Sin and Sorcery

Scripture's fullest list of occult practices sits in a single sentence of Deuteronomy — nine crafts named in two verses, all of them called an abomination. Moses sets it as the first half of a contrast whose second half is the promise of Christ.

In one sentence: In the same breath that He forbids every route to hidden knowledge, God promises to speak to His people Himself through the Prophet He would raise up, Jesus, so the guidance you need comes by listening to Him.

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Types & Prophecy

Prophecy. Deuteronomy 18:15-19 is a direct verbal prediction: "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers — it is to him you shall listen." Peter quotes this oracle to the crowd in Solomon's Portico and names its fulfilment outright: "Moses said, 'The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers'" (Acts 3:22), applying it to the risen Jesus. Stephen quotes the same verse (Acts 7:37), and the crowds who saw the feeding of the five thousand reached for it independently: "This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!" (John 6:14; compare John 1:21, 45; 7:40).

The placement is the point. God bans every route to hidden knowledge in verses 10-14 and then, in the very next breath, promises the route He is providing. God forbids divination because He intends His people to hear from Him — finally, through His Son Jesus.

Lessons about Jesus

• He is the Prophet Deuteronomy 18:15 promised, the appointed alternative to every form of divination (Acts 3:22-26; 7:37).
• Where his word advances, the magic books burn (Acts 19:19-20). Luke reports the two as one movement.

Memory verses

✝️ Deuteronomy 18:14-15 (ESV)

14 for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this. 15 "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers — it is to him you shall listen —

✝️ Isaiah 8:19 (ESV)

19 And when they say to you, "Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter," should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?

Be transformed

Sorcery in Scripture is a question about where you go when you need to know something. That makes it a live question for people who would never touch a tarot deck.

• Examine what you reach for first in a crisis, when God has not yet answered. Saul kept the law until the Philistines massed at Shunem and heaven went silent (1 Samuel 28:6-7); the medium came after the silence, not before it. Unanswered prayer is the pressure point, and the temptation is not usually to occultism but to any source that will give an answer faster.
• Take stock of what you own and consume that trades in hidden knowledge or spiritual power — horoscopes, mediums, "energy" practices, spiritual-warfare methods promising results by technique. The Ephesian believers did not shelve their books or resell them. They burned them publicly and counted the cost out loud (Acts 19:19).
• Test claims by their content, not their power. Deuteronomy 13:1-5 grants that the sign may come true and still says do not listen. A thing being real is not a reason to trust it.
• Refuse to treat God's power as a technique to be acquired. Simon was baptised and still thought the Spirit could be bought (Acts 8:18-23). The sorcerer's instinct outlived his conversion, and Peter named it as a matter of the heart, not of method.

Prayer

Father, you did not leave us guessing. When you forbade every road to hidden knowledge you promised a Prophet in the same breath, and you kept that promise in your Son. You are not a God who hides from those who ask.

Teach us to bring our unanswered questions to you and to wait on you when you are silent. Guard us from wanting power more than we want you. Where we have already gone to other sources, give us the Ephesians' courage to name it and be done with it. We ask it in the name of Jesus, the Prophet you raised up, to whom we listen. Amen.

Study outline

1. The passage — Where the prohibition sits · Historical and cultural context · Nine practices, named. Where the list sits in Deuteronomy, its setting in Canaan, and the nine practices it names.
2. The argument — The hinge · The mark of the nations · Inquiry · Chirping and muttering. The listen/listen hinge of verses 14-15, kāšap as the nations' word, the inquiry verbs Chronicles and Isaiah use against Saul and Judah, and Isaiah's chirping mediums set against the test of a prophet's word.
3. What sorcery can do — What sorcery can and cannot do · Elymas and the Magi. Practitioners who produce something and then hit a wall, the one word magos used for Elymas and for the Magi, and Daniel as chief of the magicians.
4. The New Testament — Sorcery in the New Testament · Sorcery in Revelation. Pharmakeia, three episodes in Acts, and Revelation's four occurrences.
5. What carries over — What binds then, and what binds now · Theological principle. What binds then and now, and the theological principle.
6. Discussion questions. Six, for a group or on your own.

