, “ Let us follow other gods ( which you have not known) and let us worship them,” 3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul. 4 You are to follow the LORD your God and fear Him. Keep His commandments and listen to His voice; serve Him and hold fast to Him. 5 Such a prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he has advocated rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way in which the LORD your God has commanded you to walk. So you must purge the evil from among you. 6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you embrace, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “ Let us go and worship other gods” ( which neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 the gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, whether from one end of the earth or the other), 8 you must not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity, and do not spare him or shield him. 9 Instead, you must surely kill him. Your hand must be the first against him to put him to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone him to death for trying to turn you away from the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you. Idolatrous Cities to Be Destroyed 12 If, regarding one of the cities the LORD your God is giving you to inhabit, you hear it said 13 that wicked men have arisen from among you and have led the people of their city astray, saying, “ Let us go and serve other gods” ( which you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, investigate, and interrogate thoroughly. And if it is established with certainty that this abomination has been committed among you, 15 you must surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword. Devote to destruction all its people and livestock. 16 And you are to gather all its plunder in the middle of the public square, and completely burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the LORD your God. The city must remain a mound of ruins forever, never to be rebuilt. 17 Nothing devoted to destruction shall cling to your hands, so that the LORD will turn from His fierce anger, grant you mercy, show you compassion, and multiply you as He swore to your fathers, 18 because you obey the LORD your God, keeping all His commandments I am giving you today and doing what is right in the eyes of the LORD your God.
✦ What the text says
## Summary
Deuteronomy 13 gives three legal scenarios in which someone incites Israel to "serve other gods" (*'avodim 'acherim*, H0312/H5647H): a prophet or dream-diviner (vv.1-5), a close family member or friend (vv.6-11), and the inhabitants of an entire city (vv.12-18). In each case the text commands that the inciter(s) not be listened to and be put to death, and that "the evil" be removed from the community.
## Key words
- *ki* ("if/that", H3588A) — the subordinating particle that opens all three case-laws (vv.1, 6, 12), structuring the chapter as three parallel conditional protases.
- *menasseh* ("is testing", H5254G) — piel participle describing an ongoing action of Yahweh; in v.3 it frames the prophet's sign as a test of the people's loyalty, not evidence of falsehood in itself.
- *lo tishma'* ("you will not listen", H8085G) — imperfect with negation, repeated in vv.3 and 8, forming the chapter's central prohibition against heeding the inciter's words.
- *harog ta.hargennu* ("you shall surely kill him", H2026) — qal infinitive absolute + imperfect, an emphatic construction intensifying the finite verb, used in v.9 for the family-member case.
- *bi'arta ha-ra' miqqirbekha* ("you shall burn out the evil from your midst", H1197I/H7451B/H7130G) — piel sequential perfect + noun phrase, the formula closing the prophet case (v.5) and echoed structurally in v.11's summary.
## What the text says
Each of the three sections follows the same grammatical skeleton: a *ki*-clause sets the scenario, a description of the incitement to "other gods" (*'elohim 'acherim*, H0430J/H0312) follows using cohortative forms ("*nelekhah*," "let us go," H1980G/N), and the passage closes with an imperative or imperfect of judicial action. The Hebrew shifts between second-person singular suffixes (*-kha*) and plural suffixes (*-khem*) within the same unit — for example v.3 addresses "your (sg.) God" but "your (pl.) heart," and v.11 speaks of "all Israel" hearing — showing that the singular addressee represents the collective people even while individual responsibility (v.9's "your hand," singular) is emphasized in execution.
The infinitive-absolute constructions (*harog ta.hargennu*, v.9; *hakkeh takkeh*, v.15; *ha.cherem*, v.15) grammatically mark emphasis or certainty on the finite verb they accompany, a feature not reproduced by ordinary translation but visible in the doubled root.
## Differences between versions
In v.9, the LXX renders the Hebrew infinitive-absolute construction *harog ta.hargennu* ("you shall surely kill him") as *ἀναγγέλλων ἀναγγελεῖς* ("reporting you shall report"), a different verb concept (denouncing rather than killing) from both the Hebrew and the Vulgate's *statim interficies* ("you shall kill immediately"). In v.16, the LXX adds *πανδημεὶ* ("with the whole population/publicly"), a phrase without a corresponding element in the Hebrew text given.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.