Deuteronomy 12:8 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 8. Every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes— While the Israelites in the wilderness were destitute of many things requisite to the exact performance of all their sacred rites, and not yet sufficiently accustomed to the yoke of their new laws, they were excused from the observance of many of them. We have several proofs of this, particularly the total neglect of circumcision during the whole space of the forty years in the wilderness, though it had been carefully observed in Egypt: but that, in all the parts of their conduct, they were left every man to do what was right in his own eyes, is sufficiently contradicted from the former part of this history. Thus we find blasphemy, and a violation of the sabbath, punished, Lev. 35:23. Numbers 15:32 no less than the mutinous attempt to wrest the priesthood from Aaron's family. Moses, therefore, as the context abundantly proves, has an immediate regard, in these words, to the performance of their duties at the place which God should choose, to the payment of tithes, and such other things as belonged to the priests and Levites. In a word, the meaning is, that, in their present ambulatory and uncertain state, they could not practise those precepts which were annexed to the land, and required a settled condition. See Calmet and Le Clerc. In which view of the text, one cannot help reading, with astonishment, the very absurd deduction and false quotation made by Voltaire in the 12th chapter of his Treatise on Toleration.