Where the prohibition sits

Deuteronomy 16:18-18:22 works through Israel's public offices in order: judges (16:18-17:13), the king (17:14-20), the priests and Levites (18:1-8), and last the prophet (18:9-22). The list of occult practices falls inside the section on the prophetic office. Moses is not interrupting himself with a miscellaneous warning; he is describing the office by first ruling out its counterfeits.

✝️ Deuteronomy 18:9-14 (ESV)

9 "When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before the LORD your God, 14 for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this.

Then, without a break in the speech:

✝️ Deuteronomy 18:15, 18 (ESV)

15 "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers — it is to him you shall listen — … 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

The ESV Study Bible calls verses 15-19 "deliberately juxtaposed" with the prohibition: the nations listen to magicians; Israel is to listen to God's prophet. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible calls the list the most complete inventory of occult practice in the Bible, given at this length to mark off the prophetic role from everything resembling it.

Historical and cultural context

Moses is addressing the generation about to cross into Canaan, and he identifies the practices as those of "these nations, which you are about to dispossess" (18:14). Verse 12 makes the same practices the stated ground of that dispossession. Centuries earlier God had told Abraham his descendants would not return for four generations, "for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete" (Genesis 15:16) — the dispossession waits on a measure being filled, and Deuteronomy 18:12 names what was filling it.

Divination in the ancient Near East was respectable state business. Kings retained diviners the way modern governments retain analysts. Both Cultural Backgrounds Study Bibles caution that "magic" and "religion" cannot be cleanly separated in this world, and that the precise technique behind several of Moses' terms is now uncertain. The methods attested across the region included reading the entrails of sacrificial animals, astrology, dream interpretation, and calling up the dead.

Why child sacrifice heads a divination list. Verse 10 opens with the parent who "burns his son or his daughter as an offering" before naming a single diviner. In some cults, child sacrifice was itself an attempt to secure divine help or force an outcome — the ESV Study Bible points to the king of Moab sacrificing his firstborn on the wall mid-battle (2 Kings 3:26-27). The most extreme thing a person can offer heads the list of things people offer to make the powers speak.

Nine practices, named

The Hebrew of verses 10-11 lists nine participial roles. English translations vary in how many distinct crafts they preserve.

#	Hebrew	Transliteration	Strong's	ESV rendering
1	מַעֲבִיר בְּנוֹ וּבִתּוֹ בָּאֵשׁ	maʿăbîr bənô ûbittô bāʾēš	H5674	"burns his son or his daughter as an offering" (lit. makes pass through the fire)
2	קֹסֵם קְסָמִים	qōsēm qəsāmîm	H7080 / H7081	"practices divination"
3	מְעוֹנֵן	məʿônēn	H6049	"tells fortunes"
4	מְנַחֵשׁ	mənaḥēš	H5172	"interprets omens"
5	מְכַשֵּׁף	məkaššēp	H3784	"a sorcerer"
6	חֹבֵר חָבֶר	ḥōbēr ḥāber	H2266 / H2267	"a charmer"
7	שֹׁאֵל אוֹב	šōʾēl ʾôb	H7592 / H178	"a medium"
8	יִדְּעֹנִי	yiddəʿōnî	H3049	"a necromancer"
9	דֹּרֵשׁ אֶל־הַמֵּתִים	dōrēš ʾel-hammētîm	H1875	"one who inquires of the dead"

Some of these are described by method and some by result, and the categories overlap — Moses is not building a taxonomy but closing every door at once.

Two doubled phrases English cannot easily keep. Items 2 and 6 are cognate accusatives, a Hebrew construction that repeats a verb's own root as its object for emphasis: qōsēm qəsāmîm, "one who divines divinations," and ḥōbēr ḥāber, "one who binds a binding." The verb behind the second, חָבַר (ḥābar, H2266), ordinarily means to join or tie together; the spell-caster is a binder. No English version reproduces either doubling; what is lost is a shade of intensity.

