Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comAdam Clarke Commentary - Leviticus 19:31 - 19:31
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Regard not them that have familiar spirits - The Hebrew word אבות oboth probably signifies a kind of engastromuthoi or ventriloquists, or such as the Pythoness mentioned Act 16:16, Act 16:18; persons who, while under the influence of their demon, became greatly inflated, as the Hebrew word implies, and gave answers in a sort of frenzy. See a case of this kind in Virgil, Aeneid, l. vi., ver. 46, etc.: -
“ - Deus ecce, Deus! cui talla fanti
Ante fores, subito non vultus, non color unus,
Non comptae mansere comae; sed pectus anhelum,
Et rabie fera corda tument; majorque videri,
Nec mortale sonans, afflata est numine quando
Jam propiore Dei.”
- Invoke the skies, I feel the god, the rushing god, she cries.
While yet she spoke, enlarged her features grew,
Her color changed, her locks dishevelled flew.
The heavenly tumult reigns in every part,
Pants in her breast, and swells her rising heart:
Still swelling to the sight, the priestess glowed,
And heaved impatient of the incumbent god.
Pitt.
Neither seek after wizards - ידענים yiddeonim, the wise or knowing ones, from ידע yada, to know or understand; called wizard in Scotland, wise or cunning man in England; and hence also the wise woman, the white witch. Not only all real dealers with familiar spirits, or necromantic or magical superstitions, are here forbidden, but also all pretenders to the knowledge of futurity, fortune-tellers, astrologers, etc., etc. To attempt to know what God has not thought proper to reveal, is a sin against his wisdom, providence, and goodness. In mercy, great mercy, God has hidden the knowledge of futurity from man, and given him hope - the expectation of future good, in its place. See Clarke’s note on Exo 22:18.