Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Deuteronomy 32:1
Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
1. heavens earth ] To these he appeals, not as witnesses of the divine events which he is about to declare (so Deu 4:26; Deu 31:28), nor as proofs of the regularity or goodness of the divine action (so frequently in the Prophets and Psalms 1 [150] ), but in the feeling that so great a theme God’s dealings with His people demands no less an auditory! The faith of the prophets (of so small and so irresponsive a people) in the infinite interest of their message, in its power of reverberating through the universe, is very striking. And such an assurance, because spiritual and not material, remains steadfast (Carlyle in some of his moods notwithstanding) whatever views be taken of the Universe, whether pre-Copernican or post-Copernican. It is the conviction of man which commands Nature, and not Nature which crushes the conviction. The Universe cannot silence, but must listen to, the spiritual truth. M. Henry interprets less probably: Heaven and Earth will listen sooner than this unthinking people, for they revolt not from their obedience to their Creator, Psa 119:90 f.
[150] Cp. Carlyle: ‘The stars in the heavens and the blue-bells by the wayside shew forth the handiwork of Him who is Almighty, who is All Good. In a bad weak world what would become of us did not our hearts understand at all times that this is even so?’ ( Life i. 338).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
1 3. The Exordium
1 Give ear, O Heavens, let me speak,
And let Earth hear the words of my mouth.
2 May my message drop as the rain,
My speech distil as the dew,
Like mists on the grass,
And like showers on the herb.
3 For the name of the Lord I proclaim,
To our God give the greatness!
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Song of Moses
If Deu 32:1-3 be regarded as the introduction, and Deu 32:43 as the conclusion, the main contents of the song may be grouped under three heads, namely,
(1) Deu 32:4-18, the faithfulness of God, the faithlessness of Israel;
(2) Deu 32:19-33, the chastisement and the need of its infliction by God;
(3) Deu 32:34-42, Gods compassion upon the low and humbled state of His people.
The Song differs signally in diction and idiom from the preceding chapters; just as a lyrical passage is conceived in modes of thought wholly unlike those which belong to narrative or exhortation, and is uttered in different phraseology.
There are, however, in the Song numerous coincidences both in thoughts and words with other parts of the Pentateuch, and especially with Deuteronomy; while the resemblances between it and Ps. 90: A Prayer of Moses, have been rightly regarded as important.
The Song has reference to a state of things which did not ensue until long after the days of Moses. In this it resembles other parts of Deuteronomy and the Pentateuch which no less distinctly contemplate an apostasy (e. g. Deu 28:15; Lev 26:14), and describe it in general terms. If once we admit the possibility that Moses might foresee the future apostasy of Israel, it is scarcely possible to conceive how such foresight could be turned to better account by him than by the writing of this Song. Exhibiting as it does Gods preventing mercies, His peoples faithlessness and ingratitude, Gods consequent judgments, and the final and complete triumph of the divine counsels of grace, it forms the summary of all later Old Testament prophecies, and gives as it were the framework upon which they are laid out. Here as elsewhere the Pentateuch presents itself as the foundation of the religious life of Israel in after times. The currency of the Song would be a standing protest against apostasy; a protest which might well check waverers, and warn the faithful that the revolt of others was neither unforeseen nor unprovided for by Him in whom they trusted.
That this Ode must on every ground take the very first rank in Hebrew poetry is universally allowed.
Deu 32:1-3
Introduction. Heaven and earth are here invoked, as elsewhere (see the marginal references), in order to impress on the hearers the importance of what is to follow.
Deu 32:4
He is the Rock, his work is perfect – Rather, the Rock, perfect is his work. This epithet, repeated no less than five times in the Song Deu 32:15, Deu 32:18, Deu 32:30-31, represents those attributes of God which Moses is seeking to enforce, immutability and impregnable strength. Compare the expression the stone of Israel in Gen 49:24; and see 1Sa 2:2; Psa 18:2; Mat 16:18; Joh 1:42. Zur, the original of Rock, enters frequently into the composition of proper names of the Mosaic time, e. g., Num 1:5-6, Num 1:10; Num 2:12; Num 3:35, etc. Our translators have elsewhere rendered it according to the sense everlasting strength Isa 26:4, the Mighty One Isa 30:29; in this chapter they have rightly adhered to the letter throughout.
Deu 32:5
Render: It (i. e. the perverse and crooked generation) hath corrupted itself before Him (compare Isa 1:4); they are not His children, but their blemish: i. e., the generation of evil-doers cannot be styled Gods children, but rather the shame and disgrace of Gods children. The other side of the picture is thus brought forward with a brevity and abruptness which strikingly enforces the contrast.
Deu 32:6
Hath bought thee – Rather perhaps, hath acquired thee for His own, or possessed thee: compare the expression a peculiar people, margin a purchased people, in 1Pe 2:9.
Deu 32:8
That is, while nations were being constituted under Gods providence, and the bounds of their habitation determined under His government (compare Act 17:26), He had even then in view the interests of His elect, and reserved a fitting inheritance according to the number of the children of Israel; i. e., proportionate to the wants of their population. Some texts of the Greek version have according to the number of the Angels of God; following apparently not a different reading, but the Jewish notion that the nations of the earth are seventy in number (compare Gen 10:1 note), and that each has its own guardian Angel (compare Ecclus. 17:17). This was possibly suggested by an apprehension that the literal rendering might prove invidious to the many Gentiles who would read the Greek version.
Deu 32:9-14
These verses set forth in figurative language the helpless and hopeless state of the nation when God took pity on it, and the love and care which He bestowed on it.
Deu 32:10
In the waste howling wilderness – literally, in a waste, the howling of a wilderness, i. e., a wilderness in which wild beasts howl. The word for waste is that used in Gen 1:2, and there rendered without form.
Deu 32:11
Compare Exo 19:4. The so, which the King James Version supplies in the next verse, should he inserted before spreadeth, and omitted from Deu 32:12. The sense is, so He spread out His wings, took them up, etc.
Deu 32:12
With him – i. e., with God. The Lord alone delivered Israel; Israel therefore ought to have served none other but Him.
Deu 32:13
i. e., God gave Israel possession of those commanding positions which carry with them dominion over the whole land (compare Deu 33:29), and enabled him to draw the richest provision out of spots naturally unproductive.
Deu 32:14
Breed of Bashan – Bashan was famous for its cattle. Compare Psa 22:12; Eze 39:18.
Fat of kidneys of wheat – i. e., the finest and most nutritious wheat. The fat of the kidneys was regarded as being the finest and tenderest, and was therefore specified as a part of the sacrificial animals which was to be offered to the Lord: compare Exo 29:13, etc.
The pure blood of the qrape – Render, the blood of the grape, even wine. The Hebrew word seems (compare Isa 27:2) a poetical term for wine.
Deu 32:15
Jesbarun – This word, found again only in Deu 33:5, Deu 33:26, and Isa 44:2, is not a diminutive but an appellative (containing an allusion to the root, to be righteous); and describes not the character which belonged to Israel in fact, but that to which Israel was called. Compare Num 23:21. The prefixing of this epithet to the description of Israels apostasy contained in the words next following is full of keen reproof.
Deu 32:16
They provoked him to jealousy – The language is borrowed from the matrimonial relationship, as in Deu 31:16.
Deu 32:17
Devils – Render, destroyers. The application of the word to the false gods points to the trait so deeply graven in all pagan worship, that of regarding the deities as malignant, and needing to be propitiated by human sufferings.
Not to God – Rather, not God, i. e., which were not God; see the margin and Deu 32:21. Compare Deu 13:7; Deu 29:25.
Deu 32:19
The anger of God at the apostasy of His people is stated in general terms in this verse; and the results of it are described, in words as of God Himself, in the next and following verses. These results consisted negatively in the withdrawal of Gods favor Deu 32:20, and positively in the infliction of a righteous retribution.
Daughters – The women had their full share in the sins of the people. Compare Isa 3:16 ff; Isa 32:9 ff; Jer 7:18; Jer 44:15 ff.
Deu 32:20
I will see what their end shall be – Compare the similar expression in Gen 37:20.
Deu 32:21
God would mete out to them the same measure as they had done to Him. Through chosen by the one God to be His own, they had preferred idols, which were no gods. So therefore would He prefer to His people that which was no people. As they had angered Him with their vanities, so would He provoke them by adopting in their stead those whom they counted as nothing. The terms, not a people, and a foolish nation, mean such a people as, not being Gods, would not be accounted a people at all (compare Eph 2:12; 1Pe 2:10), and such a nation as is destitute of that which alone can make a really wise and understanding people Deu 4:6, namely, the knowledge of the revealed word and will of God (compare 1Co 1:18-28).
Deu 32:24
Burning heat – i. e., the fear of a pestilential disease. On the four sore judgments, famine, plague, noisome beasts, the sword, compare Lev 26:22; Jer 15:2; Eze 5:17; Eze 14:21.
Deu 32:26, Deu 32:27
Rather, I would utterly disperse them, etc., were it not that I apprehended the provocation of the enemy, i. e., that I should be provoked to wrath when the enemy ascribed the overthrow of Israel to his own prowess and not to my judgments. Compare Deu 9:28-29; Eze 20:9, Eze 20:14, Eze 20:22.
Behave themselves strangely – Rather, misunderstand it, i. e., mistake the cause of Israels ruin.
Deu 32:30
The defeat of Israel would be due to the fact that God, their strength, had abandoned them because of their apostasy.
Deu 32:31
Our enemies – i. e., the enemies of Moses and the faithful Israelites; the pagan, more especially those with whom Israel was brought into collision, whom Israel was commissioned to chase, but to whom, as a punishment for faithlessness, Israel was sold, Deu 32:30. Moses leaves the decision, whether their rock (i. e. the false gods of the pagan to which the apostate Israelites had fallen away) or our Rock is superior, to be determined by the unbelievers themselves. For example, see Exo 14:25; Num. 23; 24; Jos 2:9 ff; 1Sa 4:8; 1Sa 5:7 ff; 1Ki 20:28. That the pagan should thus be constrained to bear witness to the supremacy of Israels God heightened the folly of Israels apostasy.
Deu 32:32
Their vine – i. e., the nature and character of Israel: compare for similar expressions Psa 80:8, Psa 80:14; Jer 2:21; Hos 10:1.
Sodom … Gomorrah – Here, as elsewhere, and often in the prophets, emblems of utter depravity: compare Isa 1:10; Jer 23:14,
Gall – Compare Deu 29:18 note.
Deu 32:35
Rather: Vengeance is mine and recompence, at the time when their foot slideth.
Deu 32:36
Repent himself for – Rather, have compassion upon. The verse declares that Gods judgment of His people would issue at once in the punishment of the wicked, and in the comfort of the righteous.
None shut up, or left – A proverbial phrase (compare 1Ki 14:10) meaning perhaps married and single, or guarded and forsaken, but signifying generally all men of all sorts.
Deu 32:40-42
Render: For I lift up my hand to heaven and say, As I live forever, if I whet, etc. On Deu 32:40, in which God is described as swearing by Himself, compare Isa 45:23; Jer 22:5; Heb 6:17. The lifting up of the hand was a gesture used in making oath (compare Gen 14:22; Rev 10:5).
Deu 32:42
From the beginning of revenges upon the enemy – Render, (drunk with blood) from the head (i. e. the chief) of the princes of the enemy.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Deu 32:1-2
Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak.
Moses adjuration
Isaiah makes a similar sublime commencement to his prophecies, apostrophising heaven and earth in nearly identical language. Moses had already used the same sentiment in simple didactic form when he said, I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse, and thereby he explains the meaning of this more highly poetic style of adjuration. Such an adjuration indicates great intensity, elevation, and sincerity of feeling, while calling attention to the solemn importance of what is about to be said. It is like a heralds cry, the sound of the tocsin, or the summoning of an assize. For heaven and earth had both of them been witnesses of the covenant and giving of the law. By a sudden but suggestive transition we are introduced to the style and theme of the song. The change is from the awe-inspiring to the tenderest of moods; but it is made without derogating from the loftiness of the thought. The imagery of the gentle rain and the softly distilling dew is a fit sequel to the opening appeal to heaven and earth, and bespeaks attention to the source, the quality, and the design of the song.
1. Its source. The reference to dew and rain implies, first of all, that the whole subject, suggestion, and origin of the song is from above. Nothing but a voice Divine will ever avail to soften human nature, come home to the conscience, subjugate the will and reign in the affections. Ascribe ye greatness, therefore, that is, authoritativeness, unto our God.
2. Its quality. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew. The song is just the pith and substance of the Book of Deuteronomy; the distilled quintessence of the Deuteronomic law and covenant. It is a protestation that no community can ever thrive, surmount their dangers and slough off their corruptions, by simply confining their attention to earthly relations and requisitions. They need a higher motive and spirit of life as a sustaining and self-cleansing principle–in one word, a Gospel of God.
3. Its design. As the small rain upon the tender grass, and as the showers upon the herb; gentle, yet copious and penetrative; soft, seasonable and saturating; not like a sudden but soon spent thunderstorm, nor the beating of hail that dashes where it alights; rather like small rain, the softer it falls the deeper it sinks; or like the dew, the more insinuating it is, the more fertilising and lastingly effective. (A. H. Drysdale, M. A.)
My speech shall distil as the dew.
Gods doctrine as the dew
What a representation of gentleness! The doctrine shall not fall in torrents, but it shall drop; the speech shall not even be felt in its descent, for it shall distil. Yet who is it employs this gentlest of all gentle imagery? It is Moses: the self-same man who had pronounced the terrific judgments on Egypt. He had promulgated a system which was given forth in thunder, and lightning, and thick darkness, and a terrible tempest; the publication of this law was attended with the severest penalties. Notwithstanding every appearance to the contrary, it was true of every word which God spake by Moses, as well as of every word which Jesus spoke, that His doctrine dropped like the rain, and distilled like the dew. We need scarcely tell you that the term doctrine includes all Gods teaching in every portion of His revelation to man. It matters not whether truth be found in direct assertions of great principles, or whether it be wrapped up in the imagery of poetry, the shadows of the types, the facts of history, or the allegories of parables; it is all the same truth. Thus not only is every form of Gods Word doctrine, but in its fertilising effects on the soul may most appropriately be compared to the dropping rain and distilling dew. But in order to understand this gentle character ascribed by Moses to Gods doctrine, you must take heed that you do not fall into several errors which will perplex your belief in the dew-like influence of Divine truth. The first of these errors is to confound the effect of doctrine itself with that outward teaching by which it may often be set forth. The mere manner of teaching is no just criterion of the matter of teaching. There are differences of character which even demand differences of outward instruction. But, secondly, we must warn you against supposing that God does not sometimes adopt an internal as well as an external mode of teaching, which may appear to conflict with the statements of our text. How often do the threatenings of Divine wrath seem to lay hold on the spirit, and for a time keep it shrinking beneath the prospect of inevitable destruction! But notwithstanding these modes of teaching which God may often employ, yet we maintain that the substance of that teaching is what Moses describes it–gentle as the dropping rain, the distilling dew, the small rain, the soft shower. You will remark that the sacred writer declares that his doctrine is to be like small rain on the tender herb; and this sentence it is which explains the entire seeming anomaly we have noticed. Gods truth does not fall like small rain on the hardy, tough, strong herb, but like small rain on the tender herb. There must be a preparation–a softening of the soul to receive the gentle influences of the Gospel. And not only at our first conversion to God, but even afterwards, the herb may become hardened, and require occasional softening, before the small rain is given. The advanced Christian sometimes complains of waves and billows; he hears deep calling to deep at the noise of Gods waterspouts. But the sole reason of this is that there is some deficiency in the tenderness of the herb–some setting up of the head which needs the blast of the storm to bring it low, God loves not to see a proud look; He loves not a stiff-necked obedience; He loves not to find His servant chafing against the bit; He must have the herb tender. The ground being thus prepared, the doctrine of the Lord always drops as the rain and distils as the dew. But let us glance at a few brief practical truths which the imagery of our text suggests.
1. If you are watered by this heavenly dew, it must be all–pervading: Look at the grass after the dew has fallen; it is thoroughly covered with moisture; nothing saturates it so completely; a storm would not wet it half so effectually; the plant is all over the same; no leaf but it sparkles with dewdrops; no blade escapes; all are steeped in dew. Now, is it the same with you? The operation of the Spirit is always total and entire. All things become new where He works.
