seekeroftruth
Well-Known Member
Deuteronomy 13:6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.
This is from the easy English commentary.
In those days, relationships in a family were very strong. But the Israelites must kill even a member of their family if he or she encouraged people to worship idols. The other members of the family would throw the first stone. To kill a family member was a severe punishment. But God allowed it in order to keep the whole nation holy. It showed how serious the wrong action was. That person did not deserve to live with God’s people
It seems that a lot of people try to use verse 10 against believers. I can see that stoning your family to death is very harsh. Think about it though, we're dealing with humans here. Humans that would throw their brother down a cistern and leave him there to die. Humans who would murder every male in a village for seducing a sister. These are humans who are likely to enjoy bringing a few sex acts into the church service. Yep you read that right.... sex acts in a church service.
There were people from different religions living in the Promised Land. They had different ways to worship their gods. They had orgies in the church. They heated up metal idols until they glowed red hot and laid their babies on them as a sacrifice. They played drums to block out the sounds of the babies screaming in pain as they cooked to death.
The idols were a warning sign.... like finding rolling papers or a syringe in a family members room.... idols were warning signs that someone had become addicted to worshiping a fake god. This was extremely dangerous.... It was better to stone your family member than to let these fake religions destroy the rest of the family.
