申命記 12:30 註釋：Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi, Ibn Ezra & Ramban

“Do not inquire about their gods, saying, how did those nations worship their gods” [12:30]. The Torah teaches us that Israel should not say, we will worship God like the nations worship their foreign gods, with beautiful worship. The nations have chosen everything that God, blessed be His name, hates. They do this for their foreign gods, as the verse says, “because its speech is seductive to him till his iniquity be found out and he be hated” [Psalms, 36:3]. This means, the evildoers do everything that the Holy One hates and will anger God. Therefore, the verse says here that the nations can do no worse against the Holy One than that they burn their children before their foreign gods. Rabbi Akiva said: I saw a gentile who burned his father alive for the foreign god. How can anybody anger God more than to burn a person who was created for the person’s sake?⁸Bahya, Deuteronomy, 12:29.

פן תנקש [TAKE HEED TO THYSELF] LEST THOU BE SNARED — Onkelos renders תנקש as an expression of the same root and meaning as מוקש, a snare. But I say that he was not particular to examine carefully the expression, for we never find a נ in the term that means to snare, not even as a root letter that is sometimes omitted from it; but in the term denoting movement from place to place and knocking we do find a נ, as in (Daniel 5:6) “and his knees knocked (נקש) one against the other”. Here, too, I say that פן תנקש means lest thou run after them so that you cling to their doings. Similar is (Psalms 109:11) “Let the creditor be מנקש to all that he has” — he (the speaker) is cursing the wicked that he may have many creditors and that these may go about running after his money.

The word and lest introduces an elliptical construction, as if Scripture had said “and be careful … lest you inquire after their gods, in order to act as they act , saying…”.

אחרי השמדם מפניך [TAKE HEED THAT THOU BE NOT SNARED] (according to Rashi, THAT THOU DO NOT RUN AFTER THEM) AFTER THAT THEY BE EXTERMINATED BEFORE THEE — The meaning is: after you see that I exterminate them from before you, you ought to pay attention to why these were exterminated — because of the depraved doings which they practiced. Consequently you should not act likewise lest others come and exterminate you (cf. Sifrei Devarim 81:3).