2. Then, secondly, recollect that another of the characteristics of this dew is its diffusiveness. Not only is the dew the most equal and general giver of moisture, but the plants which receive it pass it on to others. From leaf to leaf, and from blade to blade it falls, so that if you pass through a forest on a dewy morning it is one constant dropping. So must it be with the Christian. He is not only to be influenced by the Spirit himself, but by the aid of the same Spirit he must pass on that influence to others.
3. Thirdly, still another feature of this dew is its fertilising effects. It often falls most heavily at times of the year when drought prevails, and when the plants would otherwise be scorched and withered. Its final effect is not superficial; it does not merely wet the leaves and flowers, but it percolates to the very root. The dew thus develops itself in fruits: it waters the plant, and makes it bring forth abundantly. And so with our dew. Whenever the influences of the Spirit are felt, the fruits of the Spirit are seen.
4. But, lastly, another feature of this dew is that it will prove specially and abundantly operative in the time of trial. It is not when the sun shines that the dew falls; it principally descends when the day is wrapped in evening shades or when the morning is still hidden in twilight, or when dark night has already set in: so likewise is sorrow a time of special dew falling. When have the promises and love of God so gentle and yet powerful an influence as in afflictions sad hour? When are His cheering truths so sweet as when trouble embitters the soul? (D. F. Jarman, M. A.)
The dew of the Word
Distil as the dew. Who hears the dew fall? What microphone could reveal that music to our gross unpurged ears?
1. The dew distils in silence. So does the speech of God. In stillness Gods love is condensed into dew like communications; not read, nor heard, but known by direct power of the Spirit upon the soul. Not much in noise, turmoil, and bustle.
2. The dew distils in darkness. You look out some dark night: there is no storm, no rain, not the least token to your senses of what is going on. In the morning you see every blade and leaf tipped with a dewdrop, everything revived and freshened, prepared for the heat of the day. So His words fall on your souls in darkness, not with sensible power; nothing flashes out from the page, nothing shines to shed pleasant light on your path. You do not hear sound of abundance of rain, but the words are distilling as the dew and preparing you for day.
3. The dew falls not in one mass of water, but innumerable little drops. What one drop does not reach another does. It is not one overwhelmingly powerful word which does this holy night work in the soul, but the unrealised influences of many, dropping silently on the plants of the Lord; one resting here, another there; one touching an unrecognised need, another reaching an unconsciously failing grace. Each drop uncounted hath its own mission, and is duly sent to its own leaf or blade.
4. Sometimes Gods dew goes on falling many hours of night. Watches seem long, and starlight does not reveal it. But none is lost; some is already doing hidden work as it falls around the very roots of our being, some ready to be revealed in sparkling brightness when the night is over; lessons learnt among the shadows to be lived out in the sunshine.
5. The object of the dew is to maintain life in dry places and seasons. In rainless regions this is better understood. Any dry week in summer we see enough to understand the beauty of the figure. This speech is spirit and life to souls, however feebly, yet really alive to God. Dew does nothing for stones, nor a dead leaf. It falls on little fading plants, whose leaves absorb life, renewing moisture, and closed blossoms open out again with fresher fragrance than before. Dryness is more to be dreaded than darkness. (F. R. Havergal.)
Genuine religious teaching
I. Genuine religious teaching is gentle. Descends on the soul as the dew and small rain. The great religious teachers have been quiet talkers.
II. Genuine religious teaching is penetrating. Goes down through the intellect into the conscience and heart.
III. Genuine religious teaching is refreshing. Descends with quickening influence into the soul. (Homilist.)
Soothing nature of Christian doctrine
The lovely gentleness, the refreshing and cheering nature, of Divine doctrine is here most beautifully set forth. And, indeed, very useful is it that the amiable character of our blessed religion should be as much as possible presented to the view of men. For could they once see it they would be so in love with its beauty that their whole soul would be ravished with delight in thinking of it, and would teem with desire to be effectually possessed of it. But how is the beauty of religion to be shown to men? It cannot be really apprehended but by experience. Wherefore offer a fervent prayer to heaven for grace to dispose your hearts to receive this Word. We cannot be surprised at finding the yoke easy and the burden light of that Master who is thus meek and lowly in heart. He graciously promises that if we take this yoke upon us we shall find rest to our souls. This doctrine does, indeed, drop upon the souls of troubled sinners with the softness of a gentle rain falling upon a fleece of wool. Is, then, all forgiven? Am I cleansed from all my sin, relieved from all my guilt? Am I at peace with God? Do I partake of His love? Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, and whose sin is covered. But when we come to consider the new life, the service of Christ, which must follow if we are to walk in favour with God, shall we then find this comfort and gentleness of Christian doctrine? Most assuredly we shall in the doctrine itself. The resistance which our passions and inclinations make to the Divine law causes all the discomfort and painfulness in submitting our hearts to be ruled by it. But it may be acknowledged that holiness of heart and life when attained may be comfortable, delightful; and yet a man may say, Doubtless it would be good for me to give up my unchaste and intemperate manner of living, but I cannot endure the self-denial necessary for it. A man may say, It would be good indeed for me to be a devoted servant of Jesus, but I don t know how to tear myself from my old habits, and leave my feigner companions. Could I see all this done, see myself become a new creature, and become associated with religious people, I believe that I could be happy. But now think of this one thing. What kind of Master are you called upon to serve? Is it not Jesus Christ, the kind and forbearing? Will not He be a gentle Master to you? With what gentleness is He represented administering spiritual food to the souls of His people! How considerate is He set forth of the different spiritual condition and circumstances of men, how tender to those who are in weakness, or in a great trial and difficulty! By the gentle influences of the Holy Spirit He can convert the soul, and change all its dispositions and affections. Thus will Jesus, in the most-gentle and yet the most powerful manner, lead those who commit themselves to Him. (R. L. Cotton, M. A.)
Doctrine as rain; speech as dew
The earth without rain cannot grow one tiny grass blade; when the clouds keep away the flowers hang down their heads, and shrivel and burn, and represent the very spirit of necessity and pain. We must have the black clouds; how welcome they are after a time of drought and scorching, when the earth is opening its mouth and asking for a draught of water! So Gods doctrine is to be poured out upon thirsty souls, burnt and scorched lives, ruined and unproductive natures. The rain plash is a sweet music, a tender appeal, a liquid persuasion. The rain will accommodate itself to all forms and shapes, and it will impartially visit the poor mans little handful of garden and the great mans countless acres. Such is the Gospel of Christ: it is impartial, gentle, necessary; it finds the heart when the heart is scorched, and asks to heal its burning, and to make the barren land of the inner life beautiful with summer flowers. We cannot tell how the Word gets into the heart–how softly, how silently: it is there, and we knew it not; we expected it, and at the very time we were looking out for it, it was already there; it is the secret of the Lord, and it moves by a noble mystery of action, so that no line can be laid upon it, and no man may arbitrarily handle the wealth of gold. As the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass. There shall be adaptation between the one and the other: if the herb is tender the rain must be small. Do not thunder upon us with Thy great power; do not plead against us with all the winds of Thine eloquence, for who could stand against the storm? On the other hand, the tenderer the grass the better it can bear even the scudding shower and the heavy downpour. Great trees are torn, or wrenched from their roots, or are thrust down in contempt, but all the grass of the meadow is but the greener for the winds which have galloped over it, or the great rivers that have poured themselves upon the emerald bed. Jesus will bless the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace loving; but as for those who in heathen vanity set themselves up against Him, He will dash them in pieces like a potters vessel. The Word does not always produce an instantaneous effect: the Word has sometimes to filter well down into the thought and into the heart and life; and the Word does not report itself in the mere quantity of the doctrine, but in the greenness of the young grass, in the beauty and fruitfulness of the tender herb: no statistical return shall be made of the number of discourses heard, or the number of chapters read, but the life shall be the more verdant in spring-like beauty, and the more splendid in all the colouring of summer. (J. Parker, D. D.)
As the small rain upon the tender herb.–
Small rain for tender herbs
The highest power is consistent with the lowliest tenderness. He that is mightiest in word is mighty, not so much in thunder, and earthquake, and fire, as in a silent persuasiveness.
I. Moses meant to be tender. Moses intended, in the sermon he was about to preach, to be exceedingly gentle. He would water minds as tender herbs, and water them in the same fashion as the small rain does. He would not be a beating hail, nor even a down-pouring shower, but he would be as the small rain upon the tender herb.
1. And this is the more remarkable, because he was about to preach a doctrinal sermon. Does he not say, My doctrine shall drop as the rain?
2. It is equally remarkable that this discourse of Moses was a sermon of rebuke, lie rebuked the people, with no small degree of sternness, when he said, Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked; thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick; then he forsook God which made him. He warned the people of their great sin, and he did not hesitate to say, They are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. Yet he felt that he had rebuked with the utmost meekness, and had still been as the soft dew and gentle rain. Upbraiding must be done in tenderness.
3. Furthermore, his style of speech was compassionately considerate, even as the dew seems to consider the withered grass, and the small rain to adapt itself to the tender herb. In his teaching he evidently thought of the feebler sort, and suited himself to those depressed by grief.
4. Furthermore, note well that the truth which our Lord spoke had always a refreshing effect upon those who were spiritually alive,. Our blessed Masters sermons were as the small rain upon the tender herb, not merely for the softness of their descent, but for the wondrous efficacy with which they came. His words fell not as fire flakes to destroy, nor as the dust from the wilderness to defile, but ever as the warm shower to cherish. So we learn that Moses meant to be tender, and Jesus was tender. What else do we learn?
5. Why, that all the servants of Jesus Christ ought to he tender; for if Moses was so, much more should we be.
II. Moses hoped to be penetrating: as the small rain upon the tender herb. Now, small rain is meant to enter the herb, so that it may drink in the nourishment and be truly refreshed. The rain is not to drench the herb, and it is not to flood it; it is to feed it, to revive it. This was what Moses aimed at. That is what all true preachers of Christ aim at. Why is it some people never seem to take in the Word, as the small rain upon the tender herb?
1. I suppose it is, first, because some of it may be above their understanding. If you hear a sermon, and you do not know at all what the good man is about, how can it benefit you?
2. Many do not drink in the sacred Word because it seems to them too good to be true. This is limiting the goodness of God: God is so good that nothing can be too good to be looked for from Him.
3. Many persons do not receive the Gospel promise to the full because they do not think it is true to them; anybody else may be blessed in that way, but they cannot think it probable that they shall be. Though the Gospel is particularly directed to sinners, yet these good folks think, Surely grace could never reach to us. Oh, how we lose our labour, and fail to comfort men, because of the unbelief which pretends to be the child of humility, but is really the offspring of pride! The small rain does not get at the tender herb, because the herb shrinks from the silver drops which would cherish it.
4. No doubt many miss the charming influences of heavenly truth because they do not think enough. Is it not strange that people should think sermons worth hearing, but not worth meditating upon? It is as foolish as if a man thought a joint of meat worth buying, but not worth cooking; for meditation is, as it were, a sort of holy cookery by which the truth is prepared to be food for the soul.
5. And, once more, we ought to pray that when we hear the Word we may be prepared to receive it: it is of great importance that we should open the doors of our soul to let the Gospel enter us. Hospitality to truth is charity to ourselves.
III. Moses hoped to see results. As the small rain upon the tender herb. Now, observe, in looking about among mankind, that whenever wise men expect any result from their labours, they always go to work in a manner adapted to the end they have in view. Finding the people to be comparable to tender herbs, he adapted his speech to them, and made it like the small rain. Now, what will be the result if we do the same? It will come to pass there will be among us young converts like tender herbs, newly planted, and if we speak in tenderness we shall see the result, for they will take root in the truth, and grow in it. Paul planted, and then Apollos watered. Why did Apollos water? Because you must water plants after you have planted them, that they may the more readily strike into the earth. Happy shall you be if you employ your greater experience in strengthening those whose new life is as yet feeble. Next, when a mans discourse is like small ram to the tender herb, he sees the weak and perishing one revive and lift up his head. The herb was withering at first, it lay down faint and ready to die; but the small rain came, and it seemed to say, Thank you, and it looked up, and lifted its head, and recovered from its swoon. You will see a reviving effect produced upon faint hearts and desponding minds. You will be a comforter, you will cheer away the fears of many, and make glad the timid and fearful. What a blessing it is when you see that result, for there is so much the more joy in the world, and God is so much the more glorified! When you water tender herbs, and see them grow, you have a further reward. It is delightful to watch the development and increase of grace in those who are under our care. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XXXII
The prophetical and historical song of Moses, showing forth the
nature of God’s doctrine, 1-3.
The character of God, 4.
The corruption of the people, 5, 6.
They are called to remember God’s kindness, 7,
and his dealings with them during their travels in the
wilderness, 8-14.
Their ingratitude and iniquity, 15-18.
They are threatened with his judgments, 19-28.
A pathetic lamentation over them because of their sins, 29-35.
Gracious purposes in their behalf, mixed with reproaches for
their manifold idolatries, and threatenings against his enemies,
36-42.
A promise of salvation to the Gentiles, 43.
Moses, having finished the song, warmly exhorts the people to
obedience, 44-47.
God calls him up to the mount, that he may see the good land and
then die, 48-52.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXXII
Verse 1. On the inimitable excellence of this ode much has been written by commentators, critics, and poets; and it is allowed by the best judges to contain a specimen of almost every species of excellence in composition. It is so thoroughly poetic that even the dull Jews themselves found they could not write it in the prose form; and hence it is distinguished as poetry in every Hebrew Bible by being written in its own hemistichs or short half lines, which is the general form of the Hebrew poetry; and were it translated in the same way it would be more easily understood. The song itself has suffered both by transcribers and translators, the former having mistaken some letters in different places, and made wrong combinations of them in others. As to the translators, most of them have followed their own fancy, from good Mr. Ainsworth, who ruined it by the most inanimate rhyming version, to certain latter poets, who have cast it unhallowedly into a European mould. See the observations at the end of the chapter. See Clarke on De 32:52“.
Give ear, O ye heavens] Let angels and men hear, and let this testimony of God be registered both in heaven and earth. Heaven and earth are appealed to as permanent witnesses.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
O ye heavens, and, O earth: either,
1. Angels and men; or,
2. You lifeless and senseless creatures, heaven and earth, which he calls upon partly to accuse the stupidity of Israel, that were more dull of hearing than these; and partly as witnesses of the truth of his sayings, and the justice of Gods proceedings against them.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. Give ear, O ye heavens; . . .hear, O earthThe magnificence of the exordium, the grandeur ofthe theme, the frequent and sudden transitions, the elevated strainof the sentiments and language, entitle this song to be rankedamongst the noblest specimens of poetry to be found in theScriptures.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth,
the words of my mouth. This song is prefaced and introduced in a very grand and pompous manner, calling on the heavens and earth to give attention; by which they themselves may be meant, by a “prosopopaeia”, a figure frequently used in Scripture, when things of great moment and importance are spoken of; and these are called upon to hearken, either to rebuke the stupidity and inattention of men, or to show that these would shed or withhold their influences, their good things, according to the obedience or disobedience of Israel; or because these are durable and lasting, and so would ever be witnesses for God and against his people: Gaon, as Aben Ezra observes, by the heavens understands the angels, and by the earth the men of the earth, the inhabitants of both worlds, which is not amiss: and by these words of Moses are meant the words of the song, referred to in De 31:29; here called his words, not because they were of him, but because they were put into his mouth, and about to be expressed by him, not in his own name, but in the name of the Lord; and not as the words of the law, which came by him, but as the words and doctrines of the Gospel concerning Christ, of whom Moses here writes; whose character he gives, and whose person and office he vindicates against the Jews, whom he accuses and brings a charge of ingratitude against for rejecting him, to which our Lord seems to refer, Joh 5:45; the prophecies of their rejection, the calling of the Gentiles, the destruction of the Jews by the Romans, and the miseries they should undergo, and yet should not be wholly extirpated out of the world, but continue a people, who in the latter days would be converted, return to their own land, and their enemies be destroyed; which are some of the principal things in this song, and which make it worthy of attention and observation.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The Song of Moses. – In accordance with the object announced in Deu 31:19, this song contrasts the unchangeable fidelity of the Lord with the perversity of His faithless people. After a solemn introduction pointing out the importance of the instruction about to be given (Deu 32:1-3), this thought is placed in the foreground as the theme of the whole: the Lord is blameless and righteous in His doings, but Israel acts corruptly and perversely; and this is carried out in the first place by showing the folly of the Israelites in rebelling against the Lord (Deu 32:6-18); secondly, by unfolding the purpose of God to reject and punish the rebellious generation (Deu 32:19-23); and lastly, by announcing and depicting the fulfilment of this purpose, and the judgment in which the Lord would have mercy upon His servants and annihilate His foes (Deu 32:34-43).
