Deuteronomy 13

Deuteronomy 13:5

It shall be our righteousness - Heb. Righteousness shall be to us. We shall be owned and pronounced by God to be righteous and holy persons, if we sincerely obey him, otherwise we shall be declared to be unrighteous and ungodly. Or, mercy shall be to us, or with us. For as the Hebrew word rendered righteousness is very often put for mercy, (as Psalms 24:5 36:10 51:14 Proverbs 10:2 11:4 Daniel 9:16) so this sense seems best to agree both with the scripture use of this phrase, (in which righteousness, seldom or never, but grace or mercy frequently, is said to be to us or with us) and with the foregoing verse and argument God, saith he, Deuteronomy 5:24, commanded these things for our good, that he might preserve us alive, as it is this day. And, saith he in this verse, this is not all; for as he hath done us good, so he will go on to do us more and more good, and God’s mercy shall be to us, or with us, in the remainder of our lives, and for ever, if we observe these commandments.

Deuteronomy 13:7

Seven nations - There were ten in Genesis 15:19 - 21. But this being some hundreds of years after, it is not strange if three of them were either destroyed by foreign or domestick wars, or by cohabitation and marriage united with, and swallowed up in the rest.

Deuteronomy 13:10

To serve other Gods - That is, there is manifest danger of apostacy and idolatry from such matches. Which reason doth both limit the law to such of these as are unconverted (otherwise Salmon married Rahab, Matthew 1:5) and enlarge it to other idolatrous nations, as appears from 1 Kings 11:2 Ezra 9:2 Nehemiah 13:23.

Deuteronomy 13:11

Their graves - Which idolaters planted about the temples and altars of their Gods. Hereby God designed to take away whatsoever might bring their idolatry to remembrance, or occasion the reviving of it.

Deuteronomy 13:13

The fewest - To wit, at that time when God first declared his choice of you for his peculiar people, which was done to Abraham. For Abraham had but one son concerned in this choice and covenant, namely, Isaac, and that was in his hundredth year; and Isaac was sixty years old ere he had a child, and then had only two children; and though Jacob had twelve sons, it was a long time before they made any considerable increase. Nor do we read of any great multiplication of them ’till after Joseph’s death.

Deuteronomy 13:14

The Lord loved you - It was his free choice without any cause or motive on your part.

Deuteronomy 13:16

Them that hate him - Not only those who hate him directly and properly, (for so did few or none of the Israelites to whom he here speaks,) but those who hate him by construction and consequence; those who hate and oppose his people, and word, those who wilfully persist in the breach of God’s commandments. To their face - That is, openly, and so as they shall see it, and not be able to avoid it. Slack - So as to delay it beyond the fit time or season for vengeance, yet withal he is long - suffering, and slow to anger.

Deuteronomy 13:18

The covenant and the mercy - That is, the covenant of mercy, which he out of his own mere grace made with them.