The origins of items 7 and 8 are unsettled in the lexica, so the usage does the work: they appear as a fixed pair across the Old Testament, and every occurrence concerns consulting the dead.

The hinge: who you listen to

The turn from verse 14 to verse 15 runs on one repeated verb. In verse 14 the nations יִשְׁמָעוּ (yišmāʿû, H8085, "they listen") to soothsayers and diviners. In verse 15 Israel is told תִּשְׁמָעוּן (tišmāʿûn, "you shall listen") to the coming prophet. It is the same verb, שָׁמַע (šāmaʿ, H8085), in consecutive sentences, once of the nations and once of Israel. Between them stands a blunt Hebrew clause: וְאַתָּה לֹא כֵן (wəʾattâ lōʾ kēn) — "but you, not so."

Everyone listens to something. Deuteronomy 18 does not command Israel to stop seeking guidance; it tells them where the guidance will come from. This shows that God means to be heard: He supplies the voice His people need, so you are never left with only the diviners to listen to.

Sorcery as the mark of the nations

The verb כָּשַׁף (kāšap, H3784, "to practise sorcery") and its noun כֶּשֶׁף (kešep, H3785) occur twelve times between them. The distribution is the finding.

Two are the legal texts themselves (Exodus 22:18; Deuteronomy 18:10). Of the remaining ten, every one attaches to a foreign power or to an Israelite importing foreign religion: Egypt's court magicians (Exodus 7:11), Jezebel of Sidon (2 Kings 9:22), Manasseh (2 Chronicles 33:6), Babylon (Isaiah 47:9, 12; Daniel 2:2), and Nineveh, twice in one verse (Nahum 3:4). The last two are Micah 5:12, where God promises to cut sorceries out of Israel, and Malachi 3:5, where he comes as a swift witness against sorcerers in judgment.

Kings' account of Manasseh uses four of Deuteronomy 18's other terms (2 Kings 21:6); only the Chronicler adds kāšap (2 Chronicles 33:6).

There is no neutral or approved use of this word anywhere in the Old Testament. It is lexically marked as something the nations do, and when Israel does it the text presents it as adopting the nations' religion.

The word that carries the argument: inquiry

Items 7 and 9 of the Deuteronomy list are built on two ordinary verbs — שָׁאַל (šāʾal, H7592, "to ask") and דָּרַשׁ (dāraš, H1875, "to seek, inquire, consult"). Neither verb is sinful. Both are used constantly of legitimate prayer and of consulting the LORD. What Deuteronomy 18:11 forbids is the object: šōʾēl ʾôb, one who asks of a medium; dōrēš ʾel-hammētîm, one who inquires of the dead.

Two later writers prosecute Israel using exactly this vocabulary.

The Chronicler on Saul. Saul's visit to the medium at En-dor (1 Samuel 28) is narrative, and narrative reports what happened without always saying what to make of it. Here the evaluation is supplied outright, at the end of Chronicles' account of his death:

✝️ 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 (ESV)

13 So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the LORD in that he did not keep the command of the LORD, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance. 14 He did not seek guidance from the LORD. Therefore the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse.

The Hebrew of verse 13 is lišʾôl bāʾôb lidrôš — "to ask of a medium, to inquire" — using both of Deuteronomy 18:11's verbs and its noun. Verse 14 completes the indictment with the same verb turned negative: wəlōʾ-dāraš baYHWH, "and he did not inquire of the LORD." The Chronicler charges Saul under the statute, in the statute's language.

The narrative had already set this up. Saul turned to the medium only after heaven went quiet: "when Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him, either by dreams, or by Urim, or by prophets" (1 Samuel 28:6). The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible puts the irony sharply — Saul is both lawmaker and lawbreaker, since he had himself expelled the mediums from the land (28:3).

