Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 23:28
And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.
28. the hornet ] so Deu 7:20; Jos 24:12 (E). The writer imagines swarms of this terrible insect employed to clear the Canaanites away before Israel, and expel them even from their hiding-places (see Dt. l.c.).
the Hivite, &c.] see on Exo 3:8.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Hornets – Compare the marginal references. The word is used figuratively for a cause of terror and discouragement. Bees are spoken of in the like sense, Deu 1:44; Psa 118:12.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 28. I will send hornets before thee] hatstsirah. The root is not found in Hebrew, but it may be the same with the Arabic [Arabic] saraa, to lay prostrate, to strike down; the hornet, probably so called from the destruction occasioned by the violence of its sting. The hornet, in natural history, belongs to the species crabro, of the genus vespa or wasp; it is a most voracious insect, and is exceedingly strong for its size, which is generally an inch in length, though I have seen some an inch and a half long, and so strong that, having caught one in a small pair of forceps, it repeatedly escaped by using violent contortions, so that at last I was obliged to abandon all hopes of securing it alive, which I wished to have done. How distressing and destructive a multitude of these might be, any person may conjecture; even the bees of one hive would be sufficient to sting a thousand men to madness, but how much worse must wasps and hornets be! No armour, no weapons, could avail against these. A few thousands of them would be quite sufficient to throw the best disciplined army into confusion and rout. From Jos 24:12, we find that two kings of the Amorites were actually driven out of the land by these hornets, so that the Israelites were not obliged to use either sword or bow in the conquest.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Hornets, properly so called, as may be gathered from Jos 24:12; Deu 7:20. Hornets are of themselves very troublesome and mischievous; but these it is very probable were like those Egyptian flies, Exo 8:21, of an extraordinary bigness and perniciousness. Nor is it strange that such creatures did drive many of these people from their habitations; for many heathen writers give us instances of some people driven from their seats by frogs, others by mice, others by bees and wasps; of which see Herodotus, Diodorus, Pliny, Elian, Justin, &c. He names these three people, either for all the rest, because they were the most potent about the time of Israels first entrance into Canaan, and gave them most trouble; or because these three were more infested with hornets than the other nations, as being more numerous and dangerous.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
28. I will send hornets before thee,c. (See on Jos 24:12) Someinstrument of divine judgment, but variously interpreted: as hornetsin a literal sense [BOCHART]as a pestilential disease [ROSENMULLER];as a terror of the Lord, an extraordinary dejection [JUNIUS].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And I will send hornets before thee,…. Which may be interpreted either figuratively, and so may signify the same as fear before which should fall on the Canaanites upon hearing the Israelites were coming; the stings of their consciences for their sins, terrors of mind, dreading the wrath of the God of Israel, of whom they had heard, and terrible apprehensions of ruin and destruction from the Israelites: Aben Ezra interprets it of some disease of the body, which weakens it, as the leprosy, from the signification of the word, which has some affinity with that used for the leprosy; and so the Arabic version understands it of a disease: or rather, the words are to be taken literally, for hornets, which are a sort of wasps, whose stings are very penetrating and venomous; nor is it any strange or unheard of thing for people to be drove out of their countries by small animals, as mice, flies, bees, c. and particularly Aelianus q relates, that the Phaselites were drove out of their country by wasps: and Bochart r has shown that those people were of a Phoenician original, and inhabited the mountains of Solymi and that this happened to them about the times of Joshua, and so may probably be the very Canaanites here mentioned, as follow: the wasps, in Aristophanes’s comedy which bears that name, are introduced speaking of themselves, and say, no creature when provoked is more angry and troublesome than we are s:
which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee; which three are mentioned instead of the rest, or because they were more especially infested and distressed with the hornets, and drove out of their land by means of them.