The song embraces the whole of the future history of Israel, and bears all the marks of a prophetic testimony from the mouth of Moses, in the perfectly ideal picture which it draws, on the one hand, of the benefits and blessings conferred by the Lord upon His people; and on the other hand, of the ingratitude with which Israel repaid its God for them all. “This song, soaring as it does to the loftiest heights, moving amidst the richest abundance of pictures of both present and future, with its concise, compressed, and pictorial style, rough, penetrating, and sharp, but full of the holiest solemnity, a witness against the disobedient nation, a celebration of the covenant God, sets before us in miniature a picture of the whole life and conduct of the great man of God, whose office it pre-eminently was to preach condemnation” ( O. v. Gerlach). – It is true that the persons addressed in this ode are not the contemporaries of Moses, but the Israelites in Canaan, when they had grown haughty in the midst of the rich abundance of its blessings, and had fallen away from the Lord, so that the times when God led the people through the wilderness to Canaan are represented as days long past away. But this, the stand-point of the ode, is not to be identified with the poet’s own time. It is rather a prophetic anticipation of the future, which has an analogon in a poet’s absorption in an ideal future, and differs from this merely in the certainty and distinctness with which the future is foreseen and proclaimed. The assertion that the entire ode moves within the epoch of the kings who lived many centuries after the time of Moses, rests upon a total misapprehension of the nature of prophecy, and a mistaken attempt to turn figurative language into prosaic history. In the whole of the song there is not a single word to indicate that the persons addressed were “ already sighing under the oppression of a wild and hostile people, the barbarous hordes of Assyrians or Chaldeans” ( Ewald, Kamphausen, etc.).
(Note: How little firm ground there is for this assertion in the contents of the ode, is indirectly admitted even by Kamphausen himself in the following remarks: “The words of the ode leave us quite in the dark as to the author;” and “if it were really certain that Deuteronomy was composed by Moses himself, the question as to the authenticity of the ode would naturally be decided in the traditional way.” Consequently, the solution of the whole is to be found in the dictum, that “the circumstances which are assumed in any prophecy as already existing, and to which the prophetic utterances are appended as to something well known (?), really determine the time of the prophet himself;” and, according to this canon, which is held up as “certain and infallible,” but which is really thoroughly uncritical, and founded upon the purely dogmatic assumption that any actual foreknowledge of the future is impossible, the ode before us is to be assigned to a date somewhere about 700 years before Christ.)
The Lord had indeed determined to reject the idolatrous nation, and excite it to jealousy through those that were “no people,” and to heap up all evils upon it, famine, pestilence, and sword; but the execution of this purpose had not yet taken place, and, although absolutely certain, was in the future still. Moreover, the benefits which God had conferred upon His people, were not of such a character as to render it impossible that they should have been alluded to by Moses. All that the Lord had done for Israel, by delivering it from bondage and guiding it miraculously through the wilderness, had been already witnessed by Moses himself; and the description in Deu 32:13 and Deu 32:14, which goes beyond that time, is in reality nothing more than a pictorial expansion of the thought that Israel was most bountifully provided with the richest productions of the land of Canaan, which flowed with milk and honey. It is true, the satisfaction of Israel with these blessings had not actually taken place in the time of Moses, but was still only an object of hope; but it was hope of such a kind, that Moses could not cherish a moment’s doubt concerning it. Throughout the whole we find no allusions to peculiar circumstances or historical events belonging to a later age. – On the other hand, the whole circle of ideas, figures, and words in the ode points decidedly to Moses as the author. Even if we leave out of sight the number of peculiarities of style ( . ), which is by no means inconsiderable, and such bold original composite words as ( not-God, Deu 32:21; cf. Deu 32:17) and ( not-people, Deu 32:21), which might point to a very remote antiquity, and furnish evidence of the vigour of the earliest poetry, – the figure of the eagle in Deu 32:11 points back to Exo 19:4; the description of God as a rock in Deu 32:4, Deu 32:15, Deu 32:18, Deu 32:30, Deu 32:31, Deu 32:37, recalls Gen 49:24; the fire of the wrath of God, burning even to the world beneath (Deu 32:22), points to the representation of God in Deu 4:24 as a consuming fire; the expression “to move to jealousy,” in Deu 32:16 and Deu 32:21, recalls the “jealous God” in Deu 4:24; Deu 6:15; Exo 20:5; Exo 34:14; the description of Israel as children (sons) in Deu 32:5, and “children without faithfulness” in Deu 32:20, suggests Deu 14:1; and the words, “O that they were wise,” in Deu 32:29, recall Deu 4:6, “a wise people.” Again, it is only in the Pentateuch that the word ( greatness, Deu 32:3) is used to denote the greatness of God (vid., Deu 3:24; Deu 5:21; Deu 9:26; Deu 11:2; Num 14:19); the name of honour given to Israel in Deu 32:15, viz., Jeshurun, only occurs again in Deu 33:5 and Deu 33:26, with the exception of Isa 44:2, where it is borrowed from these passages; and the plural form , in Deu 32:7, is only met with again in the prayer of Moses, viz., Psa 90:15.
Deu 32:1-5 “ Introduction and Theme. – in the introduction (Deu 32:1-3), – “ Give ear, O ye heavens, I will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. Let my doctrine drop as the rain, let my speech fall as the dew; as showers upon green, and rain-drops upon herb, for I will publish the name of the Lord; give ye greatness to our God,” – Moses summons heaven and earth to hearken to his words, because the instruction which he was about to proclaim concerned both heaven and earth, i.e., the whole universe. It did so, however, not merely as treating of the honour of its Creator, which was disregarded by the murmuring people ( Kamphausen), or to justify God, as the witness of the righteousness of His doings, in opposition to the faithless nation, when He punished it for its apostasy (just as in Deu 4:26; Deu 30:19; Deu 31:28-29, heaven and earth are appealed to as witnesses against rebellious Israel), but also inasmuch as heaven and earth would be affected by the judgment which God poured out upon faithless Israel and the nations, to avenge the blood of His servants (Deu 32:43); since the faithfulness and righteousness of God would thus become manifest in heaven and on earth, and the universe be sanctified and glorified thereby. The vav consec. before expresses the desired or intended sequel: so that I may then speak, or “so will I then speak” (vid., Khler on Hagg. p. 44, note).
Deu 32:2-3 But because what was about to be announced was of such importance throughout, he desired that the words should trickle down like rain and dew upon grass and herb. The point of comparison lies in the refreshing, fertilizing, and enlivening power of the dew and rain. Might the song exert the same upon the hearts of the hearers. , accepting, then, in a passive sense, that which is accepted, instruction (doctrine, Pro 16:21, Pro 16:23; Isa 29:24). To “ publish the name of the Lord: ” lit., call, i.e., proclaim (not “call upon”), or praise. It was not by himself alone that Moses desired to praise the name of the Lord; the hearers of his song were also to join in this praise. The second clause requires this: “ give ye (i.e., ascribe by word and conduct) greatness to our God.” , applied here to God (as in Deu 3:24; Deu 5:21; Deu 9:26; Deu 11:2), which is only repeated again in Psa 150:2, is the greatness manifested by God in His acts of omnipotence; it is similar in meaning to the term “glory” in Psa 29:1-2; Psa 96:7-8.
Deu 32:4-5 “ The Rock – blameless is His work; for all His ways are right: a God of faithfulness, and without injustice; just and righteous is He. Corruptly acts towards Him, not His children; their spot, a perverse and crooked generation.” is placed first absolutely, to give it the greater prominence. God is called “the rock,” as the unchangeable refuge, who grants a firm defence and secure resort to His people, by virtue of His unchangeableness or impregnable firmness (see the synonym, “ the Stone of Israel,” in Gen 49:24). This epithet points to the Mosaic age; and this is clearly shown by the use made of this title of God ( Zur ) in the construction of surnames in the Mosaic era; such, for example, as Pedahzur (Num 1:10), which is equivalent to Pedahel (“God-redeemed,” Num 34:28), Elizur (Num 1:5), Zuriel (Num 3:35), and Zurishaddai ( Num 1:6; Num 2:12). David, who had so often experienced the rock-like protection of his God, adopted it in his Psalms (2Sa 22:3, 2Sa 22:32 = Psa 18:3, Psa 18:32; also Ps. 19:15; Psa 31:3-4; Psa 71:3). Perfect (i.e., blameless, without fault or blemish) is His work; for His ways, which He adopts in His government of the world, are right. As the rock, He is “a God of faithfulness,” upon which men may rely and build in all the storms of life, and “without iniquity,” i.e., anything crooked or false in His nature.
Deu 32:5 His people Israel, on the contrary, had acted corruptly towards Him. The subject of “acted corruptly” is the rebellious generation of the people but before this subject there is introduced parenthetically, and in apposition, “not his children, but their spot.” Spot ( mum) is used here in a moral sense, as in Pro 9:7; Job 11:15; Job 31:7, equivalent to stain. The rebellious and ungodly were not children of the Lord, but a stain upon them. If these words had stood after the actual subject, instead of before them, they would have presented no difficulty. This verse is the original of the expression, “children that are corrupters,” in Isa 1:4.
Deu 32:6-18 Expansion of the theme according to the thought expressed in Deu 32:5. The perversity of the rebellious generation manifested itself in the fact, that it repaid the Lord, to whom it owed existence and well-being, for all His benefits, with a foolish apostasy from its Creator and Father. This thought is expressed in Deu 32:6, in a reproachful question addressed to the people, and then supported in Deu 32:7-14 by an enumeration of the benefits conferred by God, and in Deu 32:15-18 by a description of the ingratitude of the people.
Deu 32:6 “ Will ye thus repay the Lord? thou foolish people and unwise! Is He not thy Father, who hath founded thee, who hath made thee and prepared thee? ” , the primary idea of which is doubtful, signifies properly to show, or do, for the most part good, but sometimes evil (vid., Psa 7:5). For the purpose of painting the folly of their apostasy distinctly before the eyes of the people, Moses crowds words together to describe what God was to the nation – “ thy Father,” to whose love Israel was indebted for its elevation into an independent people: comp. Isa 63:16, where Father and Redeemer are synonymous terms, with Isa 64:7, God the Father, Israel the clay which He had formed, and Mal 2:10, where God as Father is said to have created Israel; see also the remarks at Deu 14:1 on the notion of Israel’s sonship. – , He has acquired thee; , , to get, acquire (Gen 4:1), then so as to involve the idea of (Gen 14:9), though without being identical with . It denotes here the founding of Israel as a nation, by its deliverance out of the power of Pharaoh. The verbs which follow ( made and established) refer to the elevation and preparation of the redeemed nation, as the nation of the Lord, by the conclusion of a covenant, the giving of the law, and their guidance through the desert.
Deu 32:7 “ Remember the days of old, consider the years of the past generations: ask thy father, that he may make known to thee; thine old men, that they may tell it to thee! ” With these words Moses summons the people to reflect upon what the Lord had done to them. The days of old ( ), and years of generation and generation, i.e., years through which one generation after another had lived, are the times of the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, including the pre-Mosaic times, and also the immediate post-Mosaic, when Israel had entered into the possession of Canaan. These times are described by Moses as a far distant past, because he transported himself in spirit to the “latter days” (Deu 31:29), when the nation would have fallen away from its God, and would have been forsaken and punished by God in consequence. “ Days of eternity ” are times which lie an eternity behind the speaker, not necessarily, however, before all time, but simply at a period very far removed from the present, and of which even the fathers and old men could only relate what had been handed down by tradition to them.
Deu 32:8-9 “ When the Most High portioned out inheritance to the nations, when He divided the children of men; He fixed the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the sons of Israel: for the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob the cord of His inheritance.” Moses commences his enumeration of the manifestations of divine mercy with the thought, that from the very commencement of the forming of nations God had cared for His people Israel. The meaning of Deu 32:8 is given in general correctly by Calvin: “In the whole arrangement of the world God had kept this before Him as the end: to consult the interests of His chosen people.” The words, “when the Most High portioned out inheritance to the nations,” etc., are not to be restricted to the one fact of the confusion of tongues and division of the nations as described in Gen 11, but embrace the whole period of the development of the one human family in separate tribes and nations, together with their settlement in different lands; for it is no doctrine of the Israelitish legend, as Kamphausen supposes, that the division of the nations was completed once for all. The book of Genesis simply teaches, that after the confusion of tongues at the building of the tower of Babel, God scattered men over the entire surface of the earth (Deu 11:9), and that the nations were divided, i.e., separate nations were formed from the families of the sons of Noah ( Gen 10:32); that is to say, the nations were formed in the divinely-appointed way of generation and multiplication, and so spread over the earth. And the Scriptures say nothing about a division of the countries among the different nations at one particular time; they simply show, that, like the formation of the nations from families and tribes, the possession of the lands by the nations so formed was to be traced to God, – was the work of divine providence and government, – whereby God so determined the boundaries of the nations (“the nations” are neither the tribes of Israel, nor simply the nations round about Canaan, but the nations generally), that Israel might receive as its inheritance a land proportioned to its numbers.
(Note: The Septuagint rendering, “according to the number of the angels of God,” is of no critical value, – in fact, is nothing more than an arbitrary interpretation founded upon the later Jewish notion of guardian angels of the different nations (Sir. 17:14), which probably originated in a misunderstanding of Deu 4:19, as compared with Dan 10:13, Dan 10:20-21, and Dan 12:1.)
Deu 32:9 God did this, because He had chosen Israel as His own nation, even before it came into existence. As the Lord’s people of possession (cf. Deu 7:6; Deu 10:15, and Exo 19:5), Israel was Jehovah’s portion, and the inheritance assigned to Him. , a cord, or measure, then a piece of land measured off; here it is figuratively applied to the nation.
Deu 32:10-14 He had manifested His fatherly care and love to Israel as His own property.
