This sheet on Deuteronomy 18 was written by Shai Secunda for 929 and can also be found here
Deuteronomy 18 warns the Israelites not to engage in array of magical practices:
Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead…you must be wholehearted with the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 18:10-11, 13).
Nowadays, a common approach to this passage (which derives from the great twelfth-century philosopher, Moses Maimonides) is that the Torah is denying the validity of magical acts altogether, as they are oriented towards powers other than God Himself. From this perspective, the concluding commandment to be “wholehearted with the Lord your God” is essentially an insistence not to believe in superstitious nonsense.
Yet if we are being honest, this approach is difficult to square with the text, which takes care to detail a multiplicity of prohibited magical acts. Further, the Bible contains many stories where such practices are shown to be effectively used, for example in the story of the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28). In a similar vein, when the rabbis thought about the prohibition against sorcery (kishuf), the primary legal distinction they made was between effective magic, punishable under pain of death, and illusion – which was not (m. Sanhedrin 7:11). It was obvious to them that magic was something that had a real effect on the world.
From the classical rabbinic perspective, worship of the One God could exist in a messy world of alternative and mysterious forces. Indeed, this is what made the directive to be wholehearted with God so powerful. The challenge of Deuteronomy 18 is not to distinguish between wisdom and foolishness, but to choose between right and wrong.
Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead…you must be wholehearted with the Lord your God. (Deuteronomy 18:10-11, 13).
Nowadays, a common approach to this passage (which derives from the great twelfth-century philosopher, Moses Maimonides) is that the Torah is denying the validity of magical acts altogether, as they are oriented towards powers other than God Himself. From this perspective, the concluding commandment to be “wholehearted with the Lord your God” is essentially an insistence not to believe in superstitious nonsense.
Yet if we are being honest, this approach is difficult to square with the text, which takes care to detail a multiplicity of prohibited magical acts. Further, the Bible contains many stories where such practices are shown to be effectively used, for example in the story of the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28). In a similar vein, when the rabbis thought about the prohibition against sorcery (kishuf), the primary legal distinction they made was between effective magic, punishable under pain of death, and illusion – which was not (m. Sanhedrin 7:11). It was obvious to them that magic was something that had a real effect on the world.
From the classical rabbinic perspective, worship of the One God could exist in a messy world of alternative and mysterious forces. Indeed, this is what made the directive to be wholehearted with God so powerful. The challenge of Deuteronomy 18 is not to distinguish between wisdom and foolishness, but to choose between right and wrong.
Shai Secunda is a professor of Jewish studies at Bard College, and writes regularly for the Jewish Review of Books on Jewish scholarship and culture.
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