Isaiah on Judah. Isaiah 8:19 uses dāraš three times in a single verse, and closes on Deuteronomy 18:11's exact phrase, אֶל־הַמֵּתִים (ʾel-hammētîm, "to the dead"). The rhetorical question in the middle — "should not a people inquire of their God?" — is the whole argument in six words. Isaiah does not dispute that the mediums offer information. He asks what a people are doing seeking it there.

Sorcery, on this reading, is a redirected inquiry. The same verbs show what God wants: He is the One His people are to seek, and He invites the asking. So bring your questions to Him.

Chirping, muttering, and words in the mouth

Isaiah adds a description of the practitioners that is easy to skim past. He calls them מְצַפְצְפִים (məṣapṣəpîm, H6850) and מַהְגִּים (mahgîm, H1897) — ESV's "chirp and mutter." The first verb is used elsewhere of birds; the second covers moaning, growling, and low unformed sound.

Set that against what God promises about his prophet: "I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him" (Deuteronomy 18:18). The contrast is between noise that requires an interpreter and speech that can simply be heard and obeyed. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible reaches the same point on 18:14-22: the divine will is not found by searching in the organs of animals or in the grave, but in intelligible speech.

This is also why the chapter ends with a test (18:20-22) rather than a technique. A prophet's word either comes to pass or it does not, and Israel can check. Divination offers no such handle — an oracle vague enough to need interpreting is an oracle that cannot be falsified.

Deuteronomy 13:1-5 supplies the companion test, and it is the more searching of the two: even when a sign does come true, if the one giving it leads you after other gods, "you shall not listen." A prediction being accurate was never sufficient warrant.

What sorcery can and cannot do

Scripture consistently shows the practitioners producing something and then hitting a wall.

Pharaoh's magicians duplicate the first signs "by their secret arts," and then Aaron's staff swallows theirs (Exodus 7:11-12). They fail at the gnats and tell Pharaoh so: "This is the finger of God" (Exodus 8:19). Balaam, hired precisely as a diviner, ends up announcing that "there is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel" (Numbers 23:23). Babylon's whole apparatus cannot recover a dream, and Daniel says so before interpreting it:

✝️ Daniel 2:27-28 (ESV)

27 Daniel answered the king and said, "No wise men, enchanters, magicians, or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked, 28 but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days. …

Isaiah generalises it into a statement about God's character: he is the one "who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners… who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers" (Isaiah 44:25-26). The two halves of that sentence are the two halves of Deuteronomy 18. Isaiah then turns it on Babylon directly, inviting her to try: "Stand fast in your enchantments and your many sorceries… perhaps you may be able to succeed" (Isaiah 47:12). The taunt only works because sorcery does enough to be believed in and not enough to save. This shows that God is sovereign over every rival power: He alone reveals mysteries and confirms His servant's word, so you need not fear what sorcery can do.

The same word for Elymas and for the Magi

The Greek μάγος (magos, G3097) appears six times in the New Testament. Two are Elymas on Cyprus, "a magician, a Jewish false prophet" whom Paul strikes blind for making crooked the straight paths of the Lord (Acts 13:6, 8). The other four are the wise men who came looking for the newborn king (Matthew 2:1, 7, 16), and Matthew records no censure of them at all.

The word itself named a class — Persian and Babylonian court sages whose competence included astrology and dream interpretation. Whether it condemns depends entirely on what the person is doing and whose word they end up following. Matthew's magoi follow a sign, then are redirected by Scripture (Micah 5:2, quoted in Matthew 2:5-6), and end up worshipping Christ. Elymas uses his standing to keep a proconsul from hearing the word of God. Luke names him "a Jewish false prophet" and a magician in the same breath — sorcery and false prophecy in one person, as Deuteronomy 18 already had them in one passage.

Daniel, chief of the magicians

This resolves an apparent problem in Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar makes Daniel "chief prefect over all the wise men of Babylon" (Daniel 2:48), and Belshazzar's queen recalls that the king had made him "chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers" (Daniel 5:11). Daniel holds the office and denies that any of his colleagues' methods could have produced the revelation (2:27-28), which came from God in a night vision, in answer to prayer (2:17-19).