Deu 4:10 “ He found him in the land of the desert, and in the wilderness, the howling of the steppe; He surrounded him, took care of him, protected him as the apple of His eye.” These words do not “relate more especially to the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai” ( Luther), nor merely to all the proofs of the paternal care with which God visited His people in the desert, to lead them to Sinai, there to adopt them as His covenant nation, and then to guide them to Canaan, to the exclusion of their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt. The reason why Moses does not mention this fact, or the passage through the Red Sea, is not to be sought for, either solely or even in part, in the fact that “the song does not rest upon the stand-point of the Mosaic times;” for we may see clearly that distance of time would furnish no adequate ground for “singling out and elaborating certain points only from the renowned stories of old,” say from the 105th Psalm, which no one would think of pronouncing an earlier production than this song. Nor is it because the gracious help of God, which the people experienced up to the time of the exodus from Egypt, was inferior in importance to the divine care exercised over it during the march through the desert (a fact which would need to be proved), or because the solemn conclusion of the covenant, whereby Israel first because the people of God, took place during the sojourn at Sinai, that Moses speaks of God as finding the people in the desert and adopting them there; but simply because it was not his intention to give a historical account of the acts performed by God upon and towards Israel, but to describe how Israel was in the most helpless condition when the Lord had compassion upon it, to take it out of that most miserable state in which it must have perished, and bring it into the possession of the richly-blessed land of Canaan. The whole description of what the Lord did for Israel (Deu 32:10-14) is figurative; Israel is represented as a man in the horrible desert, and in danger of perishing in the desolate waste, where not only bread and water had failed, but where ravenous beasts lay howling in wait for human life, when the Lord took him up and delivered him out of all distress. The expression “found him” is also to be explained from this figure. Finding presupposes seeking, and in the seeking the love which goes in search of the loved on is manifested. Also the expression “land of the desert” – a land which is a desert, without the article defining the desert more precisely – shows that the reference is not to the finding of Israel in the desert of Arabia, and that these words are not to be understood as relating to the fact, that when His people entered the desert the Lord appeared to them in the pillar of cloud and fire (Exo 13:20, Schultz). For although the figure of the desert is chosen, because in reality the Lord had led Israel through the Arabian desert to Canaan, we must not so overlook the figurative character of the whole description as to refer the expression “ in a desert land” directly and exclusively to the desert of Arabia. The measures adopted by the Pharaohs, the object of which was the extermination or complete suppression of Israel, made even Egypt a land of desert to the Israelites, where they would inevitably have perished if the Lord had not sought, found, and surrounded them there. To depict still further the helpless and irremediable situation of Israel, the idea of the desert is heightened still further by the addition of , “ and in fact ( is explanatory) in a waste,” or wilderness ( tohu recalls Gen 1:2). “ Howling of the desert ” is in apposition to tohu ( waste), and not a genitive dependent upon it, viz., “waste of the howling of the desert, or of the desert in which wild beasts howl” ( Ewald), as if stood after . “Howling of the desert” does not mean the desert in which wild beasts howl, but the howling which is heard in the desert of wild beasts. The meaning of the passage, therefore, is “in the midst of the howling of the wild beasts of the desert.” This clause serves to strengthen the idea of tohu (waste), and describes the waste as a place of the most horrible howling of wild beasts. It was in this situation that the Lord surrounded His people. , to surround with love and care, not merely to protect (vid., Psa 26:6; Jer 31:22). , from or , to pay attention, in the sense of “not to lose sight of them.” “To keep as the apple of the eye” is a figurative description of the tenderest care. The apple of the eye is most carefully preserved (vid., Psa 17:8; Pro 7:2).
Deu 32:11 “ As an eagle, which stirreth up its nest and soars over its young, He spread out His wings, took him up, carried him upon His wings.” Under the figure of an eagle, which teaches its young to fly, and in doing so protects them from injury with watchful affection, Moses describes the care with which the Lord came to the relief of His people in their helplessness, and assisted them to develop their strength. This figure no doubt refers more especially to the protection and assistance of God experienced by Israel in its journey through the Arabian desert; but it must not be restricted to this. It embraces both the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt by the outstretched arm of the Lord, as we may see from a comparison with Exo 19:4, where the Lord is said to have brought His people out of Egypt upon eagles’ wings, and also the introduction into Canaan, when the Lord drove the Canaanites out from before them and destroyed them. This verse contains an independent thought; the first half is the protasis, the second the apodosis. The nominative to “spreadeth abroad” is Jehovah; and the suffixes in and (“taketh” and “beareth”) refer to Israel or Jacob (Deu 32:9), like the suffixes in Deu 32:10. As cannot open a sentence like , we must supply the relative after . , to waken up, rouse up its nest, i.e., to encourage the young ones to fly. It is rendered correctly by the Vulgate, provocans ad volandum pullos suos; and freely by Luther, “bringeth out its young.” “ Soareth over its young: ” namely, in order that, when they were attempting to fly, if any were in danger of falling through exhaustion, it might take them at once upon its powerful wings, and preserve them from harm. Examples of this, according to the popular belief, are given by Bochart ( Hieroz. ii. p. 762). , from to be loose or slack ( Jer 23:9): in the Piel it is applied to a bird in the sense of loosening its wings, as distinguished from binding its wings to its body; hence (1) to sit upon eggs with loosened wings, and (2) to fly with loosened wings. Here it is used in the latter sense, because the young are referred to. The point of comparison between the conduct of God towards Jacob and the acts of an eagle towards its young, is the loving care with which He trained Israel to independence. The carrying of Israel upon the eagle’s wings of divine love and omnipotence was manifested in the most glorious way in the guidance of it by the pillar of cloud and fire, though it was not so exclusively in this visible vehicle of the gracious presence of God as that the comparison can be restricted to this phenomenon alone. Luther’s interpretation is more correct than this – “Moses points out in these words, how He fostered them in the desert, bore with their manners, tried them and blessed them that they might learn to fly, i.e., to trust in Him,” – except that the explanation of the expression “to fly” is narrowed too much.
Deu 32:12-14 “ The Lord alone did lead him, and with Him was no strange god. He made him drive over the high places of the earth, and eat the productions of the field; and made him suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flint-stone. Cream of cattle, and milk of the flock, with the fat of lambs, and rams of Bashan’s kind, and bucks, with the kidney-fat of wheat: and grape-blood thou drankest as fiery wine.” Moses gives prominence to the fact that Jehovah alone conducted Israel, to deprive the people of every excuse for their apostasy from the Lord, and put their ingratitude in all the stronger light. If no other god stood by the Lord to help Him, He had thereby laid Israel under the obligation to serve Him alone as its God. “ With Him ” refers to Jehovah, and not to Israel.
Deu 32:13-14 The Lord caused the Israelites to take possession of Canaan with victorious power, and enter upon the enjoyment of its abundant blessings. The phrase, “to cause to drive over the high places of the earth,” is a figurative expression for the victorious subjugation of a land; it is not taken from Psa 18:34, as Ewald assumes, but is original both here and in Deu 33:29. “ Drive ” (ride) is only a more majestic expression for “ advance.” The reference to this passage in Isa 58:14 is unmistakeable. Whoever has obtained possession of the high places of a country is lord of the land. The “high places of the earth” do not mean the high places of Canaan only, although the expression in this instance relates to the possession of Canaan. “ And he (Jacob) ate: ” for, so that he could now eat, the productions of the field, and in fact all the riches of the fruitful land, which are then described in superabundant terms. Honey out of the rock and oil out of the flint-stone, i.e., the most valuable productions out of the most unproductive places, since God so blessed the land that even the rocks and stones were productive. The figure is derived from the fact that Canaan abounds in wild bees, which make their hives in clefts of the rock, and in olive-trees which grow in a rocky soil. “Rock-flints,” i.e., rocky flints. The nouns in Deu 32:14 are dependent upon “to suck” in Deu 32:13, as the expression is not used literally. “Things which are sweet and pleasant to eat, people are in the habit of sucking” ( Ges. thes. p. 601). and (though seems to require a form ; vid., Ewald, 213, b.) denotes the two forms in which the milk yielded by the cattle was used; the latter, milk in general, and the former thick curdled milk, cream, and possibly also butter. The two are divided poetically here, and the cream being assigned to the cattle, and the milk to the sheep and goats. “ The fat of lambs,” i.e., “lambs of the best description laden with fat” ( Vitringa). Fat is a figurative expression for the best (vid., Num 18:12). “ And rams: ” grammatically, no doubt, this might also be connected with “the fat,” but it is improbable from a poetical point of view, since the enumeration would thereby drag prosaically; and it is also hardly reconcilable with the apposition , i.e., reared in Bashan (vid., Eze 39:18), which implies that Bashan was celebrated for its rams, and not merely for its oxen. This epithet, which Kamphausen renders “of Bashan’s kind,” is unquestionably used for the best description of rams. The list becomes poetical, if we take “rams” as an accusative governed by the verb “to suck” (Deu 32:13). “ Kidney-fat (i.e., the best fat) of wheat,” the finest and most nutritious wheat. Wine is mentioned last, and in this case the list passes with poetic freedom into the form of an address. “ Grape-blood ” for red wine (as in Gen 49:11). , from to ferment, froth, foam, lit., the foaming, i.e., fiery wine, serves as a more precise definition of the “blood of the grape.”
Deu 32:15-18 Israel had repaid its God for all these benefits by a base apostasy. – Deu 32:15. “ But Righteous-nation became fat, and struck out – thou becamest fat, thick, gross – and let go God who made him, and despised the rock of his salvation.” So much is certain concerning Jeshurun, that it was an honourable surname given to Israel; that it is derived from , and describes Israel as a nation of just or right men (a similar description to that given by Balaam in Num 23:10), because Jehovah, who is just and right (Deu 32:4), had called it to uprightness, to walk in His righteousness, and chosen it as His servant (Isa 44:2). The prevalent opinion, that Jeshurun is a diminutive, and signifies rectalus , or “little pious” ( Ges. and others), has no more foundation than the derivation from Israel, and the explanation, “little Israel,” since there is no philological proof that the termination un ever had a diminutive signification in Hebrew (see Hengstenberg, Balaam, p. 415); and an appellatio blanda et charitativa is by no means suitable to this passage, much less to Deu 33:5. The epithet Righteous-nation, as we may render Jeshurun, was intended to remind Israel of its calling, and involved the serverest reproof of its apostasy. “By placing the name of righteous before Israel, he censured ironically those who had fallen away from righteousness; and by thus reminding them with what dignity they had been endowed, he upbraided them with the more severity for their guilt of perfidy. For in other places (sc., Deu 33:5, Deu 33:26) Israel is honoured with an eulogium of the same kind, without any such sinister meaning, but with simple regard to its calling; whilst here Moses shows reproachfully how far they had departed from that pursuit of piety, to the cultivation of which they had been called” ( Calvin). The words, “became fat, and struck out,” are founded upon the figure of an ox that had become fat, and intractable in consequence (vid., Isa 10:27; Hos 4:16; and for the fact itself, Deu 6:11; Deu 8:10; Deu 31:20). To sharpen this reproof, Moses repeats the thought in the form of a direct address to the people: “Thou hast become fat, stout, gross.” Becoming fat led to forsaking God, the Creator and ground of its salvation. “A full stomach does not promote piety, for it stands secure, and neglects God” ( Luther). is no doubt a denom. verb from , lit., to treat as a fool, i.e., to despise (vid., Micah. Deu 7:6).
Deu 32:16-18 “ They excited His jealousy through strange (gods), they provoked Him by abominations. They sacrificed to devils, which (were) not-God; to gods whom they knew not, to new (ones) that had lately come up, whom your fathers feared not. The rock which begat thee thou forsookest, and hast forgotten the God that bare thee.” These three verses are only a further expansion of Deu 32:15. Forsaking the rock of its salvation, Israel gave itself up to the service of worthless idols. The expression “ excite to jealousy” is founded upon the figure of a marriage covenant, under which the relation of the Lord to Israel is represented (vid., Deu 31:16, and the com. on Exo 34:15). “This jealousy rests upon the sacred and spiritual marriage tie, by which God had bound the people to Himself” ( Calvin). “Strange gods,” with which Israel committed adultery, as in Jer 2:25; Jer 3:13. The idols are called “abominations” because Jehovah abhorred them (Deu 7:25; Deu 27:15; cf. 2Ki 23:13). signifies demons in Syriac, as it has been rendered by the lxx and Vulgate here; lit., lords, like Baalim. It is also used in Psa 106:37. – “ Not-God,” a composite noun, in apposition to Shedim (devils), like the other expressions which follow: “gods whom they knew not,” i.e., who had not made themselves known to them as gods by any benefit or blessing (vid., Deu 11:28); “new (ones), who had come from near,” i.e., had but lately risen up and been adopted by the Israelites. “Near,” not in a local but in a temporal sense, in contrast to Jehovah, who had manifested and attested Himself as God from of old (Deu 32:7). , to shudder, construed here with an accusative, to experience a holy shuddering before a person, to revere with holy awe. – In Deu 32:18 Moses returns to the thought of Deu 32:15, for the purpose of expressing it emphatically once more, and paving the way for a transition to the description of the acts of the Lord towards His rebellious nation. To bring out still more prominently the base ingratitude of the people, he represents the creation of Israel by Jehovah, the rock of its salvation, under the figure of generation and birth, in which the paternal and maternal love of the Lord to His people had manifested itself. , to twist round, then applied to the pains of childbirth. The . . is to be traced to , and is a pausal form like in Deu 4:33. = , to forget, to neglect.
Deu 32:19-33 For this foolish apostasy the Lord would severely visit His people. This visitation is represented indeed in Deu 32:19, as the consequence of apostasy that had taken place, – not, however, as a punishment already inflicted, but simply as a resolution which god had formed and would carry out, – an evident proof that we have no song here belonging to the time when God visited with severe punishments the Israelites who had fallen into idolatry. In Deu 32:19 the determination to reject the degenerate children is announced, and in Deu 32:20-22 this is still further defined and explained.
Deu 32:19 “ And the Lord saw it, and rejected – from indignation at His sons and daughters.” The object to “saw” may easily be supplied from the context: He saw the idolatry of the people, and rejected those who followed idols, and that because of indignation that His sons and daughters practised such abominations. The expression “he saw” simply serves to bring out the causal link between the apostasy and the punishment. has been very well rendered by Kamphausen, “He resolved upon rejection,” since Deu 32:20. clearly show that the rejection had only been resolved upon by God, and was not yet carried out. In what follows, Moses puts this resolution into the mouth of the Lord Himself.
Deu 32:20-21 “ And He said, I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end will be: for they are a generation full of perversities, children in whom is no faithfulness. They excited My jealousy by a no-god, provoked Me by their vanities: and I also will excite their jealousy by a no-people, provoke them by a foolish nation. For a fire blazes up in My nose, and burns to the lowest hell, and consumes the earth with its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains.” The divine purpose contains two things: – first of all (Deu 32:20) the negative side, to hide the face, i.e., to withdraw His favour and see what their end would be, i.e., that their apostasy would bring nothing but evil and destruction; for they were “a nation of perversities” ( taphuchoth is moral perversity, Pro 2:14; Pro 6:14), i.e., “a thoroughly perverse and faithless generation” ( Knobel); – and then, secondly (Deu 32:21), the positive side, viz., chastisement according to the right of complete retaliation. The Israelites had excited the jealousy and vexation of God by a no-god and vanities; therefore God would excite their jealousy and vexation by a no-people and a foolish nation. How this retaliation would manifest itself is not fully defined however here, but is to be gathered from the conduct of Israel towards the Lord. Israel had excited the jealousy of God by preferring a no-god, or , nothingnesses, i.e., gods that were vanities or nothings ( Elilim , Lev 19:4), to the true and living God, its Father and Creator. God would therefore excite them to jealousy and ill-will by a no-people, a foolish nation, i.e., by preferring a no-people to the Israelites, transferring His favour to them, and giving the blessing which Israel had despised to a foolish nation. It is only with this explanation of the words that full justice is done to the idea of retribution; and it was in this sense that Paul understood this passage as referring to the adoption of the Gentiles as the people of God (Rom 10:19), and that not merely by adaptation, or by connecting another meaning with the words, as Umbreit supposes, but by interpreting it in exact accordance with the true sense of the words.
(Note: But when Kamphausen, on the other hand, maintains that this thought, which the apostle finds in the passage before us, would be “quite erroneous if taken as an exposition of the words,” the assertion is supported by utterly worthless arguments: for example, (1) that throughout this song the exalted heathen are never spoken of as the bride of God, but simply as a rod of discipline used against Israel; (2) that this verse refers to the whole nation of Israel, and there is no trace of any distinction between the righteous and the wicked; and (3) that the idea that God would choose another people as the covenant nation would have been the very opposite of that Messianic hope with which the author of this song was inspired. To begin with the last, the Messianic hope of the song consisted unquestionably in the thought that the Lord would do justice to His people, His servants, and would avenge their blood, even when the strength of the nation should have disappeared (Deu 32:36 and Deu 32:43). But this thought, that the Lord would have compassion upon Israel at last, by no means excludes the reception of the heathen into the kingdom of God, as is sufficiently apparent from Rom 9-11. The assertion that this verse refers to the whole nation is quite incorrect. The plural suffixes used throughout in Deu 32:20 and Deu 32:21 show clearly that both verses simply refer to those who had fallen away from the Lord; and nowhere throughout the whole song is it assumed, that the whole nation would fall away to the very last man, so that there would be no further remnant of faithful servants of the Lord, to whom the Lord would manifest His favour again. And lastly, it is nowhere affirmed that God would simply use the heathen as a rod against Israel. The reference is solely to enemies and oppressors of Israel; and the chastisement of Israel by foes holds the second, and therefore a subordinate, place among the evils with which God would punish the rebellious. It is true that the heathen are not described as the bride of God in this song, but that is for no other reason than because the idea of moving them to jealousy with a not-people is not more fully expanded.)