q Hist. Animal. l. 11. c. 28. r Hierozoic. par. 2. l. 4. c. 13. col. 541. s Aristoph. Vespae, p. 510.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
28. And I will send hornets. Although that secret terror, of which He had made mention, would be sufficient to put their enemies to flight, He states that there would also be other ready means, to rout them without any danger, or much difficulty to His people. Yet He does not threaten to send great and powerful warriors, but only insects and hornets; as much as to say, that God would be so entirely propitious to His people that He would prepare and arm even the smallest animals to destroy their enemies. (270) Thus is the easiness of their victory shewn; because, without the use of the sword, hornets alone would suffice to rout and exterminate their enemies. He adds, however, an exception, lest the Israelites should complain, if the land should not immediately lie open to them empty and cleared of its old inhabitants; and He reminds them that it would be advantageous to them that He should consume their enemies by degrees. Although, therefore, God might at first sight seem to perform less than He had promised, and thus to retract or diminish somewhat from His grace; yet Moses shews that in this respect also He was considering their welfare, lest the wild beasts should rush in upon the bare and desert land, and prove more troublesome than the enemies themselves. It came to pass indeed, through the people’s slackness, that they were long mixed with their enemies, because they executed with too little energy the vengeance of God; yea, His menace against them by the mouth of Joshua was then fulfilled,
“
if ye cleave unto the remnant of these nations, know for a certainty that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land, which the Lord your God hath given you.” (Jos 23:12.)
The fact, therefore, that it was later and at the end of David’s reign that these wicked and heathen nations were exterminated so as to deliver up to the people the quiet possession of the land, must be attributed to their own fault, since unbelief and ingratitude rendered them inactive, and disposed to indulge their ease. But, if no such inactivity had delayed the fulfillment of the promise, they would have found that the final destruction of the nations by God would have been delayed no longer than was good for them.
(270) Few historical conjectures can be more striking than that of Dr. Hales, quoted in the Illustrated Commentary on Jos 24:12, who supposes the “arma Jovis,” by which Virgil represents Saturn as having been driven to Italy, to have been the hornets here spoken of, and identifies the fugitive monarch with one of the Amorite kings, expelled before the armies of Joshua.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(28) I will send hornets.Heb., the hornet. Comp. Jos. 24:12, where the hornet is said to have been sent. No doubt hornets might be so numerous as to become an intolerable plague, and induce a nation to quit its country and seek another (see Bochart, Hierozoic. iv. 13). But as we have no historical account of the kind in connection with the Canaanite races, the expression here used is scarcely to be taken literally. Probably the Egyptians are the hornets intended. It was they who, under Rameses III., broke the power of the Hittites and other nations of Palestine, while the Israelites were sojourners in the wilderness. Possibly the term was chosen in reference to the hieroglyphic sign for king in Egypt, which was the figure of a bee or wasp. The author of the Book of Wisdom seems, however, to have understood the expression literally (Wis. 12:8-9).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
28. I will send hornets before thee There is no necessity to explain this literally, and there is no evidence that any such miracle as the driving out of the Canaanites by swarms of hornets occurred during the entire history of the conquest of Palestine . There are, indeed, divers accounts of certain ancient tribes being driven out of their lands by armies of wasps and other noxious creatures; and the armies of locusts which occasionally sweep through those countries are a most destructive plague . But a comparison of Deu 1:44, Jos 24:12, Psa 118:12, and Isa 7:18-19, will show that this expression was employed metaphorically to denote any marked interposition of God to discomfit the enemies of his people .