Sorcery in the New Testament

The Greek term that carries the Old Testament prohibition forward is φαρμακεία (pharmakeia, G5331), with its related nouns φάρμακος and φάρμακοι. It appears in Paul's list of the works of the flesh — "idolatry, sorcery" standing side by side (Galatians 5:20) — and three times in Revelation (9:21; 18:23; 21:8; with 22:15).

Pharmakeia's semantic domain

A correction. Pharmakeia is often taught as though it meant pharmaceuticals, and Revelation read as predicting the drug industry. The word family does cover drugs and potions in wider Greek, and ancient magic used them. Louw and Nida's semantic-domain lexicon, which groups words by usage, places φαρμακεία and φάρμακον at 53.100, inside Domain 53 (Religious Activities), in the sub-domain for magic, immediately beside περίεργος, "magic arts," at 53.99 (the word Luke uses in Acts 19:19). Revelation 18:23 settles it in context: sorcery there is what deceives nations, which is not a thing pharmaceuticals do.

Three episodes in Acts

Simon in Samaria

Simon in Samaria (Acts 8:9-24) had "amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great," to the point that they called him "the power of God that is called Great." He believed and was baptised — and then offered the apostles money for the ability to confer the Spirit. Peter's answer goes to motive, not method: "your heart is not right before God" (8:21). Conversion had not yet reached the instinct that treats spiritual power as a purchasable capability.

The slave girl at Philippi

The slave girl at Philippi (Acts 16:16-18) had "a spirit of divination," Greek πνεῦμα πύθωνα (pneuma pythōna) — literally "a python spirit." Both Cultural Backgrounds Study Bibles identify the reference: Python was the serpent Apollo slew at Delphi, and the Delphic priestess, the most famous oracle in antiquity, was called the Pythia. The girl's owners were making money from her. What she said about Paul was true in a formal sense — "These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation" — and Paul, after days of it, silenced her without engaging: "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her."

Ephesus

Ephesus (Acts 19:11-20) gives the fullest sequence. First the sons of Sceva, who used the name of Jesus as a formula — "I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims" — and were beaten by the man they were trying to help. Then the believers' response:

✝️ Acts 19:18-20 (ESV)

18 Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. 19 And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. 20 So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

Fifty thousand drachmas is roughly fifty thousand days' wages for a labourer. These were converts destroying an asset, publicly, with the value read out. Luke's next sentence makes the word of the Lord the thing that grows in the space the books vacated — the same pairing Deuteronomy 18 makes, now in narrative.

How these tests apply to deliverance ministry is taken up in a separate study, Deliverance and the Edge of Sorcery.

Sorcery in Revelation

Revelation's four occurrences fall into two groups.

Two describe humanity under judgment refusing to change: those who "did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts" (9:21), and Babylon, of whom it is said that "all nations were deceived by your sorcery" (Revelation 18:23).

That verse is built from Old Testament material. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes that Isaiah supplies the concept — Babylon judged "in spite of your many sorceries and the great power of your enchantments" (Isaiah 47:9) — while Nahum supplies the wording, from his oracle against Nineveh, "the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms" (Nahum 3:4). Reading 18:23 as a fresh prediction about a modern industry means skipping the two texts John is quoting. His subject is what Isaiah's and Nahum's already was: a world power whose spiritual counterfeit deceives nations, and which God brings down.

The other two are exclusion lists. Sorcerers appear among those whose portion is the lake of fire (21:8) and among those left "outside" the city (22:15). In both, the company is consistent, and it is the company sorcery keeps throughout Scripture: idolaters, the sexually immoral, murderers, liars. Galatians 5:20 places it in the same neighbourhood, immediately after idolatry, and warns that those who practise such things "will not inherit the kingdom of God" (5:21).

The ESV Study Bible's note on Galatians 5:20 states the link between idolatry and sorcery better than a paraphrase would: both are attempts to reach the spiritual realm by humanly invented means, which have God as their supposed object while rejecting the way he has revealed for approaching him. That is Deuteronomy 18 restated for the church.

