- Adam Clarke
- Jamieson-Fausset-Brown
- John Gill
- Tyndale
Adam Clarke Bible Commentary
They shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils - They shall not sacrifice לשעירים lasseirim, to the hairy ones, to goats. The famous heathen god, Pan, was represented as having the posteriors, horns, and ears of a goat; and the Mendesians, a people of Egypt, had a deity which they worshipped under this form. Herodotus says that all goats were worshipped in Egypt, but the he-goat particularly. It appears also that the different ape and monkey species were objects of superstitious worship; and from these sprang, not only Mendes and Jupiter Ammon, who was worshipped under the figure of a ram, but also Pan and the Sileni, with the innumerable herd of those imaginary beings, satyrs, dryads, hamadryads, etc. etc., all woodland gods, and held in veneration among the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.
After whom they have gone a whoring - Though this term is frequently used to express idolatry, yet we are not to suppose that it is not to be taken in a literal sense in many places in Scripture, even where it is used in connection with idolatrous acts of worship. It is well known that Baal-Peor and Ashtaroth were worshipped with unclean rites; and that public prostitution formed a grand part of the worship of many deities among the Egyptians, Moabites, Canaanites, Greeks, and Romans. The great god of the two latter nations, Jupiter, was represented as the general corrupter of women; and of Venus, Flora, Priapus, and others, it is needless to speak. That there was public prostitution in the patriarchal times, see Clarke on Gen 38:21 (note). And that there was public prostitution of women to goats in Egypt, see Herodotus, lib. ii., c. 46, p. 108, edit. Gale, who gives a case of this abominable kind that took place in Egypt while he was in that country. See also many examples in Bochart, vol. ii., col. 641; and see Clarke's note on Lev 20:16.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary
they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils--literally, "goats." The prohibition evidently alludes to the worship of the hirei-footed kind, such as Pan, Faunus, and Saturn, whose recognized symbol was a goat. This was a form of idolatry enthusiastically practised by the Egyptians, particularly in the nome or province of Mendes. Pan was supposed especially to preside over mountainous and desert regions, and it was while they were in the wilderness that the Israelites seem to have been powerfully influenced by a feeling to propitiate this idol. Moreover, the ceremonies observed in this idolatrous worship were extremely licentious and obscene, and the gross impurity of the rites gives great point and significance to the expression of Moses, "they have gone a-whoring."
John Gill Bible Commentary
And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils,.... As it seems they had done, which was monstrously shocking, and especially by a people that had the knowledge of the true God. Such shocking idolatry has been committed, and still is among the Indians, both East and West: when Columbus discovered Hispaniola, and entered it, he found the inhabitants worshippers of images they called Zemes, which were in the likeness of painted devils, which they took to be the mediators and messengers of the great God, the only one, eternal, omnipotent, and invisible (a); and so at Calecut and Pego in the East Indies, and in other parts thereof, they sacrifice to the devil (b): one can hardly think the Israelites would give into such gross idolatry as this; wherefore by "devils" may be meant idols in general; for if men do not worship God and Christ, let them worship what they will, it is only worshipping devils, Co1 10:20; and so the calves of Jeroboam are called devils, Ch2 11:15; hence the golden calf also, the Israelites worshipped but lately in the wilderness, might go by the same name; to which sense is the Targum of Jonathan,"and they shall not offer again their sacrifices to idols, which are like to devils.''The word here used signifies "goats", and these creatures were worshipped by the Egyptians, and so might be by the Israelites, while among them; this is asserted by several writers. Diodorus Siculus says (c), they deified the goat, as the Grecians did Priapus, and for the same reason; and that the Pans and the Satyrs were had in honour by men on the same account; and Herodotus (d) observes, that the Egyptians paint and engrave Pan as the Greeks do, with the face and thighs of a goat, and therefore do not kill a goat, because the Mendesians reckon Pan among the gods; and of the Mendesians he says, that they worship goats, and the he goats rather than the she goats; wherefore in the Egyptian language both Pan and a goat are called Mendes; and Strabo (e) reports of Mendes, that there Pan and the goat are worshipped: if these sort of creatures were worshipped by the Egyptians in the times of Moses, which is to be questioned, the Israelites might be supposed to have followed them in it; but if that be true, which Maimonides (f) says of the Zabii, a set of idolaters among the Chaldeans, and other people, long before the times of Moses, that some of them worshipped devils, whom they supposed to be in the form of goats, the Israelites might have given in to this idolatry from them, and be the occasion of this prohibition:
after whom they have gone a whoring; idolatry being a spiritual adultery, a forsaking God, who had taken them into a conjugal relation, and been as an husband to them, and cleaving to idols, which were as paramours; see Jer 31:32,
this shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations: not only this of not sacrificing to devils, but all before commanded, particularly that they should bring their sacrifices to the priest, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
(a) P. Martyr. de Angleria, Decad. 1. l. 9. (b) Vartoman. Navigat. l. 5. c. 2. 23. & 1. 6. c. 16. 27. (c) Bibliothec. l. 1. p. 58, 79. (d) Euterpe, sive, l. 2. c. 46. (e) Geograph. l. 17. p. 551. (f) Moreh Nevochim, p. 3. c. 46.
Tyndale Open Study Notes
17:7 be unfaithful (Hebrew zanah, “commit fornication”): Israel was not to worship any god but the Lord (Exod 20:3). Israel’s covenant relationship to the Lord was even compared to a marriage (see Hos 1:2), and worshiping other gods could be described as spiritual adultery. In addition, many of the Canaanite religions were fertility cults. This verb reflects the prostitution conducted at Canaanite shrines to induce fertility in the land through rites of magic involving sexual intercourse. • The Hebrew word translated goat idols is the plural for a male goat. In the ancient world, the male goat was often a symbol of fertility or of a god of the underworld. During the reign of Jeroboam I, many Levites from the northern kingdom moved south to Jerusalem; they had been appalled by the use of goats and bulls in the northern kingdom’s worship (2 Chr 11:15-16).