The adoption of the Gentile world into covenant with the Lord involved the rejection of the disobedient Israel; and this rejection would be consummated in severe judgments, in which the ungodly would perish. In this way the retribution inflicted by the Lord upon the faithless and perverse generation of His sons and daughters becomes a judgment upon the whole world. The jealousy of the Lord blazes up into a fire of wrath, which burns down to sheol. This aspect of the divine retribution comes into the foreground in what follows, from Deu 32:23 onwards; whilst the adoption of the Gentile world, which the Apostle Paul singles out as the leading thought of this verse, in accordance with the special purpose of the song, falls back behind the thought, that the Lord would not utterly destroy Israel, but when all its strength had disappeared would have compassion upon His servants, and avenge their blood upon His foes. The idea of a no-people is to be gathered from the antithesis no-god. As Schultz justly observes, “the expression no-people can no more denote a people of monsters, than the no-god was a monster, by which Israel had excited the Lord to jealousy.” This remark is quite sufficient to show that the opinion of Ewald and others is untenable and false, namely, that “the expression no-people signifies a truly inhuman people, terrible and repulsive.” No-god is a god to whom the predicate of godhead cannot properly be applied; and so also no-people is a people that does not deserve the name of a people or nation at all. The further definition of no-god is to be found in the word “vanities” No-god are the idols, who are called vanities or nothingnesses, because they deceive the confidence of men in their divinity; because, as Jeremiah says (Jer 14:22), they can give no showers of rain or drops of water from heaven. No-people is explained by a “foolish nation.” A “foolish nation” is the opposite of a wise and understanding people, as Israel is called in Deu 4:6, because it possessed righteous statutes and rights in the law of the Lord. The foolish nation therefore is not “an ungodly nation, which despises all laws both human and divine” ( Ros., Maur.), but a people whose laws and rights are not founded upon divine revelation. Consequently the no-people is not “a barbarous and inhuman people” ( Ros.), or “a horde of men that does not deserve to be called a people” ( Maurer), but a people to which the name of a people or nation is to be refused, because its political and judicial constitution is the work of man, and because it has not the true God for its head and king; or, as Vitringa explains, “a people not chosen by the true God, passed by when a people was chosen, shut out from the fellowship and grace of God, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and a stranger from the covenant of promise (Eph 2:12).” In this respect every heathen nation was a “no-people,” even though it might not be behind the Israelites so far as its outward organization was concerned. This explanation cannot be set aside, either by the objection that at that time Israel had brought itself down to the level of the heathen, by its apostasy from the Eternal, – for the notion of people and no-people is not taken from the outward appearance of Israel at any particular time, but is derived from its divine idea and calling, – or by an appeal to the singular, “a foolish nation,” whereas we should expect “foolish nations” to correspond to the “vanities,” if we were to understand by the no-people not one particular heathen nation, but the heathen nations generally. The singular, “ a foolish nation,” was required by the antithesis, upon which it is founded, the “wise nation,” from which the expression no-people first receives its precise definition, which would be altogether obliterated by the plural. Moreover, Moses did not intend to give expression to the thought that God would excite Israel to jealousy by either few, or many, or all the Gentile nations.
Deu 32:22 In Deu 32:22, the determination of the Lord with regard to the faithless generation is explained by the threat, that the wrath of the Lord which was kindled against this faithlessness would set the whole world in flames down to the lowest hell. We may see how far the contents of this verse are from favouring the conclusion that “no-people” means a barbarous and inhuman horde, from the difficulty which the supporters of this view had found in dealing with the word . Ewald renders it doch (yet), in total disregard of the usages of the language; and Venema, certe , profecto (surely); whilst Kamphausen supposes it to be used in a somewhat careless manner. The contents of Deu 32:22, which are introduced with , by no means harmonize with the thought, “I will send a barbarous and inhuman horde;” whilst the announcement of a judgment setting the whole world in flames may form a very suitable explanation of the thought, that the Lord would excite faithless Israel to jealousy by a “ no-people.” This judgment, for example, would make the worthlessness of idols and the omnipotence of the God of Israel manifest in all the earth, and would lead the nations to seek refuge and salvation with the living God; and, as we learn from the history of the kingdom of God, and the allusions of the Apostle Paul to this mystery of the divine counsels, the heathen themselves would be the first to do so when they saw all their power and glory falling into ruins, and then the Israelites, when they saw that God had taken the kingdom from them and raised up the heathen who were converted to Him to be His people. The fire in the nose of the Lord is a figurative description of burning wrath and jealousy (vid., Deu 29:19). The fire signifies really nothing else than His jealousy, His vital energy, and in a certain sense His breath; it therefore naturally burns in the nose (vid., Psa 18:9). In this sense the Lord as “a jealous God” is a consuming fire (vid., Deu 4:24, and the exposition of Exo 3:2). This fire burns down even to the lower hell. The lower hell, i.e., the lowest region of sheol, or the lower regions, forms the strongest contrast to heaven; though we cannot deduce any definite doctrinal conclusions from the expression as to the existence of more hells than one. This fire “consumes the earth with its increase,” i.e., all its vegetable productions, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. This description is not a hyperbolical picture of the judgment which was to fall upon the children of Israel alone ( Kamphausen, Aben-Ezra, etc.); for it is a mistake to suppose that the judgment foretold affected the Israelitish nation only. The thought is weakened by the assumption that the language is hyperbolical. The words are not intended to foretell one particular penal judgment, but refer to judgment in its totality and universality, as realized in the course of centuries in different judgments upon the nations, and only to be completely fulfilled at the end of the world. “ Calvin is right therefore when he says, “As the indignation and anger of God follow His enemies to hell, to eternal flames and infernal tortures, so they devour their land with its produce, and burn the foundations of the mountains;…there is no necessity therefore to imagine that there is any hyperbole in the words, ‘to the lower hell.’” This judgment is then depicted in Deu 32:23-33 as it would discharge itself upon rebellious Israel.
Deu 32:23 “ I will heap up evils upon them, use up My arrows against them.” The evils threatened against the despisers of the Lord and His commandments would be poured out in great abundance by the Lord upon the foolish generation. , to add one upon the other (vid., Num 32:14); hence in Hiphil to heap up, sweep together. These evils are represented in the second clause of the verse as arrows, which the Lord as a warrior would shoot away at his foes (as in Deu 32:42; cf. Psa 38:3; Psa 91:6; Job 6:4). , to bring to an end, to use up to the very last.
Deu 32:24-25 “ Have they wasted away with hunger, are they consumed with pestilential heat and bitter plague: I will let loose the tooth of beasts upon them, with the poison of things that crawl in the dust.” (Deu 32:25) “ If the sword without shall sweep them away, and in the chambers of terrors, the young man as the maiden, the suckling with the grey-haired man.” The evils mentioned are hunger, pestilence, plague, wild beasts, poisonous serpents, and war. The first hemistich in Deu 32:24 contains simply nouns construed absolutely, which may be regarded as a kind of circumstantial clause. The literal meaning is, “With regard to those who are starved with hunger, etc., I will send against them;” i.e., when hunger, pestilence, plague, have brought them to the verge of destruction, I will send, etc. , construct state of , . . with which Cocceius compares and , to suck out, and for which Schultens has cited analogies from the Arabic. “Sucked out by hunger,” i.e., wasted away. “Tooth of beasts and poison of serpents:” poetical for beasts of prey and poisonous animals. See Lev 26:22, where wild beasts are mentioned as a plague along with pestilence, famine, and sword.
Deu 32:25 These are accompanied by the evils of war, which sweeps away the men outside in the slaughter itself by the sword, and the defenceless – viz., youths and maidens, sucklings and old men – in the chambers by alarm. is a sudden mortal terror, and Knobel is wrong in applying it to hunger and plague. The use of the verb , to make childless, is to be explained on the supposition that the nation or land is personified as a mother, whose children are the members of the nation, old and young together. Ezekiel has taken the four grievous judgments out of these two verses: sword, famine, wild beasts, and pestilence (Eze 14:21: see also Eze 5:17, and Jer 15:2-3).
Deu 32:26-28 “ I should say, I will blow them away, I will blot out the remembrance of them among men; if I did not fear wrath upon the enemy, that their enemies might mistake it, that they might say, Our hand was high, and Jehovah has not done all this.” The meaning is, that the people would have deserved to be utterly destroyed, and it was only for His own name’s sake that God abstained from utter destruction. to be construed conditionally requires : if I did not fear (as actually was the case) I should resolve to destroy them, without leaving a trace behind. “ I should say,” used to denote the purpose of God, like “he said” in Deu 32:20. The . . , which has been rendered in very different ways, cannot be regarded, as it is by the Rabbins, as a denom. verb from , a corner; and Calvin’s rendering, “to scatter through corners,” does not suit the context; whilst the meaning, “to cast or scare out of all corners,” cannot be deduced from this derivation. The context requires the signification to annihilate, as the remembrance of them was to vanish from the earth. We get this meaning if we trace it to , to blow, – related to (Isa 42:14) and , from which comes , – in the Hiphil “to blow away,” not to blow asunder. , not “to cause to rest,” but to cause to cease, delere (as in Amo 8:4). “ Wrath upon the enemy,” i.e., “displeasure on the part of God at the arrogant boasting of the enemy, which was opposed to the glory of God” ( Vitringa). , lest, after , to fear. On this reason for sparing Israel, see Deu 9:28; Exo 32:12; Num 14:13.; Isa 10:5. Enemy is a generic term, hence it is followed by the plural. , Piel, to find strange, sc., the destruction of Israel, i.e., to mistake the reason for it, or, as is shown by what follows, to ascribe the destruction of Israel to themselves and their own power, whereas it had been the word of God. “ Our hand was high,” i.e., has lifted itself up or shown itself mighty, an intentional play upon the “high hand” of the Lord (Exo 14:8; cf. Isa 26:11). – The reason why Israel did not deserve to be spared is given in Deu 32:28: “ For a people forsaken of counsel are they, and there is not understanding in them.” “Forsaken of counsel,” i.e., utterly destitute of counsel.
This want of understanding on the part of Israel is still further expounded in Deu 32:29-32, where the words of God pass imperceptibly into the words of Moses, who feels impelled once more to impress the word which the Lord had spoken upon the hearts of the people.
Deu 32:29-31 “ If they were wise, they would understand this, would consider their end. Ah, how could one pursue a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, were it not that their Rock had sold them, and Jehovah had given them up! For their rock is not as our rock; of that our enemies are judges.” presupposes a case, which is either known not to exist, or of which this is assumed; “if they were wise,” which they are not. “This” refers to the leading thought of the whole, viz., that apostasy from God the Lord is sure to be followed by the severest judgment. “ Their end,” as in Deu 32:20, the end towards which the people were going through obstinate perseverance in their sin, i.e., utter destruction, if the Lord did not avert it for His name’s sake.
Deu 32:30 If Israel were wise, it could easily conquer all its foes in the power of its God (vid., Lev 26:8); but as it had forsaken the Lord its rock, He, their (Israel’s) rock, had given them up into the power of the foe. is more emphatic or distinct than only, and introduces an exception which does not permit the desired event to take place. Israel could have put all its enemies to flight were it not that its God had given it entirely up to them (sold them as slaves). The supposition that this had already occurred by no means proves, as Kamphausen believes, “that the poet was speaking of the existing state of the nation,” but merely that Moses thinks of the circumstances as certain to occur when the people should have forsaken their God. The past implied in the verbs “sold” and “given up” is a prophetically idea past or present, but not a real and historical one. The assertion of Hupfeld and Kamphausen, that , as used with special reference to the giving up of a nation into the power of the heathen, “ belongs to a somewhat later usage of the language,” is equally groundless.
Deu 32:31 The giving up of Israel into the power of the heathen arose, not from the superior power of the heathen and their gods, but solely from the apostasy of Israel from its own God. “Our rock,” as Moses calls the Lord, identifying himself with the nation, is not as their rock, i.e., the gods in whom the heathen trust. That the pronoun in “ their rock” refers to the heathen, is so perfectly obvious from the antithesis “ our rock,” that there cannot possibly be any doubt about it. The second hemistich in Deu 32:30 contains a circumstantial clause, introduced to strengthen the thought which precedes it. The heathen themselves could be arbitrators (vid., Exo 21:22), and decide whether the gods of the heathen were not powerless before the God of Israel. “Having experience so often the formidable might of God, they knew for a certainty that the God of Israel was very different from their own idols” ( Calvin). The objection offered by Schultz, namely, that “the heathen would not admit that their idols were inferior to Jehovah, and actually denied this at the time when they had the upper hand ( Isa 10:10-11),” has been quite anticipated by Calvin, when he observes that Moses “leaves the decision to the unbelievers, not as if they would speak the truth, but because he knew that they must be convinced by experience.” As a confirmation of this, Luther and others refer not only to the testimony of Balaam (Num 23 and 24), but also to the Egyptians ( Exo 14:25) and Philistines (1Sa 5:7.), to which we may add Jos 2:9-10.
Deu 32:32-33 “ For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are poisonous grapes, bitter clusters have they. Dragon-poison is their wine, and dreadful venom of asps.” The connection is pointed out by Calovius thus: “Moses returns to the Jews, showing why, although the rock of the Jews was very different from the gods of the Gentiles, even according to the testimony of the heathen themselves, who were their foes, they were nevertheless to be put to flight by their enemies and sold; and why Jehovah sold them, namely, because their vine was of the vine of Sodom, i.e., of the very worst kind, resembling the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, as if they were descended from them, and not from their holy patriarchs.” The “ for ” in Deu 32:32 is neither co-ordinate nor subordinate to that in Deu 32:31. To render it as subordinate would give no intelligible meaning; and the supposition that it is co-ordinate is precluded by the fact, that in that case Deu 32:32 and Deu 32:33 would contain a description of the corruptions of the heathen. The objections to this view have been thus expressed by Schultz with perfect justice: “It is priori inconceivable, that in so short an ode there should be so elaborate a digression on the subject of the heathen, seeing that their folly is altogether foreign to the theme of the whole.” To this we may add, that throughout the Old Testament it is the moral corruption and ungodliness of the Israelites, and never the vices of the heathen, that are compared to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Israelites who were forsaken by the Lord, were designated by Isaiah (Isa 1:10) as a people of Gomorrah, and their rulers as rulers of Sodom (cf. Isa 3:9); the inhabitants of Jerusalem were all of them like Sodom and Gomorrah (Jer 23:14); and the sin of Jerusalem was greater than that of Sodom (Eze 16:46.). The only sense in which the “for” in Deu 32:32 can be regarded as co-ordinate to that in Deu 32:31, is on the supposition that the former gives the reason for the thought in Deu 32:30, whilst the latter serves to support the idea in Deu 32:30. The order of thought is the following: Israel would have been able to smite its foes with very little difficulty, because the gods of the heathen are not a rock like Jehovah; but Jehovah had given up His people to the heathen, because it had brought forth fruits like Sodom, i.e., had resembled Sodom in its wickedness. The vine and its fruits are figurative terms, applied to the nation and its productions. “The nation was not only a degenerate, but also a poisonous vine, producing nothing but what was deadly” ( Calvin). This figure is expanded still further by Isa 5:2. Israel was a vineyard planted by Jehovah, that it might bring forth good fruits, instead of which it brought forth wild grapes (vid., Jer 2:21; Psa 80:9.; Hos 10:1). “Their vine” is the Israelites themselves, their nature being compared to a vine which had degenerated as much as if it had been an offshoot of a Sodomitish vine. , the construct state of , floors, fields. The grapes of this vine are worse than wild grapes is snake-poison. Tannin: see Exo 7:9-10. Pethen: the asp or adder, one of the most poisonous kinds of snake, whose bite was immediately fatal (vid., Rosenmller, bibl. Althk. iv. 2, pp. 364ff.). These figures express the thought, that “nothing could be imagined worse, or more to be abhorred, than that nation” ( Calvin). Now although this comparison simply refers to the badness of Israel, the thought of the penal judgment that fell upon Sodom lies behind. “They imitate the Sodomites, they bring forth the worst fruits of all impiety, they deserve to perish like Sodom” ( J. H. Michaelis).
