Comentário sobre Deuteronômio 13:3

אשר לא ידעתם, the miracle proving the existence of such a phenomenon seeing you had never heard of its existence. Seeing we do not know the function of the phenomenon makes it more difficult to dismiss the idea that it possesses powers. It is unlike sun and moon whose functions and limitations we know. We know that it is useless to pray to sun and moon, as their obvious limitations are known to us.

ובא האות והמופת, these false prophets came by their knowledge by means of their dealings with the necromancers, etc., people whom we are supposed to put to death.

V. 3. ובא וגו׳ אשר דבר וגו׳; es tritt das Zeichen ein, das er dir gegenüber angekündigt hat, um dir damit zu sagen, d. h. um damit seine Aufforderung zu unterstützen. Oder nach ר׳ עקיבא: Wenn ein Prophet aufsteht und hat dir bereits Zeichen und Beweis gegeben, es ist auch bereits eingetroffen das Zeichen und der Beweis, der aber nun zu dir spricht etc. etc.

ובא האות והמופת, “and the sign or wonder predicted will come to pass;” the letter ו in the word והמופת means: “or.”We have a similar construction in Exodus 21,15, where the line: ומכה אביו ואמו, means: “anyone who strikes his father or his mother.” Similar constructions occur in Exodus 21,17, and in numerous other places in the Torah. The Sifri quotes a Baraitha in which Rabbi Akiva is cited as saying that we must not be misled into believing that G-d would interfere with the position of sun or moon in order to comply with the wishes of a false prophet. What is meant in our verse is that a true prophet, who has in the past performed miracles, and had thus legitimised himself by having performed such miracles, has become a heretic and the people now believe him, not knowing that he has become a heretic. If such a prophet would call on the people to perform acts of idolatry, he must not be believed, regardless of the fact that at one time he was a legitimate prophet. No true prophet is to be believed if his message entails violating laws of the Torah, regardless of how many times he had in the past demonstrated that he was a true prophet, unless when he did so he said that he suggested such a violation only as a one time emergency measure due to exceptional circumstances. If you were to ask, that seeing that G-d knew in advance that such a prophet would turn into a heretic, so why did He equip him with prophetic powers in the first place?The Torah answers this question by telling us that it is G-d’s way of testing our faith in Moses’ Torah being the one and only Torah He has given us, and that it will not undergo changes in the course of history. (verse 4) This is even more true, when the socalled prophet performs acts by a slight of hand which deceive the onlookers into believing that he had performed miracle. The same is true if such a charlatan knows how to trick you into believing that you had heard things in the name of the Lord, things which he had never heard from G-d. Do not let either your eyes or your ears deceive you when the subject is the inviolability of the laws of the Torah. You must follow only the revealed word of G-d as handed down by Moses in the Torah.

אשר לא ידעתם: von denen ihr nichts erfahren, von deren Dasein ihr durch nichts Überzeugung gewonnen habt, oder vielmehr: von deren Nichtsein ihr überzeugt seid.