and mutter' and bring false oracles from imagined gods. But that
primary reference of the words does not exclude, but rather demands,
their ultimate reference to Him in whom the divine word is perfectly
enshrined, and who is the bright, consummate flower of the prophetic
order, which 'spake of Him,' not only in its individual predictions,
but by its very existence.

A glance must be given to the exhaustive list of pretenders to
knowledge of the future or to power of shaping it magically, which
occurs in verses 10,11, and suggests a terrible picture of the burdens
of superstition which weighed on men in these days of ignorance, as the
like burdens do still, wherever Jesus is not known as the one Revealer
of God, and the sole Lord of all things. Of the eight terms employed,
the first three refer to different means of reading the future, the
next two to different means of influencing events, and the last three
to different ways of consulting the dead. The first of these eight
properly refers to drawing lots, but includes other methods; the second
is an obscure word, which is supposed by some to mean a 'murmurer,' and
may refer rather to the low mutterings of the soothsayer than to the
method of his working; the third is probably a general expression for
an interpreter of omens, especially of those given by the play of
liquid in a 'cup,' such as Joseph 'divined' by.

Two names for magicians follow, of which the former seems to mean one
who worked with charms such as African or American Indian 'medicine
men' use, and the latter, one who binds by incantations, or one who
ties magic knots, which are supposed to have the power of hindering the
designs of the person against whom they are directed. The word employed
means 'binding,' and maybe used either literally or metaphorically. The
malicious tying of knots in order to work harm is not dead yet in some