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exo 23:28. And I will send hornets before thee See this fulfilled, Jos 24:12. The author of the Book of Wisdom, ch. Exo 12:8 calls these wasps; and didst find wasps, forerunners of thine host, to destroy them by little and little. The hornet, whose sting is more venomous with us than that of the wasp, is far more venomous in the hot Eastern countries than in our colder climates: there it is often deadly. Pliny and Bochart have both remarked its pernicious and fatal nature; and the latter author, in his Hieroz. p. 534, produces many instances of nations that have been obliged to relinquish their country, by means of insects apparently so contemptible as bees, warps, and hornets. The reader is by all means referred to his ingenious work.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
May not these hornets be spiritually considered as the stings of a guilty conscience? Deu 7:20 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Hornets and Angels
Exo 23:28
God brake the ships of Tarshish with an east wind, a puff of breath. He told the east wind to seize their masts and torment them to their destruction. Dagon was thrown down upon his face, though he was locked up with the ark, and no hand was near him; yea, he was utterly broken to pieces so that he was not a god at all. How was this? The chariots of God are twenty thousand. Can you remember twenty thousand names? Can you venture to say, “This is, and this is not, one of the twenty thousand”? It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. A great wind battered the Armada of Spain in a critical moment in English history. Thus God has more resources than those which are merely human. We gather ourselves together as if we were all his belongings, as if he depended upon us alone, and we talk, and resolve, and organise, and go forth, as if the Lord had nothing else to depend upon. Mayhap that is partly right. A man may do more if he thinks that everything depends upon himself; but he should cheer himself, and bring great encouragement into his soul, by remembering the number of God’s chariots; they are twenty thousand. The stars in their courses fought against Sisera, and the stones of the field were covenanted to help those that feared the Lord. Nature helps, nature hinders, nature is God’s other self, and his chariots are twenty thousand strong. The Lord God is a sun and shield, he is a spear and buckler, he is a pavilion and a sanctuary. The lightnings gather themselves round him, and say, “Here we are”; his ministers are the frog and the fly, the hornet and the locust; the fiery flying serpent and the hidden viper, the child, the angel, poverty and plenty, are his servants; yea, all things praise the Lord by their sympathy and help, so much so that if we were to hold our tongues, the universe would not be silent. “I tell you that if these were to hold their peace, the very stones would cry out, for God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” He shall never want a minister to stand before his face. If so be thou art a minister, boast not thyself of thy ministry, for a hornet may take thy place, a frog may dispossess thee, and there may be none to find out thy footsteps. Be thankful, hopeful, energetic, glad; but boast not, for boasting hastens death.
The one thought that is to inspire us is that God has many ways of helping his people, likely and unlikely, but they are ways of his own choosing, and therefore they will end in success. Hornets and angels, Are not the ministers of God both visible and invisible? The flying hornet you can see, but who can trace the angel in the air? Can you see the angel? He is there, notwithstanding your inability to descry him. You see the hornet. Ah! we are all quicker in seeing the hornet than in seeing the angel. Fie on us, shame on shame, till we be burnt with blushes. Can you see the angel? You cannot always tell what forces and ministries are fighting either for you or against you. We do not know the meaning of nature. She is a parable we have not fully read or understood; an eternal lesson, God’s perpetual illustration of himself. Oh that we had eyes to see and hearts to understand; for the library is always open, and the writing is always done by an angel’s hand.
A man says, “A curse on this hornet, this winged, stinging insect, only a large bee, only an exaggerated wasp a curse on the thing. I dare not open my window, for it may fly in; I dare not go out, for it hovers near my door and may smite me with its cruel sting. It never sleeps, it seems ever to fill the sultry air.” He does not know what he is talking about: he thinks it is an insect; he says: “Why did God make such a creature?” ah, why? He calls it insect; when he has been longer at school he may call it minister of God, and servant of the Most High. He is fretted by its unceasing and energetic buzz; by-and-by he will hear music in it, a sad and terrible music. That hornet is sent of God to drive you out: it will not die; you have been doing wrong and it has come to punish you. That hornet is death, or loss, or pain, or bitterness of soul. That hornet is not a mere insect; it means judgment, penalty, retribution, death. I wish people would see the great meaning of things and not the little trifling suggestions.
I will tell you what to do with the hornet. Hear me bad man, hear me: I have a gospel for thee. Outrun it: thou hast two legs, two leaden feet outrun the hornet. “I cannot.” Then that will not do. Close your hand upon it. “I dare not.” No, you dare not. Then that will not do. Bribe it: coat your window-sill with sugar, inches thick, and it will glut itself to death. “Aye, I will try that.” Ah, it grows by what it feeds on. It is a stronger hornet for the sugar. It took your bribes and strengthened itself against you. I will tell you what to do: compromise with it, propose terms, negotiate, send a third party. “Oh bitter irony, oh mocking man,” say you? Yes, I mean to mock, for who can outrun the chariots of God? No, sir, no: stop, turn round, fall down, confess, pray; cry mightily to God to take the hornet back. That is the true gospel: hear it, and thou shalt live.
