Pensée juive sur Le Deutéronome 13:15

After exhorting against all those things which are forbidden because of their identification with idol worship, the Torah begins speaking of the punishment for idol worship itself, doing so last because of its relative rarity. It begins (Deuteronomy 17:2): "If there be found in your midst, within one of your gates…" And because it is so unexpected that any Jew would go and serve idols, unlike the case with the other transgressions of the Torah to which many might succumb under the pressure of their evil inclination, it is accordingly written (Ibid 4): "And it was told to you, and you heard, and you inquired well." We find this expression three times in the Torah. The first, in relation to a city that has been turned to idolatry (Ibid 13:15): "And you inquire, and you search it out, and you ask well"; the second, here, in relation to idol worship: "and you inquired well, and the thing was true and correct"; the third in relation to contriving witnesses [edim zomemim] (Ibid 19:18): "And the judges shall inquire well." And though our rabbis of blessed memory have expounded this as dictating diligent inquiry for all monetary judgments, and they have derived from it that whatever applies to one [of the three cases] applies to the other, as stated in the beginning of the chapter "They would Subject them to Seven Inquiries" (Sanhedrin 40a), it being stated in the Gemara: "How do we know these things? R. Yehudah answered: 'We know it from the verses: "And you inquire, and you search it out, and you ask well" in relation to a city that has been turned to idolatry; "And it was told to you, and you heard, and you inquired well" in relation to idol worship; "And the judges shall inquire well" in relation to contriving witnesses'" — still, I contend that it was so written in these three places alone to impress it upon us that in any case [such as these] where the alleged occurrence is rare, the judges should accept the testimony and punish the suspect only after the most thoroughgoing inquiry, the exhaustiveness of the inquiry to be proportionate to the rarity of the occurrence. Unquestionably, there is no transgression in the Torah more severe than that of idolatry, which, in point of its severity, should have the fewest number of transgressors, which no one should be suspected of, and which, consequently, no one should be punished for except after the most exacting inquiry. But what is even rarer is that an entire city should consent in such a severe transgression, for which reason the Torah dilated upon the need for the most exhaustive inquiry, and searching out, and questioning, compounding its terms — "And you inquire, and you search it out, and you ask well" — such a thing being extremely rare because of the severity of the transgression. And because the numbers involved are very great, the witnesses should be believed only after the completest of cross-examinations. One idol worshipper, however, is not so rare as many, for which reason the judges were not commanded to be so exhaustive in their inquiry in this regard as in the case of an entire city, it being written in the latter case: "And you inquire, and you search it out, and you ask well," and in the former, only: "and you inquire well." Still, because it is far less common for one to fall prey to idol worship than to the other transgressions, the Torah wrote "and you inquired well," to teach us that no Jew should be suspected of such an abomination and punished for it without thorough inquiry.

When it is said that God is visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, this refers exclusively to the sin of idolatry, and to no other sin. That this is the case may be inferred from what is said in the ten commandments, “upon the third and fourth generation of my enemies” (Exod. 20:5), none except idolaters being called “enemy”; comp. also “every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth” (Deut. 12:31). It was, however, considered sufficient to extend the punishment to the fourth generation, because the fourth generation is the utmost a man can see of his posterity; and when, therefore, the idolaters of a place are destroyed, the old man worshipping idols is killed, his son, his grandson, and his great-grandson, that is, the fourth generation. By the mention of this attribute we are, as it were, told that His commandments, undoubtedly in harmony with His acts, include the death even of the little children of idolaters because of the sin of their fathers and grandfathers. This principle we find frequently applied in the Law, as, e.g., we read concerning the city that has been led astray to idolatry, “destroy it utterly, and all that is therein” (Deut. 13:15). All this has been ordained in order that every vestige of that which would lead to great injury should he blotted out, as we have explained.