Deuteronomy 4:19

Ver. 19. Which the Lord thy God hath divided, &c.— i.e. Distributed, or imparted. The force of the argument is this: as Jehovah, the true God, whom you adore, has dispensed to all nations under heaven the benefit of the sun, moon, and stars, which he has created; you ought therefore to worship him alone, who is the Lord of them all, and has made them ministers to the sons of men. Nothing can be more reasonable than this inference, that we are not made for the sun, but the sun for us; it is not the luminary itself that we ought to worship, but God, who created it for our use. But the nations, struck with the visible splendour of the heavenly bodies, and with the sensible benefit which they derived from them, stopped short in the blind admiration of their beautiful appearance, instead of turning their attentive minds to the adoration of that invisible Intelligence by whom they were created. See book of Wisd. chap. 13: The worship of the sun and planets was, in all probability, the first and leading instance of idolatry, and in use, no doubt, long before the time of Moses, See chap. Deuteronomy 17:3. But on this subject, we refer to Young on the Rise and Progress of Idolatry, Maimonides, de Idol. lib. 1: sect. 3 and Prideaux's Connection, vol. 1 b. 3: p. 177.

See commentary on Deuteronomy 4:17