The man who does presumptuously in not listening to the priest who stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or to the judge, even that man shall die. You shall put away the evil from Israel.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 12. And the decree. Some copies read with Sixtus V. ex decreto, by and so forth “decree,” ( Bible.) as if a lay-judge stood ready to put the sentence in execution. Calmet.—But there was no necessity of any farther judgment after the high priest had spoken, who is here declared the sovereign judge. S. Cyp. ep. 55. Hebrew “or to the judge.” Amama ridicules his friend, Ant. a Dominis, for saying that the Hebrew and Vulg. have et decreto. Bible.—The Rabbins inform us, that if any judge refused to acquiesce in the decision, and endeavoured to draw others into his opinion, in matters of consequence, (as those are where the guilty is ordered to be cut off,) he was to be strangled, on a festival day, at Jerusalem, that all the people hearing it might fear, verse 13. Seld. Syned. iii. 3. Calmet.