| Deuteronomy 17:12
| But he that will be proud, and refuse to obey the commandment of the priest, who ministereth at that time to the Lord thy God, and the decree of the judge, that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel:
| And the decree. Some copies read with Sixtus V ex decreto, by etc., "decree," (Haydock) as if a lay-judge stood ready to put the sentence in execution. (Calmet) --- But there was no necessity of any farther judgment after the high priest had spoken, who is here declared the sovereign judge. (St. Cyprian, ep. 55.) Hebrew, "or to the judge." Amama ridicules his friend, Ant. a Dominis, for saying that the Hebrew and Vulgate have et decreto. (Haydock) --- The Rabbins inform us, that if any judge refused to acquiesce in the decision, and endeavoured to draw others into his opinion, in matters of consequence, (as those are where the guilty is ordered to be cut off,) he was to be strangled, on a festival day, at Jerusalem, that all the people hearing it might fear, ver. 13. (Selden, Syned. 3:3.) (Calmet)
|