Then on the other hand there is a kind angel that can be nearly seen, and that can be almost heard, and that can be all but felt. Thank God for the things that are nearly, that are all but, that are just about to begin to be. Thank Heaven this verb of life is not all shut up in the indicative mood. Wondrous conjugation indicative, potential, subjunctive, infinitive how the verb grows; how the little “I am,” a child’s first mouthful, grows into the immeasurable eternity. Think of this kind angel, who is all but seen, who is so near as to be almost felt. You catch an aroma which he must have shaken from his wings. Bless God for these occasional hints, and touches, and blessings as we go on. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him. Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?
Then remember the hornet will fight for you as well as against you. If you are in the right way, the hornet is your friend. It will pursue your enemies, it will bring them to reflection, it will drive them to repentance, it will force them to prayer. That hornet never dies. My God, my Father, follow not my enemies with the hornet, if gentler means will bring them to their senses; but bring them to their senses, even if it take the hornet to do it.
Hornets and angels are not the agencies of God both humble and illustrious? See the contrast, the flying insect and the flying angel, yet they are both the messengers of Heaven. Suppose them to meet one another in the summer air what a talk they might have! Saith the hornet, “Why does he send me when he has servants like you who can do his work so much better than I, poor winged insect, charged indeed with a sting, can do?” Saith the angel, “Why am I not employed in studying the deeper problems of the universe, when little mean insects like this could go about the work of visitation, and penalty, and judgment?” Then they catch the Divinity of the purpose, they realise their election in God, and they say, “He doeth as it pleaseth him in the armies of heaven and among the children of men. There is no meanness in doing his work. His household is infinite and his servants are many away, sting the enemy, bless the friend, let the decree of punishment be confirmed, and let the gospel of benediction be proclaimed.” So away they go, hornet and angel, to carry out the will of just but clement Heaven. Beware: the angels of God and the hornets are both his servants.
Hornets and angels are not God’s agencies material and immaterial? Of matter and of spirit doth he not make his ministers? The hornet is of the earth, the angel is of the skies; the hornet is from below, the angel is from above. There are no barren spaces in God’s universe. All that great sky, on which you have never driven your small vehicles beginning in your little baby’s cart, and ending in your last hearse-ride to the gaping tomb all that blue ground, what is it but an armoury in which he stores his resources? All things are his; all things are mine it I be in him: if I am in Christ all things are mine: death, life, angels, principalities, powers, past, present, future all, for I am Christ’s and Christ is God’s. Oh, hide thee in the broken heart of Christ, shelter thee in his wounded side: do not be living in thy little mean propositions, and small theories, and miserable dogmas, and noisy controversies hide thee in the bleeding side of the wounded Lamb of God. Then all things that fought for him will fight for me, and if I do not fight, but stand still and suffer, draw no sword for me: thinkest thou not that I could pray to my Father, and he would give me more than twelve legions of angels to defend me wherein I am right, and am hidden in his Son Jesus Christ?
Has there been a hornet in your estate lately? I wonder what it meant. Why cannot you kill that hornet? It comes by every post. You dare not open that letter there is a hornet in it It comes by many a telegram. You dare not open the third telegram you get to-morrow there is a hornet in it. When life is sharpened into a pain, when loss swiftly succeeds loss, when the rich showers fall everywhere except on our own garden, when every flower withers, when the firstborn sickens and the eyes are filled with mist, when the strong hands tremble men should bethink themselves: the hornet of the Lord is then piercing the very air with its sting, puncturing our life and giving it great agony. Do not call it insect; call it God do not call it misfortune let the atheist use up that same inheritance; it is not misfortune, it is Providence. Oh, the hornet stings me, frets me, plagues me; will not let me have a holiday, knows when I am going out, flies faster than the lightning express, waits for me at the seashore, goes with me over the sea. Beast? no: God, law, righteousness, mercy, didst thou but know it. It is sent to pain thee into prayer, for thou hast sinned away thy visitation day, and now it is God’s turn. Lord, teach us the meaning of these hornets; they are hard to bear. We dare hardly turn over any leaf for fear a hornet should spring up and sting us: our life is now one daily fear teach us the meaning of this, and by prayer may we find the remedy.
