Deuteronomy 12:29

"When Jehovah thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest in to dispossess them, and thou dispossessest them, and dwellest in their land; take heed to thyself that thou be not ensnared to follow them, after that they are destroyed from before thee; and that thou not enquire after their gods, saying, How do these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto Jehovah thy God: for every abomination to Jehovah, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters do they burn in the fire to their gods. What thing soever I commanded you, that shall ye observe to do: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it."

"This paragraph is an emphatic repeat of the warning given in the first four verses of the chapter."[22] Even the countless repetitions of the Old Testament were not enough to deter Israel from falling into the same "abominations" practiced by their heathen predecessors in Canaan.

Cousins warned against the tendency of men to look with favor and appreciation upon the religious practices that God has not authorized, saying, "God's people in all ages have created appalling problems for themselves and distorted their own faith by incorporating alien practices and concepts."[23]

"Take heed to thyself ..." It seems incredible to us that an intelligent people like the Israelites would have been seduced to wallow in the debaucheries of the pagan Canaanites, but there was a near universal conception in those ages that every land had a whole family of local deities who required the adoration of any who occupied the land. Any failure to honor those "gods of the land" was supposed to bring disaster. "Now the Israelites themselves were well schooled in this old bug-bear notion of such deities who severely resented their neglect by all new-comers."[24] Even the king of Assyria who left many Israelites in Canaan, learned that the wild beasts were making ravages against the few who remained in the land concluded that it was because they had not properly "honored the gods of the land," that being the king of Assyria's estimate of who Jehovah really is! 2 Kings 17:25ff. That accounts for the fact that priests were sent back to Samaria, having only the Books of Moses, which became known in time as "The Samaritan Pentateuch." Thus, it was that God, in these verses, warned that all such "deities" were to be ignored, their shrines, altars, pillars, and groves be demonlished, and that their very names be obliterated from the face of the earth.

Scott paraphrased the larger paragraph above, as follows: "Neither curiosity nor self-interested desire must lead the Israelites to traffic with Canaanite gods and ritual. All such is intolerable to Jehovah, for (to take an extreme instance) even children are sacrificed."[25]

"Even their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods ..." (Deuteronomy 12:31). At other places in the Old Testament, this horrible practice is referred to as `making a child to pass through the the fire to Molech,' (Deuteronomy 18:10), or simply, `pass through to Molech' (Leviticus 18:21; Jeremiah 32:35). "This has led some to allege that the ceremony referred to here was not an actual burning of children, but some kind of a `symbolical' passing of the child to Molech!"[26] The stark and ugly truth shines here. Child sacrifice was widely practiced in Canaan, as "Archeology has dramatically proved."[27]

"Every abomination ... which Jehovah hateth ... have they done ..." Here is the reason for God's removal of the Canaanites: It was due to their depravity, their unconscionable debauchery, and their shameful indulgence in every evil and licentious conduct, all of which things they did as "sacrifices to their gods."

In the final verse of this chapter (Deuteronomy 13:1 in the Hebrew Bible), we have "essentially a repeat of Deuteronomy 4:2. Moses here again delivers the only true standard of ethics and godly service, the revealed will of God; no more; no less!"[28]