What binds then, and what binds now

Two things in this material are tied to Israel's own moment, and one is not.

The techniques are dated. Extispicy, teraphim, reading the stars for a king's campaign — the specific crafts Deuteronomy names belonged to an ancient Near Eastern world with its own apparatus. Their modern descendants look different. The prohibition was never about the equipment.

The civil penalties do not carry over. "You shall not permit a sorceress to live" (Exodus 22:18) and "shall surely be put to death" (Leviticus 20:27) are the criminal law of a theocracy — a nation whose civil government and covenant worship were the same institution. The church is not that nation and has never been given that jurisdiction. The New Testament's own response to sorcery is visible and consistent: the practitioners themselves renounce it and burn what they own (Acts 19:19), and the unrepentant are excluded from the kingdom (Galatians 5:21; Revelation 21:8). Not once is the church told to execute anyone. Reading Exodus 22:18 as a standing warrant — which is exactly what the witch trials did — takes a statute out of the legal system that gave it force and hands it to people who were never given it. The verse's Hebrew is feminine (mekaššēpâ), but Deuteronomy 18:10's məkaššēp is masculine; the feminine reflects who most commonly practised the craft, and the grammar does not support aiming the verse at women.

The prohibition itself carries over completely. This is the part that does not need argument from continuity: Paul and John restate it with none of the theocratic machinery attached. Sorcery sits in the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:20) and among those outside the city (Revelation 21:8; 22:15), addressed to churches scattered across the empire under Roman law. The command survives the change of covenant; the penalty was never the church's to carry.

Theological principle

Sorcery is condemned in Scripture as a rival route: an attempt to obtain knowledge or power from a source other than the one God has appointed, and so a refusal of the way he has revealed for approaching him.

Deuteronomy 18 states this in its own structure. The nations listen to fortune-tellers; Israel is to listen to the Prophet God will raise up. God's answer to divination was, and is, Christ — the Prophet like Moses, in whose mouth God put His words, and to whom the whole passage points. This is the doctrine of revelation: God has spoken, and spoken in His Son Jesus, so you may bring every question to Him and listen.

Discussion questions

1. The language. Deuteronomy 18:14 says the nations "listen to fortune-tellers," and 18:15 says of the coming prophet, "it is to him you shall listen" — the same verb, שָׁמַע (šāmaʿ), in consecutive sentences. What does that one verb show God was after when He banned the diviners?
2. The text in its context. Deuteronomy 16:18-18:22 works through Israel's public offices, and the list of occult practices (Deuteronomy 18:9-14) falls inside the section on the prophet. What difference does that placement make to how the prohibition should be read?
3. Christ. Peter applies Deuteronomy 18:15 to the risen Jesus: "You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you" (Acts 3:22). What does it mean that God's answer to every route to hidden knowledge is a Person to listen to?
4. Testing. Deuteronomy 13:2-3 says "you shall not listen" even when the sign "comes to pass," and Paul silenced a spirit whose words about him were true (Acts 16:17-18). If accuracy is not the test, what is?
5. The hard part. Matthew calls the wise men who worshipped Jesus magoi (Matthew 2:1) and records no censure; Luke uses the same word, μάγος (magos), of Elymas, "a magician, a Jewish false prophet" (Acts 13:6, 8). How do those two uses of one word sit beside Deuteronomy 18:10?
6. Be transformed. "When Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him" (1 Samuel 28:6), and the medium came next. When God is silent with you, what do you reach for while you wait?

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Group study · 40 minutes

Sin and Sorcery

Deuteronomy 18:9-22

The point In the same breath that He forbids every route to hidden knowledge, God promises to speak to His people Himself through the Prophet He would raise up, Jesus, so the guidance you need comes by listening to Him.