The description of this judgment commences in Deu 32:34. Israel had deserved for its corruption to be destroyed from the earth (Deu 32:26); yet for His name’s sake the Lord would have compassion upon it, when it was so humiliated with its heavy punishments that its strength was coming to an end.
Deu 32:34 “ Is not this hidden with Me, sealed up in My treasuries? ” The allusion in this verse has been disputed; many refer it to what goes before, others to what follows after. There is some truth in both. The verse forms the transition, closing what precedes, and introducing what follows. The assertion that the figure of preserving in the treasuries precludes the supposition that “ this ” refers to what follows, cannot be sustained. For although in Hos 13:12, and Job 14:17, the binding and sealing of sins in a bundle are spoken of, yet it is very evident from Psa 139:16; Mal 3:16, and Dan 7:10, that not only the evil doings of men, but their days generally, i.e., not only their deeds, but the things which happen to them, are written in a book before God. O. v. Gerlach has explained it correctly: “All these things have been decreed long ago; their coming is infallibly certain.” “ This ” includes not only the sins of the nation, but also the judgments of God. The apostasy of Israel, as well as the consequent punishment, is laid up with God – sealed up in His treasuries – and therefore they have not yet actually occurred: an evident proof that we have prophecy before us, and not the description of an apostasy that had already taken place, and of the punishment inflicted in consequence. The . . in this connection signifies to lay up, preserve, conceal, although the etymology is disputed. The figure in the second hemistich is not taken from secret archives, but from treasuries or stores, in which whatever was to be preserved was to be laid up, to be taken out in due time.
Deu 32:35-36 “ Vengeance is Mine, and retribution for the time when their foot shall shake: for the day of their destruction is near, and that which is determined for them cometh hastily. For the Lord will judge His people, and have compassion upon His servants, when He seeth that every hold has disappeared, and the fettered and the free are gone.” – The Lord will punish the sins of His people in due time. “Vengeance is Mine:” it belongs to Me, it is My part to inflict. is a noun here for the usual , retribution (vid., Ewald, 156, b.). The shaking of the foot is a figure representing the commencement of a fall, or of stumbling vid., Psa 38:17; Psa 94:18). The thought in this clause is not, “At or towards the time when their misfortune begins, I will plunge them into the greatest calamity,” as Kamphausen infers from the fact that the shaking denotes the beginning of the calamity; and yet the vengeance can only be completed by plunging them into calamity, – a though which he justly regards as unsuitable, though he resorts to emendations of the text in consequence. But the supposed unsuitability vanishes, if we simply regard the words, “ Vengeance is Mine, and retribution,” not as the mere announcement of a quality founded in the nature of God, and residing in God Himself, but as an expression of the divine energy, with this signification, I will manifest Myself as an avenger and recompenser, when their foot shall shake. Then what had hitherto been hidden with God, lay sealed up as it were in His treasures, should come to light, and be made manifest to the sinful nation. God would not delay in this; for the day of their destruction was near. signifies misfortune, and sometimes utter destruction. The primary meaning of the word cannot be determined with certainty. That it does not mean utter destruction, we may see from the parallel clause. “The things that shall come upon them,” await them, or are prepared for them, are, according to the context, both in Deu 32:26 and also in Deu 32:36., not destruction, but simply a calamity or penal judgment that would bring them near to utter destruction. Again, these words do not relate to the punishment of “the wicked deeds of the inhuman horde,” or the vengeance of God upon the enemies of Israel ( Ewald, Kamphausen), but to the vengeance or retribution which God would inflict upon Israel. This is evident, apart from what has been said above against the application of Deu 32:33, Deu 32:34, to the heathen, simply from Deu 32:36, which unquestionably refers to Israel, and has been so interpreted by every commentator. – The first clause is quoted in Rom 12:19 and Heb 10:30, in the former to warn against self-revenge, in the latter to show the energy with which God will punish those who fall away from the faith, in connection with Deu 32:36, “the Lord will judge His people.” – In Deu 32:36 the reason is given for the thought in Deu 32:35. is mostly taken here in the sense of “procure right,” help to right, which it certainly often has (e.g., Psa 54:3), and which is not to be excluded here; but this by no means exhausts the idea of the word. The parallel does not compel us to drop the idea of punishment, which is involved in the judging; for it is a question whether the two clauses are perfectly synonymous. “Judging His people” did not consist merely in the fact that Jehovah punished the heathen who oppressed Israel, but also in the fact that He punished the wicked in Israel who oppressed the righteous. “His people” is no doubt Israel as a whole (as, for example, in Isa 1:3), but this whole was composed of righteous and wicked, and God could only help the righteous to justice by punishing and destroying the wicked. In this way the judging of His people became compassion towards His servants. “His servants” are the righteous, or, speaking more correctly, all who in the time of judgment are found to be the servants of God, and are saved. Because Israel was His nation, the Lord judged it in such a manner as not to destroy it, but simply to punish it for its sins, and to have compassion upon His servants, when He saw that the strength of the nation was gone. , the hand, with which one grasps and works, is a figure employed to denote power and might (vid., Isa 28:2). , to run out, or come to an end (1Sa 9:7; Job 14:11). The meaning is, “when every support is gone,” when all the rotten props of its might, upon which it has rested, are broken ( Ewald). The noun , cessation, disappearance, takes the place of a verb. The words are a proverbial phrase used to denote all men, as we may clearly see from 1Ki 14:10; 1Ki 21:21; 2Ki 4:8; 2Ki 14:6. The literal meaning of this form, however, cannot be decided with certainty. The explanation given by L. de Dieu is the most plausible one, viz., the man who is fettered, restrained, i.e., married, and the single or free. For the meaning caelebs is established by the Arabic, though the Arabic can hardly be appealed to as proving that means paterfamilias , as this meaning, which Roediger assigns to the Arabic word, is founded upon a mistaken interpretation of a passage in Kamus.
Deu 32:37-38 The Lord would then convince His people of the worthlessness of idols and the folly of idolatry, and bring it to admit the fact that He was God alone. “ Then will He say, Where are their gods, the rock in whom they trusted; who consumed the fat of their burnt-offerings, the wine of their libations? Let them rise up and help you, that there may be a shelter over you! See now that I, I am it, and there is no God beside Me: I kill, and make alive; I smite in pieces, and I heal; and there is no one who delivers out of My hand.” might be taken impersonally, as it has been by Luther and others, “men will say;” but as it is certainly Jehovah who is speaking in Deu 32:39, and what Jehovah says there is simply a deduction from what is addressed to the people in Deu 32:37 and Deu 32:38, there can hardly be any doubt that Jehovah is speaking in Deu 32:37, Deu 32:38, as well as in Deu 32:34, Deu 32:35, and therefore that Moses simply distinguishes himself from Jehovah in Deu 32:36, when explaining the reason for the judgment foretold by the Lord. The expression “ their gods,” relates, not to the heathen, but to the Israelites, upon whom the judgment had fallen. The worthlessness of their gods had become manifest, namely, of the strange gods or idols, which the Israelites had preferred to the living God (vid., cf. Deu 32:16, Deu 32:17), and to which they had brought their sacrifices and drink-offerings. In Deu 32:38, is the subject, – the gods, who consumed the fat of the sacrifices offered to them by their worshippers (the foolish Israelites), – and is not to be taken as the relative with , as the lxx, Vulg., and Luther have rendered it, viz., “whose sacrifices they (the Israelites) ate,” which neither suits the context nor the word (fat), which denotes the fat portions of the sacrificial animals that were burned upon the altar, and therefore presented to God. The wine of the drink-offerings was also poured out upon the altar, and thus given up to the deity worshipped. The handing over of the sacrificial portions to the deity is described here with holy irony, as though the gods themselves consumed the fat of the slain offerings, and drank the wine poured out for them, for the purpose of expression this thought: “The gods, whom ye entertained so well, and provided so abundantly with sacrifices, let them now arise and help you, and thus make themselves clearly known to you.” The address here takes the form of a direct appeal to the idolaters themselves; and in the last clause the imperative is introduced instead of the optative, to express the thought as sharply as possible, that men need the protection of God, and are warranted in expecting it from the gods they worship: “let there be a shelter over you.” Sithrah for sether , a shelter or defence.
Deu 32:39 The appeal to their own experience of the worthlessness of idols is followed by a demand that they should acknowledge Jehovah as the only true God. The repetition of “I” is emphatic: “I, I only it,” as an expression of being; I am it, , Joh 8:24; Joh 18:5. The predicate Elohim (vid., 2Sa 7:28; Isa 37:16) is omitted, because it is contained in the thought itself, and moreover is clearly expressed in the parallel clause which follows, “there is not a God beside Me.” Jehovah manifests himself in His doings, which Israel had experienced already, and still continued to experience. He kills and makes alive, etc., i.e., He has the power of life and death. These words do not refer to the immortality of the soul, but to the restoration of life of the people of Israel, which God had delivered up to death (so 1Sa 2:6; 2Ki 5:7; cf. Isa 26:19; Hos 13:10; Wisd. 16:13; Tobit 13:2). This thought, and the following one, which is equally consolatory, that God smites and heals again, are frequently repeated by the prophets (vid., Hos 6:1; Isa 30:26; Isa 57:17-18; Jer 17:14). None can deliver out of His hand (vid., Isa 43:13; Hos 5:14; Hos 2:12).
Deu 32:40-42 The Lord will show Himself as the only true God, who slays and makes alive, etc. He will take vengeance upon His enemies, avenge the blood of His servants, and expiate His land, His people. With this promise, which is full of comfort for all the servants of the Lord, the ode concludes. “ For I lift up My hand to heaven, and say, As truly as I live for ever, if I have sharpened My flashing sword, and My hand grasps for judgment, I will repay vengeance to My adversaries, and requite My haters. I will make My arrows drunk with blood, and My sword will eat flesh; with the blood of the slain and prisoners, with the hairy head of the foe.” Lifting up the hand to heaven was a gesture by which a person taking an oath invoked God, who is enthroned in heaven, as a witness of the truth and an avenger of falsehood (Gen 14:22). Here, as in Exo 6:8 and Num 14:30, it is used anthropomorphically of God, who is in heaven, and can swear by no greater than Himself (vid., Isa 45:23; Jer 22:5; Heb 6:17). The oath follows in Deu 32:41 and Deu 32:42. , however, is not the particle employed in swearing, which has a negative meaning (vid., Gen 14:23), but is conditional, and introduces the protasis. As the avenger of His people upon their foes, the Lord is represented as a warlike hero, who whets His sword, and has a quiver filled with arrows (as in Psa 7:13). “As long as the Church has to make war upon the world, the flesh, and the devil, it needs a warlike head” ( Schultz). , the flash of the sword, i.e., the flashing sword (vid., Gen 3:24; Nah 3:3; Hab 3:11). In the next clause, “and My hand grasps judgment,” mishpat (judgment) does not mean punishment or destruction hurled by God upon His foes, nor the weapons employed in the execution of judgment, but judgment is introduced poetically as the thing which God takes in hand for the purpose of carrying it out. , to lead back vengeance, i.e., to repay it. Punishment is retribution for evil done. By the enemies and haters of Jehovah, we need not understand simply the heathen enemies of the Israelites, for the ungodly in Israel were enemies of God quite as much as the ungodly heathen. If it is evident from Deu 32:25-27, where God is spoken of as punishing Israel to the utmost when it had fallen into idolatry, but not utterly destroying it, that the punishment which God would inflict would also fall upon the heathen, who would have made an end of Israel; it is no less apparent from Deu 32:37 and Deu 32:38, especially from the appeal in Deu 32:38, Let your idols arise and help you (Deu 32:38), which is addressed, as all admit, to the idolatrous Israelites, and not to the heathen, that those Israelites who had made worthless idols their rock would be exposed to the vengeance and retribution of the Lord. In Deu 32:42 the figure of the warrior is revived, and the judgment of God is carried out still further under this figure. Of the four different clauses in this verse, the third is related to the first, and the fourth to the second. God would make His arrows drunk with the blood not only of the slain, but also of the captives, whose lives are generally spared, but were not to be spared in this judgment. This sword would eat flesh of the hairy head of the foe. The edge of the sword is represented poetically as the mouth with which it eats (2Sa 2:26; 2Sa 18:8, etc.); “the sword is said to devour bodies when it slays them by piercing” ( Ges. thes. p. 1088). , from , a luxuriant, uncut growth of hair (Num 6:5; see at Lev 10:6). The hairy head is not a figure used to denote the “wild and cruel foe” ( Knobel), but a luxuriant abundance of strength, and the indomitable pride of the foe, who had grown fat and forgotten his Creator (Deu 32:15). This explanation is confirmed by Psa 68:22; whereas the rendering , princes, leaders, which is given in the Septuagint, has no foundation in the language itself, and no tenable support in Jdg 5:2.
Deu 32:43 For this retribution which God accomplishes upon His enemies, the nations were to praise the people of the Lord. As this song commenced with an appeal to heaven and earth to give glory to the Lord (Deu 32:1-3), so it very suitably closes with an appeal to the heathen to rejoice with His people on account of the acts of the Lord. “Rejoice, nations, over His people; for He avenges the blood of His servants, and repays vengeance to His adversaries, and so expiates His land, His people.” “His people” is an accusative, and not in apposition to nations in the sense of “nations which are His people.” For, apart from the fact that such a combination would be unnatural, the thought that the heathen had become the people of God is nowhere distinctly expressed in the song (not even in Deu 32:21); nor is the way even so prepared for it as that we could expect it here, although the appeal to the nations to rejoice with His people on account of what God had done involves the Messianic idea, that all nations will come to the knowledge of the Lord (vid., Psa 47:2; Psa 66:8; Psa 67:4). – The reason for this rejoicing is the judgment through which the Lord avenges the blood of His servants and repays His foes. As the enemies of God are not the heathen as such (see at Deu 32:41), so the servants of Jehovah are not the nation of Israel as a whole, but the faithful servants whom the Lord had at all times among His people, and who were persecuted, oppressed, and put to death by the ungodly. By this the land was defiled, covered with blood-guiltiness, so that the Lord was obliged to interpose as a judge, to put an end to the ways of the wicked, and to expiate His land, His people, i.e., to wipe out the guilt which rested upon the land and people, by the punishment of the wicked, and the extermination of idolatry and ungodliness, and to sanctify and glorify the land and nation (vid., Isa 1:27; Isa 4:4-5).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Song of Moses. | B. C. 1451. |
1 Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. 2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: 3 Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. 4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. 5 They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. 6 Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?
Here is, I. A commanding preface or introduction to this song of Moses, Deu 32:1; Deu 32:2. He begins, 1. With a solemn appeal to heaven and earth concerning the truth and importance of what he was about to say, and the justice of the divine proceedings against a rebellious and backsliding people, for he had said (ch. xxxi. 28) that he would in this song call heaven and earth to record against them. Heaven and earth would sooner hear than this perverse and unthinking people; for they revolt not from the obedience to their Creator, but continue to this day, according to his ordinances, as his servants (Ps. cxix. 89-91), and therefore will rise up in judgment against rebellious Israel. Heaven and earth will be witnesses against sinners, witnesses of the warning given them and of their refusal to take the warning (see Job xx. 27); the heaven shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him. Or heaven and earth are here put for the inhabitants of both, angels and men; both shall agree to justify God in his proceedings against Israel, and to declare his righteousness, Ps. l. 6; see Rev 19:1; Rev 19:2. 2. he begins with a solemn application of what he was about to say to the people (v. 2): My doctrine shall drop as the rain. “It shall be a beating sweeping rain to the rebellious;” so one of the Chaldee paraphrasts expounds the first clause. Rain is sometimes sent for judgment, witness that with which the world was deluged; and so the word of God, while to some it is reviving and refreshing–a savour of life unto life, is to others terrifying and killing–a savour of death unto death. It shall be as a sweet and comfortable dew to those who are rightly prepared to receive it. Observe, (1.) The subject of this song is doctrine; he had given them a song of praise and thanksgiving (Exod. xv.), but this is a song of instruction, for in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, we are not only to give glory to god, but to teach and admonish one another, Col. iii. 16. Hence many of David’s psalms are entitled Maschil–to give instruction. (2.) This doctrine is fitly compared to rain and showers which come from above, to make the earth fruitful, and accomplish that for which they are sent. (Isa 55:10; Isa 55:11), and depend not upon the wisdom or will of man, Mic. v. 7. It is a mercy to have this rain come often upon us, and our duty to drink it in, Heb. vi. 7. (3.) He promises that his doctrine shall drop and distil as the dew, and the small rain, which descend silently and without noise. The word preached is likely to profit when it comes gently, and sweetly insinuates itself into the hearts and affections of the hearers. (4.) He bespeaks their acceptance and entertainment of it, and that it might be as sweet, and pleasant, and welcome to them as rain to the thirsty earth, Ps. lxxii. 6. And the word of God is likely to do us good when it is thus acceptable. (5.) The learned bishop Patrick understands it as a prayer that his words which were sent from heaven to them might sink into their hearts and soften them, as the rain softens the earth, and so make them fruitful in obedience.