Has there been an angel in your estate lately? I say it with shame that we are much quicker in seeing the hornet than in seeing the angel; our cry is readier than our hymn, our fear is more emphatic than our love. Is the angel in your estate? Do you say you do not know? Then I will find him for you. Be still awhile. Are the children all well? “Yes.” Flowers budding, singing-birds returning, the rain over and gone? “Yes; but the garden is much less than it used to be.” A few flowers in the window? “Just a little box full, about eighteen inches long.” Still, you have them? “Yes.” Bread enough? “Plenty.” A few friends? “Few, but good.” The angel is in your lot. Give these things their highest meanings. There are plenty of people outside who would drag down life and make it smaller and smaller in its meanings. I would be sent of God to widen speech till it takes in all that it can of God’s purpose and God’s life. Poetry will have faith; faith itself is the poetry of reason; carry it up to its highest uses, and make your life as large and luminous as you can.
There are some people who are afraid of giving too great meanings to the events of life. There they get miserably wrong. When the ruddy morning comes, do not be afraid to call it the awakening angel. There are people near you who will call it fantasy; those people are lean, bony, shrivelled, dessicated, mean; and when they tell you that this is fantasy, and that is poetry, they speak out of themselves: they have no gospel to deliver. If thou dost meet a man on the high-road who takes up a flower and says, “Sir, this flower is a child of the sun,” make friend of him rather than of the man who takes it up and says, “Ah, poor thing,” and throws it over the fence. When spring spreads her green carpet and makes the warm air live with wordless songs, do not be afraid to call it God’s angel. There be little, narrow, pence-table men who say, “It is spring, and there is rent day in spring, and there is hope of good trade in spring, and spring is one of four seasons of the year, and spring begins on the sixth and ends on the twentieth, and spring…. is nothing more.”
So God rules his world. “I will send hornets before thee, and they will drive out the Hivite and all the nations that set themselves against thee. I will not send angels to fight the Hivites: let the hornets do it. And I will send an angel before thee, and he will find thee a resting-place, space for the sanctuary, and he will give thee peace.” Great God! rule us still; spare the hornets, we cannot bear them, but send the hornets, if nothing else will bring us home.
“I will send,” saith the first text, “I will send,” saith the second. Then do not you be sending anything; sit still; I am afraid of your sending things. “I will send hornets,” then do not you be sending your nasty, bitter, cantankerous letters, keep your hands off post-cards, do not write anonymous slanders on sheets of paper you borrow from other people. “I will send,” then do not interfere with God’s movements. He knows when to send, how to send, how many to send, where to send let him do it. “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.” No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper. I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. I have seen the great gourd of the wicked arching over his blasphemous head lo, in the morning it was not. Why? For God prepared a worm a worm, and the worm cankered the root of the gourd, and it withered away. Send angels if you can live as if you would send ten thousand angels, sweet blessings, tender gospels, messages of the heart. You live in that direction, and some day God will pick you up in one of his chariots and drive you to the very camp of your enemies and show you unto them as their true friend. I will stand in God; I will rest in God.
Let the hornet do its work; let the angel fulfil his ministry. God’s people cannot be permanently injured; and as for God’s Church, it shall be set up on foundations broad and immovable, and all its glowing pinnacles shall pierce the clouds, and God’s will shall be done on earth as it is done in heaven.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Exo 23:28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.
Ver. 28. Hornets before thee. ] Understand it either literally, as in Jos 24:12 ; or figuratively, of the stinging terrors of their self-condemning consciences.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
hornets. Compare Deu 7:20. Jos 24:12.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
hornets: Tzirah, The hornet, may be so called from the Arabic zaraa, to lay prostrate, strike down, because of the destruction occasioned by the violence of its sting. The hornet, in natural history, belongs to the species Crabro, of the genus Vespa or Wasp. It is a most voracious insect, and exceedingly strong for its size, which is generally an inch in length. Deu 7:20, Jos 24:11
Reciprocal: Deu 4:38 – drive Deu 6:19 – General Deu 7:1 – the Hittites Deu 31:4 – General Jos 5:1 – Canaanites Jos 12:8 – the Hittites Jos 24:12 – I sent Jdg 1:4 – Lord 1Ki 9:20 – Amorites 1Ch 1:13 – Heth Psa 44:2 – how thou didst afflict Psa 80:9 – preparedst