Footnotes

1. crossing his son…into the fire. This appears to be a slightly euphemistic term for child sacrifice; i.e., ascending a child to a deity as a whole burnt offering. ↩

2. a diviner of divinations. The noun qesem is used almost entirely negatively in scripture, but the one positive use illuminates its meaning well: Proverbs 16:10 says that a qesem is on the lips of a king; yet “in judgment his mouth transgresseth not.” A qesem is thus some kind of oracle, a judgment or verdict; the king is depicted as divining the right answer, not through magic, but by being the source of the oracle himself, thanks to the wisdom of God. What is being condemned here in Deuteronomy is the seeking of such oracles from sources other than God, which would include spirits, but also techniques like reading entrails. By extension, then, modern occult divination like palm-reading or tea-leaves or Tarot are strictly condemned also. Divination is essentially counterfeit or treacherous prophecy, and the same word is used of Bala’am in Numbers 22:7 and Joshua 13:22. ↩

3. cloud-reader (’anan). The precise meaning is unclear; the root really does mean cloud, and could perhaps refer either to someone who observes clouds, or to someone who conjures them. The sense of the word appears to be an omen-reader, but possibly extends to something like “rain men,” and even any kind of medium or necromancer (remembering that spirits appear as clouds also; God is surrounded by a glory-cloud of angels). ↩

4. augur (nachash). Or “diviner,” but this is properly used of the root qsm, which is more common. NET, “soothsayer.” The sense appears to be perhaps a subset of divination; for instance, in Genesis 30:27, Laban attests that he has augured or divined that Yahweh is with him because of Yakob, and in Genesis 44:5, 15, Yoseph is described as using his cup for auguring or divining. Numbers 23:23 places nachash in parallel with qesem (“divination”), further corroborating the similar meaning. Nachash as a noun is the same word used of the “serpent” in Genesis 3. This is a verb, so properly, “one who augurs.” ↩

5. incanter (kashaph). Or “sorcerer,” but the root means to mutter or sing spells, which is where we get the word “enchanter.” Ironically, however, this word no longer indicates chanting. I have chosen to therefore to appropriate and create a word from the related “incantation.” This too is a verb, so properly “one who incants,” or, if we must observe grammatical decorum, “a doer of incantations.” The FSB, however, says that comparative evidence from other Semitic languages suggests the word refers to someone who concocts potions from plants, which would make this synonymous with pharmakeia in the NT. It seems likely to me that both could be in view, given that incantations and potions are not exactly unrelated in most practice of magic. ↩

6. a binder of binding. More dynamically, perhaps, “a hexer of hexes.” The root, chvr, is generally used of pacts as regards people (e.g. Gen 14:3); but also refers to joining or coupling items like the tabernacle curtains (Ex 26:3ff). The sense here is of creating magical bonds, either through words or knots, to immobilize or oppress someone, or otherwise to bind a spirit to do one’s will. However, while it is here forbidden, this must be taken contextually; in Ps 58:5 it refers to binding a snake using whispering—a similar concept to incanting (see previous note). The NET translates these “whisperers” as “magicians” and “skilled snake-charmers.” The Psalm, along with Ecclesiastes 10:11, suggests that this practice is commonplace enough to use instructively, and indeed positively—it does not seem to condemn snake-charming as “magic” in the sense forbidden here in Deuteronomy. Presumably this is because no actual supernatural activity was going on. Thus scripture, to my eye, draws a similar distinction that we do between illicit and licit magic—one being actual spiritual manipulation, and the other being “tricks” that use the same terminology, but natural mechanisms. ↩

7. ritual pits (ov). Or “mediums.” Trad. “familiar spirits,” but the usage of ov in 1 Samuel 28:7–8, along with recent archeological evidence, indicates that the NET is correct that ov properly refers to the pit used for summoning spirits from the netherworld, and only by metonymy refers to the spirits themselves, or those who summon them. There we read that Saul asks his men to find a woman who is a “mistress” or “owner” of an ov, which does not strike me as a likely term to use for someone’s relationship with a spirit of the dead; moreover, why think that a medium would only be connected to a single spirit? Then when Saul speaks to her, he says, “Divine, pray, for me by/with thine ov, and ascend for me whom I say unto thee.” She in turn objects that Saul has “cut off the ovs and the knowing ones from the land,” where ovs surely does not refer to the spirits, but either to the ritual pits or the mediums who use them, or both. ↩

8. knowing one (yidde’oni). Or “sage,” but as with ov, the referent is ambiguous due to metonymy, and could refer to either a human, or the spirit they are consulting. Trad. “wizard,” because in early modern English a wizard was literally a wise-ard, someone who is known for always being wise, just as a drunk-ard is someone known for always being drunk. ↩

9. inquirer unto the dead. As in Isaiah 8:19, there is no suggestion here that inquiring of the dead is impossible, or that the spirits being consulted are actually fallen angels; on the contrary, the presupposition is that these practices are forbidden precisely because they are doing exactly as stated. ↩