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Ask: what comes to mind when you hear Sin and Sorcery? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

5–12minRead it aloud BSB

Deuteronomy 18:9-22 ⁹When you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. ¹⁰Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, practices divination or conjury, interprets omens, practices sorcery, ¹¹casts spells, consults a medium or spiritist, or inquires of the dead. ¹²For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD. And because of these detestable things, the LORD your God is driving out the nations before you. ¹³You must be blameless before the LORD your God. ¹⁴Though these nations, which you will dispossess, listen to conjurers and diviners, the LORD your God has not permitted you to do so. ¹⁵The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. You must listen to him. ¹⁶This is what you asked of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, “Let us not hear the voice of the LORD our God or see this great fire anymore, so that we will not die!” ¹⁷Then the LORD said to me, “They have spoken well. ¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put My words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. ¹⁹And I will hold accountable anyone who does not listen to My words that the prophet speaks in My name. ²⁰But if any prophet dares to speak a message in My name that I have not commanded him to speak, or to speak in the name of other gods, that prophet must be put to death.” ²¹You may ask in your heart, “How can we recognize a message that the LORD has not spoken?” ²²When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and the message does not come to pass or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.

12–25minLook closer

What does it say?

What did it mean to them?

What does it mean for us?

Sin and Sorcery

The study in brief

1. The passage — Where the prohibition sits · Historical and cultural context · Nine practices, named. Where the list sits in Deuteronomy, its setting in Canaan, and the nine practices it names.
2. The argument — The hinge · The mark of the nations · Inquiry · Chirping and muttering. The listen/listen hinge of verses 14-15, kāšap as the nations' word, the inquiry verbs Chronicles and Isaiah use against Saul and Judah, and Isaiah's chirping mediums set against the test of a prophet's word.
3. What sorcery can do — What sorcery can and cannot do · Elymas and the Magi. Practitioners who produce something and then hit a wall, the one word magos used for Elymas and for the Magi, and Daniel as chief of the magicians.
4. The New Testament — Sorcery in the New Testament · Sorcery in Revelation. Pharmakeia, three episodes in Acts, and Revelation's four occurrences.
5. What carries over — What binds then, and what binds now · Theological principle. What binds then and now, and the theological principle.

Notes

Sin and Sorcery

12–25minDiscover

1The language. Deuteronomy 18:14 says the nations "listen to fortune-tellers," and 18:15 says of the coming prophet, "it is to him you shall listen" — the same verb, שָׁמַע (šāmaʿ), in consecutive sentences. What does that one verb show God was after when He banned the diviners?

2The text in its context. Deuteronomy 16:18-18:22 works through Israel's public offices, and the list of occult practices (Deuteronomy 18:9-14) falls inside the section on the prophet. What difference does that placement make to how the prohibition should be read?

25–35minWrestle

3Christ. Peter applies Deuteronomy 18:15 to the risen Jesus: "You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you" (Acts 3:22). What does it mean that God's answer to every route to hidden knowledge is a Person to listen to?

4Testing. Deuteronomy 13:2-3 says "you shall not listen" even when the sign "comes to pass," and Paul silenced a spirit whose words about him were true (Acts 16:17-18). If accuracy is not the test, what is?

5The hard part. Matthew calls the wise men who worshipped Jesus magoi (Matthew 2:1) and records no censure; Luke uses the same word, μάγος (magos), of Elymas, "a magician, a Jewish false prophet" (Acts 13:6, 8). How do those two uses of one word sit beside Deuteronomy 18:10?

Sin and Sorcery

35–40minBe transformed

6Be transformed. "When Saul inquired of the LORD, the LORD did not answer him" (1 Samuel 28:6), and the medium came next. When God is silent with you, what do you reach for while you wait?