II. An awful declaration of the greatness and righteousness of God, Deu 32:3; Deu 32:4.
1. He begins with this, and lays it down as his first principle, (1.) To preserve the honour of God, that no reproach might be cast upon him for the sake of the wickedness of his people Israel; how wicked and corrupt soever those are who are called by his name, he is just, and right, and all that is good, and is not to be thought the worse of for their badness. (2.) To aggravate the wickedness of Israel, who knew and worshipped such a holy god, and yet were themselves so unholy. And, (3.) To justify God in his dealings with them; we must abide by it, that God is righteous, even when his judgments are a great deep,Jer 12:1; Psa 36:6.
2. Moses here sets himself to publish the name of the Lord (v. 3), that Israel, knowing what a God he is whom they had avouched for theirs, might never be such fools as to exchange him for a false god, a dunghill god. He calls upon them therefore to ascribe greatness to him. It will be of great use to us for the preventing of sin, and the preserving of us in the way of our duty, always to keep up high and honourable thoughts of God, and to take all occasions to express them: Ascribe greatness to our God. We cannot add to his greatness, for it is infinite; but we must acknowledge it, and give him the glory of it. Now, when Moses would set forth the greatness of God, he does it, not by explaining his eternity and immensity, or describing the brightness of his glory in the upper world, but by showing the faithfulness of his word, the perfection of his works, and the wisdom and equity of all the administrations of his government; for in these his glory shines most clearly to us, and these are the things revealed concerning him, which belong to us and our children, v. 4. (1.) He is the rock. So he is called six times in this chapter, and the LXX. all along translates it Theos, God. The learned Mr. Hugh Broughton reckons that God is called the rock eighteen times (besides in this chapter) in the Old Testament (though in some places we translate it strength), and charges it therefore upon the papists that they make St. Peter a god when they make him the rock on which the church is built. God is the rock, for he is in himself immutable immovable, and he is to all that seek him and fly to him an impenetrable shelter, and to all that trust in him an everlasting foundation. (2.) His work is perfect. His work of creation was so, all very good; his works of providence are so, or will be so in due time, and when the mystery of God shall be finished the perfection of his works will appear to all the world. Nothing that God does can be mended, Eccl. iii. 14. God was now perfecting what he had promised and begun for his people Israel, and from the perfection of this work they must take occasion to give him the glory of the perfection of all his works. The best of men’s works are imperfect, they have their flaws and defects, and are left unfinished; but, as for God, his work is perfect; if he begin, he will make an end. (3.) All his ways are judgment. The ends of his ways are all righteous, and he is wise in the choice of the means in order to those ends. Judgment signifies both prudence and justice. The ways of the Lord are right, Hos. xiv. 9. (4.) He is a God of truth, whose word we may take and rely upon, for he cannot lie who is faithful to all his promises, nor shall his threatenings fall to the ground. (5.) He is without iniquity, one who never cheated any that trusted in him, never wronged any that appealed to his justice, nor ever was hard upon any that cast themselves upon his mercy. (6.) Just and right is he. As he will not wrong any by punishing them more than they deserve, so he will not fail to recompense all those that serve him or suffer for him. He is indeed just and right; for he will effectually take care that none shall lose by him. Now what a bright and amiable idea does this one verse give us of the God whom we worship; and what reason have we then to love him and fear him, to live a life of delight in him, dependence on him, and devotedness to him! This is our rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him; nor can there be, Ps. xcii. 15.
III. A high charge exhibited against the Israel of God, whose character was in all respects the reverse of that of the God of Israel, v. 5. 1. They have corrupted themselves. Or, It has corrupted itself; the body of the people has: the whole head sick, and the whole heart faint. God did not corrupt them, for just and right is he; but they are themselves the sole authors of their own sin and ruin; and both are included in this word. They have debauched themselves; for every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust. And they have destroyed themselves, Hos. xiii. 9. If thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear the guilt and grief, Prov. ix. 12. 2. Their spot is not the spot of his children. Even God’s children have their spots, while they are in this imperfect state; for if we say we have no sin, no spot, we deceive ourselves. But the sin of Israel was none of those; it was not an infirmity which they strove against, watched and prayed against, but an evil which their hearts were fully set in them to do. For, 3. They were a perverse and crooked generation, that were actuated by a spirit of contradiction, and therefore would do what was forbidden because it was forbidden, would set up their own humour and fancy in opposition to the will of God, were impatient of reproof, hated to be reformed, and went on frowardly in the way of their heart. The Chaldee paraphrase reads this verse thus: They have scattered or changed themselves, and not him, even the children that served idols, a generation that has depraved its own works, and alienated itself. Idolaters cannot hurt God, nor do any damage to his works, nor make him a stranger to this world. See Job xxxv. 6. No, all the hurt they do is to themselves and their own works. The learned bishop Patrick gives another reading of it: Did he do him any hurt? That is, “Is God the rock to be blamed for the evils that should befal Israel? No, His children are their blot,” that is, “All the evil that comes upon them is the fruit of their children’s wickedness; for the whole generation of them is crooked and perverse.” All that are ruined ruin themselves; they die because they will die.
IV. A pathetic expostulation with this provoking people for their ingratitude (v. 6): “Do you thus requite the Lord? Surely you will not hereafter be so base and disingenuous in your carriage towards him as you have been.” 1. He reminds them of the obligations God had laid upon them to serve him, and to cleave to him. He had been a Father to them, had begotten them, fed them, carried them, nursed them, and borne their manners; and would they spurn at the bowels of a Father? He had bought them, had been at a vast expense of miracles to bring them out of Egypt, had given men for them, and people for their life, Isa. xliii. 4. “Is not he thy Father, thy owner (so some), that has an incontestable propriety in thee?” and the ox knoweth his owner. “he has made thee, and brought thee into being, established thee and kept thee in being; has he not done so? Can you deny the engagements you lie under to him, in consideration of the great things he has done and designed for you?” And are not our obligations, as baptized Christians, equally great and strong to our Creator that made us, our Redeemer that bought us, and our Sanctifier that has established us. 2. Hence he infers the evil of deserting him and rebelling against him. For, (1.) It was base ingratitude: “Do you thus require the Lord? Are these the returns you make him for all his favours to you? The powers you have from him will you employ them against him?” See Mic 6:3; Joh 10:32. This is such monstrous villany as all the world will cry shame of: call a man ungrateful, and you can call him no worse. (2.) It was prodigious madness: O foolish people and unwise! Fools, and double fools! who has bewitched you? Gal. iii. 1. “Fools indeed, to disoblige one on whom you have such a necessary dependence! To forsake your own mercies for lying vanities!” Note, All wilful sinners, especially sinners in Israel, are the most unwise and the most ungrateful people in the world.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
DEUTERONOMY – CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Verses 1-6:
This song which Moses composed at God’s direction, demonstrates the depths of spiritual insight and the consummate literary skill of its author. Moses was no ignorant, semi-literate peasant. His writings demonstrate his skill as an orator, his sagacity as a legislator, and his insight as a poet.
This composition may be divided into six sections:
(1) Verses 1-3:Introduction. The announcement of the importance of what he is about to say.
(2) Verses 4-6: The excellence of Jehovah, in contrast to the fickleness and perversity of Israel.
(3) Verse 7-18: The folly and ingratitude of Israel.
(4) Verses 19-23: God’s rejection and chastisement of rebellious Israel.
(5) Verses 24-34: Judgment upon the rebels; mercy and compassion to the penitent.
(6) Verses 35-43: Divine judgment upon Israel’s enemies; blessings and mercy upon God’s servants.
“Doctrine,” leqach, “the receiving, what is to be received;’ also translated “learning,” Proverbs 1; Proverbs 5; Pro 9:9; Pro 16:21; Pro 16:23, q.v.
“Drop,” araph, “be abundant,” as the gentle falling of a soft rain drop, or the distillation of the dew.
The soft rains of the growing season aid the growth of the tender herbs, and nourish the vulnerable sprouts of the grain crops This symbolizes the care with which Moses entered upon the delivery of this magnificent song.
“Publish,” qara, “call, or proclaim.”
The song calls the hearers to join all nature in proclaiming the “greatness,” godel, of God.
He is the “Rock,” tsur, the sharp, strong fortress. This term is applied to God also in verses 13, 15, 18, 30, 31, 37; and eighteen times in the Psa 31:2; Psa 61:2; Psa 92:15, et.al.
“Perfect,” tamin, “complete, whole,” needing nothing to make it whole; blameless.
“Right,” yashar, “upright.”
The character of God is in contrast to that of His people Israel. He is holy, without blame, dependable, just, upright, and true. They are the opposite.
This text focuses on the ingratitude of Israel toward Jehovah, in’ that they repay Him for His perfect character and gracious treatment with perversity and iniquity. God is to them a:
(1) Father, in that He had chosen them a His children.
(2) Purchaser, in redeeming them from Egyptian slavery.
(3) Maker, who made of them as a nation.
(4) Establisher, from kun, meaning”to form, prepare,” in bringing them safely through the wilderness to establish them in their Land.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. Give ear, O ye heavens. Moses commences in a strain of magnificence, lest the people should disdain this song with their usual pride, or even reject it altogether, being exasperated by its severe censures and reproaches. For we well know how the world naturally longs to be flattered, and that no strain can be gratifying to it unless it tickles and soothes the ear with praise. But Moses here not only inveighs bitterly against the vices of the people, but with the utmost possible vehemence stigmatizes their perverse nature, their utterly corrupt morals, their obstinate ingratitude, and incorrigible contumacy. Moreover, he desired that these accusations, whereby he rendered their name detestable, should daily echo from their tongues; and thus they became still more offensive. It was, therefore, requisite that their impatience should be bridled, as it were, in order that they might patiently and humbly receive these just reproofs, however severe they might be. If, therefore, they should repudiate this song, or should turn a deaf ear to it, he declares at the outset that heaven and earth would be witnesses of their prodigious obtuseness; nay, he turns and addresses himself to heaven and earth, and thus signifies that it was worthy of the attention of all creatures, even although they were without intelligence or feeling. For it is a hyperbolical mode of expression, when he assigns the faculty of hearing, and being instructed, to the senseless elements; just as Isaiah, when he would intimate that he found none to give heed to him amongst the whole people, in like manner appeals to the heavens and the earth, and even summons them to bear witness to the prodigious iniquity, that there should be less of intelligence amongst the whole people than in oxen and asses. (Isa 1:2.) For it is but a meager exposition, which some give of these words, that they are used, by metonymy, for angels and men. (247)
(247) See ante, on Deu 4:26, vol. 3, p. 269, and note.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE RELATION OF CONDUCT TO CONSEQUENCES
Deu 27:1 to Deu 34:12.
An earnest study of these reveals: Blessing is a fruit of obedience; and curses are a consequence of disobedience. It was said to Israel,
If thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth:
And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God (Deu 28:1-2, f).
Blessings in the city, blessings in the field (Deu 28:3), blessings on the fruit of the ground (Deu 28:4), triumph over enemies (Deu 28:7), richness in store-house (Deu 28:8), a great and good name (Deu 28:10), multiplied children (Deu 28:11), treasures from Heaven (Deu 28:12), their eventual supremacy (Deu 28:12), the head and not the tail, from above and not beneath (Deu 28:13)all conditioned upon their keeping the law (Deu 28:14).
Who would change it now? Who would dare to have blessings apart from obedience? Who would dare to divorce the one from the other and face the consequences? Men have always shown a disposition to obey their fellows and an almost equal disposition to forget God. The monk or the nunhow they yield to the Abbot or the Abbess; the Sister to the Mother Superior; the Papal churchwhat obedience to the Pope! Paganismwhat abject slavery to high potentates! But for Israeltype of the Christian it is theirs to obey God, and if conflict arises, then in the language of Peter, to obey God rather than men (Act 5:29).
One is compelled to recognize the fact that Modernism has so far discredited the personality of God, the Deity of Christ, and the authority of the Scriptures, that mens convictions no longer know a keen edge, and the Scripture commands no longer bind conscience, and the thus saith the Lord no longer settles subjects of controversy.
The Modernist argues against all external authority and has not only increased the waters of infidelity, but he has pushed back the floodgates of lawlessness and deluged the world.
If there were no other reason for studying the Book of Deuteronomy, the repeated ringing call to men for obedience to the Divine Law is both a defense and justification of the same.
As one moves on in its study he encounters the Palestinian covenant (Deu 29:1, f). That it is a Covenant in addition to the one made with them in Horeb, is perfectly clear, in fact, so clear that all debate about that subject is strained and needless. The former Covenant rested in right, tempered with mercy, and enriched by grace. This covenant explains itself in the light of experience; and while enunciating stringent conditions of blessing and strict rules of conduct, its promises are rich and lift to a higher spiritual level than the Horeb covenant. Circumcision of the flesh is changed now to the circumcision of the heart, and the bending of the knee to the surrender of the Spirit, and the blessings of the body to the life of the soul. The great lesson that runs throughout Deuteronomy, namely, that of the relation between obedience to God and Divine benediction, is a lesson upon which no mortal tongue will ever lay undue emphasis. The evils that grow out of disregard to Gods lawsno man can imagine them! The annals of human anguish is their record.
We are told that when the first cable was laid in the Atlantic, where it went down miles and miles deep, it was found to be a failure and had to be taken up, at the loss of an enormous amount of time and unthinkable expense, and it was discovered that the workmen had ignored the oft-repeated command to keep it immersed in water while working on it, and on one occasion had left it where the hot sun struck it for a few minutes and melted the gutta-percha. Years followed before it could be laid again. Friends of the enterprise were greatly discouraged. Fifty voyages were made across the Atlantic, and finally capital enough was secured to lay it the second time. Possibly through the fault of another, who had forgotten to obey when the steamer had proceeded six hundred miles to sea, the cable parted and a loss of six million dollars ensued. In July 1866, the third cable was ready and a vessel sent out on her way. This time the work was completely successful and the world applauded Field. It might have been so from the first. This loss of time, of talent, of means, might have been saved had men exactly obeyed, but even this is but a feeble type of what the world has felt in consequence of disobedience to God. Moses, then, must have brought his message from above, for only God Himself ever understood, or even now comprehends the relation of obedience to blessing, of covenant keeping to character and world consequences.
But we conclude with a further lesson of the relation of conduct to consequences.
The death of Moses is a fitting climax to Moses life. The thirty-second chapter records his swan song, and what a song it is! Volumes might be devoted to it without a waste word. Truth follows truth in an almost unlimited series of statements. When the great soul comes to his conclusion God permits his lips to pour forth blessing upon the Children of Israel before he dies. The tribes are taken in turn, and for each, blessing is announced, Reuben, Levi, Jacob, Benjamin, and so on. Moses is now to the tribes what Jacob was to his sonsa rare father yearning over them and blessing them. Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! (Deu 33:29).
The concluding chapter of this Book, the thirty-fourth, records Moses death, and suggests the translation of his body. How can one speak as he ought to speak of this man when he comes to the last and hushed moment of life! Bettex writes: Forty years a prince in the palaces of Egypt; forty years a shepherd in the wild wastes of Midian; forty years in the power of God, he bears his people through the wilderness, as a mother carries her babe, and then dies on Mount Nebo, according to the Word of the Lord, literally at the mouth of the Lord which the rabbins interpret, by the kiss of the Lord (Deu 34:5). What inexpressible words this man may have heard; what heavenly mysteries and Divine visions he may have seen, when, oblivious of the world, he was with Jehovah forty days and forty nights, and ate no bread and drank no water! His countenance is radiant with it; his thundering words flash it; the song of Moses, which John hears the redeemed sing in Heaven, echoes it. And the Christian is permitted to ascend Sinai with him; to come into the presence of his God; to hear unspeakable things out of His Law, and to forget the world below, which is dancing around its golden calf.
