C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Deuteronomy 13:12

Deu 13:12

This was to be done, and all Israel was to hear it and fear, that no such wickedness should be performed any more in the congregation. The fear of punishment, which is given here as the ultimate end of the punishment itself, is not to be regarded as the principle lying at the foundation of the law, but simply, as Calvin expresses it, as “the utility and fruit of severity,” one reason for carrying out the law, which is not to be confounded with the so-called deterrent theory, i.e., the attempt to deter from crime by the mode of punishing (see my Archäologie, ii. p. 262).