• Examine what you reach for first in a crisis, when God has not yet answered. Saul kept the law until the Philistines massed at Shunem and heaven went silent (1 Samuel 28:6-7); the medium came after the silence, not before it. Unanswered prayer is the pressure point, and the temptation is not usually to occultism but to any source that will give an answer faster.
• Take stock of what you own and consume that trades in hidden knowledge or spiritual power — horoscopes, mediums, "energy" practices, spiritual-warfare methods promising results by technique. The Ephesian believers did not shelve their books or resell them. They burned them publicly and counted the cost out loud (Acts 19:19).
• Test claims by their content, not their power. Deuteronomy 13:1-5 grants that the sign may come true and still says do not listen. A thing being real is not a reason to trust it.
• Refuse to treat God's power as a technique to be acquired. Simon was baptised and still thought the Spirit could be bought (Acts 8:18-23). The sorcerer's instinct outlived his conversion, and Peter named it as a matter of the heart, not of method.

Memory verse

for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this. "The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers — it is to him you shall listen —

Deuteronomy 18:14-15 (ESV)

Pray together

Father, you did not leave us guessing. When you forbade every road to hidden knowledge you promised a Prophet in the same breath, and you kept that promise in your Son. You are not a God who hides from those who ask.

Teach us to bring our unanswered questions to you and to wait on you when you are silent. Guard us from wanting power more than we want you. Where we have already gone to other sources, give us the Ephesians' courage to name it and be done with it. We ask it in the name of Jesus, the Prophet you raised up, to whom we listen. Amen.

Notes

The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/sin/sorcery/

References & Recommended Reading

• ESV Bible (Crossway) — the translation quoted throughout, per this site's conventions. All quotations were verified against the ESV text rather than reproduced from memory. See Copyright for the full notice.
• MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (Westminster Leningrad Codex) and MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets (SBLGNT), Clear Bible — queried through this repo's references/build/bible-text.db. Source of every Hebrew and Greek form, Strong's number, and occurrence count above, including the twelve-occurrence distribution of kāšap/kešep, the six occurrences of magos, and the word-by-word verification of the šāʾal/dāraš links between Deuteronomy 18:11, 1 Chronicles 10:13-14, and Isaiah 8:19.
• Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains — the domain assignments cited for φαρμακεία (53.100), περίεργος (53.99), and πύθων (12.48), accessed through the MACULA Greek dataset's domain column.
• Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT), ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Moody Publishers) — root identifications and glosses for kāšap (1051), qāsam (2044), nāḥaš (1348), and ʾôb (37a), consulted via this repo's committed TWOT Strong's-number map. The "skin-bottle" gloss for ʾôb prompted the homonym caution above.
• ESV Study Bible (Crossway, 2016) — consulted after the exegesis, as a check. Confirmed the deliberate juxtaposition of 18:9-14 with 18:15-19 and the listen/listen contrast; contributed the observation that child sacrifice belongs in a divination list because it was itself a means of seeking divine help (2 Kings 3:26-27), the framing of idolatry and sorcery in Galatians 5:20 as rejecting the revealed way of approach, and the caution that 1 Samuel 28 must not be used to license séances.
• NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible (Zondervan), gen. ed. D. A. Carson — confirmed that Deuteronomy 18 sits within the block on Israel's four offices and that its list is the most complete in Scripture; contributed the intelligible-speech contrast on 18:14-22, the "lawmaker and lawbreaker" reading of Saul at En-dor, and the definition of sorcery in Exodus 22:18 as manipulation of power belonging exclusively to the Lord.
• NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, 2016) and NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, ed. John H. Walton and Craig S. Keener — contributed the inseparability of magic and religion in the ancient Near East, the note that curses as such were not forbidden in Israel and that Mesopotamian sources distinguished legitimate from illegitimate practitioners, the "ghostwife" sense of baʿălat-ʾôb in 1 Samuel 28:7, the Delphi and Apollo background to pneuma pythōna, and the observation that Revelation 18:23 draws its concept from Isaiah 47:9 and its language from Nahum 3:4.
• NLT Life Application Study Bible, Third Edition (Tyndale House, 2019) — consulted on Deuteronomy 18:10-13; confirmed the desire-to-control-the-future motive behind occult practice.
• Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth — the methodology behind this study's order of work (exegesis before application) and its genre-specific handling of law, Old Testament narrative, the prophets, Acts, and apocalyptic.

Related studies on this site: Sin and Idolatry · Test the Spirits