John Calvin Commentary Exodus 22:18

"Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live." — Exodus 22:18 (ASV)

Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. In these passages, the punishment is appointed for those who would in any respect violate the worship of God. We have recently seen how severely God avenged apostasy from the faith. But now He addresses certain particular points where religion is not openly abandoned, but some corruption is introduced by which its purity is affected.

The first passage denounces capital punishment upon witches. By this name, Moses means enchantresses or sorceresses who devote themselves to magic arts, either to injure people by their fascinations or to seek revelations from the devil—such as the one Saul consulted, although she might be called by a different name.⁶⁵ Since such illusions involve a wicked renunciation of God, it is no wonder that He would have them punished with death.

But since this destructive crime would be no more tolerable in a man than in a woman, it has probably been supposed that the law was directed against women because their sex is more inclined to superstition. Certainly, the same enactment is made concerning males in Deuteronomy 18:1,⁶⁶ only the punishment is not announced there; instead, God merely prohibits any of the people from being an enchanter or a witch. Now it is clear that all the types recited there are included here under one category, so that God would condemn to capital punishment all augurs, magicians, consulters with familiar spirits, necromancers, and followers of magic arts, as well as enchanters.

And this will appear more plainly from the second and third passages, in which God declares that He will set His face against all, that shall turn after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, so as to cut them off from His people, and then commands that they should be destroyed by stoning. Therefore, since it is not just that men should escape with impunity when the frailty of women is not spared, nor that different sentences should be pronounced in similar cases, the same punishment decreed against witches and enchantresses is now extended to either sex and to all magical superstitions.

Also, in the words that turneth to go a whoring, the atrocity of the crime is again expressed, the comparison being taken from immodest women who seek with wandering glances for the indulgence of their lust. Moses, therefore, signifies that as soon as we begin to cast our eyes this way and that, and do not keep them fixed on God alone so as to be content with Him, that sacred union⁶⁷ is violated in which He has bound us to Himself.

⁶⁵ It is said of the woman, (1 Samuel 18:7,) that “she had a familiar spirit,” (,) that “she had a familiar spirit,” (אוב See See vol. 1, p. 428; the word here used is ; the word here used is מכשפהfrom from כשף, praestigiis uti. —— Taylor’s Concordance.

⁶⁶ See ante, vol. 1, p. 426, on , on Deuteronomy 18:10..

⁶⁷ “Le mariage spirituel."—."—Fr.