And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And the Children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab (Deu 34:7-8).
How simple and yet how sublime the record! It is enough! Moses tomb requires no epitaph. His name is sufficiently immortalized. Modernists will never take the coronet from Moses brow.
This was the bravest warrior
That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word:
And never earthy philosopher
Traced with his golden pen,
On the deathless page, truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.
That was the grandest funeral
That ever passed on earth,
But no one heard the tramping,
Or saw the train go forth,
None but the bald old eagle
On gray Bethpeors height,
Which from his rocky eyrie
Looked on the wondrous sight.
And had he not high honor
The hillside for his pall
To lie in state, while angels wait
With stars for tapers tall;
And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,
Over his bier to wave,
And Gods own hand, in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave?
O lonely tomb in Moabs land!
O dark Bethpeors hill!
Speak to these curious hearts of ours
And teach them to be still!
God hath His mysteries of grace,
Ways that we cannot tell,
He hides them deep, like the secret sleep
Of him He loved so well.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
The song composed by Moses and recited to the people as a witness against them. It embraces the whole future history of Israel, and bears all the marks of prophetic testimony in the perfectly ideal picture which it draws on the one hand, or the benefits and blessings conferred by the Lord upon His people; on the other hand of the ingratitude with which Israel repaid God for them all (cf. Delitz). The poem divided into six parts.
Deu. 32:1-3. Introductory, importance of doctrine delivered. Heaven and earth invoked not as matter of rhetoric, not to witness for God as cf. Deu. 4:26; Deu. 30:19; Deu. 31:28, but indicative of the whole universe, which would be affected and sanctified by the righteousness of God manifest in heaven and earth. Doctrine Let my doctrine, a prayer. Bain with soft penetrating influence (Isa. 55:10-11). Greatness equivalent to glory in Psa. 29:1; Psa. 96:7-8.
Deu. 32:4-6. The righteousness of God placed in contrast with the corruption, perversity and folly of Israel. Rockfirst time God so called in scripture and used six times in this song. A name often found in phrases (for Heb. Tsur) like strength (Psa. 73:26; Psa. 141:1), or Mighty One (Isa. 30:29). Perfect blameless, without fault. On contrary Israel acted corruptly (Deu. 32:5). They have. The verb is singular. Render. It (i.e. the perverse and crooked generation, understood from the context) hath corrupted itself before Him (cf. Isa. 1:4); they are not his children, but their blemish, i.e., the generation of evil doers cannot be styled Gods children, but rather the shame and disgrace of Gods children (Speak. com.) Crooked (cf. Mat. 17:7; Luk. 9:41.) Foolish (Deu. 32:6; Deuteronomy cf.4, 6; Psa. 90:12). Bought, acquired thee for His own. Made a nation.
Deu. 32:7-14. Innumerable benefits conferred. Blessings given from the very first days of old (Deu. 32:7). Divided (Deu. 32:8) by His providence. Set bounds, reserved for His people a fit inheritance according to the number, proportionate to the wants of the population. Portion (Deu. 32:9), lot or piece of land; here a figure applied to the nation (cf. Exo. 15:16; Exo. 19:5). (Deu. 32:10; Deu. 32:14) Helpless and hopeless condition of Israel, and love and care which God displayed. Waste, lit., in the land of the desert and the waste (formless waste as Gen. 1:2) howling wilderness, amid ferocious beasts. Apple guarded as the tenderest part (cf. Psa. 17:8; Pro. 7:2). Eagle noted for its care and affection (Exo. 19:4; Isa. 63:9).
Deu. 32:12. So the Lord alone delivered Israel and trained them.
Deu. 32:13. Ride high positions in which they gained dominion (cf. Deu. 33:29). Honey, richest provisions from fruitful fields and unlikely places.
Deu. 32:15-18. Base ingratitude for benefits. Jeshurun only found here and in Deu. 33:5, and Isa. 44:2. A description of a nation right and just, not the character which belonged to Israel in fact, but that to which Israel was called. An epithet intended to convey keen reproof. Fat. The figure of an ox, fat and intractable in consequence (Isa. 10:27 : Hos. 4:16). Forsook, rejected. Esteemed, lit. to treat as a fool, to despise (Mic. 7:6). Rock in Palestine, a refuge from enemies. Jealousy (Deu. 32:16), language from matrimonial relationship (Exo. 34:14; Isa. 54:5; Jer. 2:25). Devils (Deu. 32:17), false gods, malignant and destructive (Lev. 17:7). Not to God, Marg. Not God, i.e., which were not God. Gods who had not benefitted them. Newly up, from near, from Moab, Amon and Canaan in a local sense; or in contrast to Jehovah, who had manifested Himself of old (Deu. 32:7).
Deu. 32:19-22. Gods rejection of Israel. Abhorred, despised, cast them off. Provoked by sins. Daughters, women had full share (Isa. 3:16; Jer. 7:18). See, I will show what their end will be at last.(Ainsworth). No faith, no dependence upon them Deu. 32:21, The terms, not God and vanities (nothings) were preferred, and God moved to anger. God would therefore excite them to jealousy, and ill-will by a no-people and foolish nation, i.e., transfer blessings upon them instead of Israel. (Deu. 32:22) When kindled divine anger would burn to lowest hell, the deepest destruction of sheol, the lower world, consume earths produce and set on fire foundations of mountains.
Deu. 32:23-28. Evils threatened many and severe, like arrows which warriors shoot at foes (Psa. 38:3; Psa. 91:5; Job. 6:4, Burning heat, i.e., fever of pestilence, famine, plague, wild beasts, poisonous serpents and war, would bring them to verge of destruction. (Deu. 32:26) Scatter them away and blot out their remembrance. (Deu. 32:27) Were it not that I feared, i.e., that I should be provoked to wrath when the enemy ascribed the overthrow of Israel to his own prowess and not to my judgments.(Speak. Com.) Hand over hand was high, i.e., lifted up, shown itself mighty. For the reason they deserved not to be spared.
Deu. 32:29-33. The reasons which lead to severity. They were foolish. Latter end, to which they were obstinately rushing, i.e., destruction if not adverted. (Deu. 32:30) Chase. If wise, conquest would be easy and the promise (Lev. 26:8) fulfilled. But abandoned for their apostacy sold and delivered up. (Deu. 32:31) Their rock gods in whom heathens trust, were felt to be unequal to Israels God or Rock. Judges. Having experienced so often the formidable might of God, they knew for a certainty that the God of Israel was very different from their own idols.(Calvin). Their vine worse than the vine of Sodom, universally corrupt, like Sodom and Gomorrah in wickedness. Bitter (cf. 2Ki. 4:39-41; Isa. 5:2-4; Jer. 2:21). Figures which express that nothing could be imagined worse, or more to be abhorred than that nation.(Calvin).
Deu. 32:34-43. Gods purpose to have mercy upon Israel when chastened and humbled. This wickedness before mentioned and judgments upon it. Store remembered and sealed up in a bag as a treasure carefully kept (Job. 14:17; Hos. 13:12). Vengeance, active vindi ation of authority. Slide, they will totter and fall, firm as they think themselves to be (Psa. 38:17; Psa. 94:18). (Deu. 32:36) Judge (cf. Psa. 135:14; 1Pe. 4:17). Repent himself, have compassion, help them. None, proverbial for all men (cf. 1Ki. 14:10; 1Ki. 21:21; 2Ki. 4:8; 2Ki. 14:6), bond and free; none to help. (Deu. 32:37) Idols utterly worthless, to which Israel had brought sacrifices and drink offerings. Rise up (Jer. 2:28). (Deu. 32:39) See now that I, I am. Experience enough to convince them that idols were impotent and that Jehovah alone should be feared. Kill (1Sa. 2:6; 2Ki. 5:7). God smites and heals (Job. 5:17; Hos. 6:1; Isa. 30:26; Isa. 57:17). (Deu. 32:40-42) These verses are closely connected. The full stop in the A. V. at the end of Deu. 32:40 should be removed, and the passage should run thus: For I lift up my hand to heaven and say, as I live for ever, if I whet, etc. In Deu. 32:40, in which God is describing as swearing by Himself (cf. Isa. 45:23; Jer. 22:5; Heb. 6:17). The lifting up of the hand was a gesture used in making oath (cf. Gen. 14:22; Rev. 10:5-6). (Speak. Com.) (Deu. 32:43) Rejoice in Gods retribution upon enemies in his wiping out the guilt which rested upon people and land and thus exterminating idolatry.
Deu. 32:44-52. A supplement added by the author, who inserted the song to the law. Hoshea (Num. 13:16). Set, give serious attention. Life (Deu. 32:47), basis of all enjoyments and length of life. (Deu. 32:48) Self-same day on which Moses rehearsed this song, and on which announcement of death renewed (Num. 27:12-14). In form this repetition differs from previous announcement, partly in the fact that the situation of Mount Nebo is more fully described (in the land of Moab, etc., as in Deu. 1:5; Deu. 28:68), and partly in the continued use of the imperative and a few other trifling points. These differences may all be explained from the fact that the account here was not written by Moses himself.(Delitz).
THE IMPORTANCE OF DIVINE INSTRUCTION.Deu. 32:1-6
The metaphors of this inimitable song of singular beauty, very suggestive and powerful. In many ways is the importance of Divine instruction set forth.
I. By its lofty theme. Israels God is made known in wonderful attributes. I will publish the name of the Lord.
1. Perfect in character. No injustice and iniquity found in him. A rock of omnipotence and immutability. Perfect in holiness, word and work. A God of truthwe charge God foolishly, but He never errs, forgets nor retracts. He cannot lie. Our rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.
2. Glorious in majesty. Greatness, royal splendour and power must be ascribed to him. We cannot add to His greatness. His perfections are infinite. We may acknowledge it and give Him glory due to His name. It is not the bright light of eternity, but the glory seen in the perfection of His works, the faithfulness of His word and the wisdom of His administration.
3. Righteous in government. All His ways are judgment, mysterious and incomprehensible, but the ways of the Lord are right. (Hos. 14:9).
4. Immutable in purpose. We are inconstant and foolish, He unchangeable in plan, counsel and ways. With whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning.
II. By its adaptation to our moral condition. We need such a God to redeem and comfort, in whom we may trust and live.
1. As the thirsty earth (Psa. 72:6). We need the rain, divine influence to soften our hearts and lives. We are barren and unfruitful in the works and ways of God. Ignorant of His truth and will, until the doctrine drops as rain.
2. As the grass, we require fertilising showers to refresh, quicken and cause the seeds of knowledge to grow. This doctrine of God is like the dew, gentle and insinuating, powerful and productive. The word shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, etc. (Isa. 55:10-11).
III. By its interested witnesses. Heaven and earth appealed to as august spectators. Such appeals often in matters of high importance (Psa. 50:3-4; Isa. 1:2; Jer. 22:29). This not a splendid instance of poetical apostrophe, but indicative of an interested universe. A summons to all intelligent beings to listen to the grand truths unfolded by this inspired ode. The doctrine concerns all mankind and should be known by all mankind. If neglected heaven and earth will witness to their stupidity and disobedience. Heaven shall reveal his iniquity and the earth shall rise up against him (Job. 20:27).
IV. By its benevolent design. A charge is made against Israel, whose character was the reverse of that of Jehovah, whose condition was helpless and deplorable. God deals in rectitude and love, and the writer is an example in tender expostulation and heavenly aim, to the poet and the minister.
1. To impart wisdom. O! foolish people and unwise. Doubly foolish in forsaking God, who bought, made and established them. Fools indeed, to disoblige one on whom you have such necessary dependence. To forsake your own mercies for lying vanities. Who hath bewitched (fascinated, demented) you? Gal. 3:1.
2. To rectify judgment. A perverse and crooked generation Perverted, froward, and untractable in thought and purpose; crooked, irregular and disorderly in life. God seeks to enlighten and correct them. That ye may be blameless and harmless (sincere) in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine, as lights (luminaries or beacons) in the world (Php. 2:15).
3. To restore the divine image. Likeness to God is the characteristic of His children. Sin defiles and degrades as spots in the face or dirt on the garment. It corrupts and destroys like putrefaction in the body. Grace delivers from sin, restores the divine image and makes us sons of God.
4. To kindle fervent gratitude. Israels base return for redemption and advancement, innumerable privileges and unprecedented honours. Do ye thus requite the Lord? We condemn the Jews, yet imitate their conduct. God has delivered and exalted us, yet we do not feel that gratitude is required, reasonable and just. God daily loads with benefits that we may render in return (Psa. 116:12). Appeals to our sense of right for a natural and willing return for mercies so constant and so great.
THE REVELATION OF GOD.Deu. 32:4-6
The doctrine of this song is a revelation concerning God. A declaration of his namea name expressing his qualities and distinguishing him from all other gods. This name must be published, for if the name drop out of use, the being Who owns it may be forgotten.
1. In the splendour of his perfections. Jehovah the Great I amindependent and self-existent. The infinite, eternal and immutable God. Perfectly just and infinitely holy. Each attribute is capable of distinct contemplation. All blended together constitute divine excellence, like colours of light in the rainbow.
2. In the rectitude of his moral government. His ways are judgment, that is accord with rectitude. He is essentially and absolutely just. Reason asserts that he can have no motive for injustice. Deeply fixed in the centre of conscience is this truth. The Bible continually sets forth that there is no unrighteousness in him. Just and right is he, in person and procedure. A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.
3. In the assertion of his rights. Is not he thy father that hath bought thee?
1. Rights as Creator.Hath he not made thee?
2. Rights as a Covenant God. Thy father.We owe to him homage, love and obedience. Thou O Lord, art our Father and Redeemer, thy name is for everlasting (Isa. 63:16). Let us think of God as here revealed, the absolute and the relative God, until our hearts are stirred to gratitude, reverence and devotion. Behold God is great and we know Him not.
Return, my senses, range no more abroad,
He only finds his bliss who seeks for God.
Parnell.
The Dew of the Word.Deu. 32:2
Distil as the dew. Who hears the dew fall? What microphone could reveal that music to our gross unpurged ears? The dew distils in silence. So does the speech of God. In stillness Gods love is condensed into dewlike communications; not read, nor heard, but known by direct power of the spirit upon the soul. Not much in noise, turmoil, and bustle. Dew falls in wider silence, in quiet places of sorrow and sickness; more in the desert than in hot harvest fields or neat gardens, from which we have been called. The dew distils in darkness. Not in the darkness of external trial merely, but in times when we cannot see anything; when we do not seem to be walking in darkness, but, like Micah, sit in darkness, too feeble even to grope; times of reaction and weariness after special work, after great or exciting success, even after unusually vivid spiritual blessing. You look out some dark night: there is no storm, no rain, not the least token to your senses of what is going on. In the morning you see every blade and leaf tipped with a dew drop, everything revived and freshened, prepared for the heat of the day. So His words fall on your souls in darkness, not with sensible power; nothing flashes out from the page, nothing shines to shed pleasant light on your path. You do not hear sound of abundance of rain, but the words are distilling as the dew and preparing you for day. The dew falls not in one mass of water, but innumerable little drops. What one drop does not reach another does. It is not one overwhelmingly powerful word which does this holy night work in the soul, but the unrealized influences of many, dropping softly on the plants of the Lord; one resting here, another there; one touching an unrecognised need, another reaching an unconciously failing grace. Each drop uncounted hath its own mission, and is duly sent to its own leaf or blade. Sometimes Gods dew goes on falling many hours of night. Watches seem long and starlight does not reveal it. But none is lost; some is already doing hidden work as it falls around the very roots of our being, some ready to be revealed in sparkling brightness when the night is over; lessons learnt among the shadows to be lived out in the sunshine. The object of the dew is to maintain life in dry places and seasons. In rainless regions this better understood. Any dry week in summer we see enough to understand the beauty of the figure. This speech is spirit and life to souls, however feebly, yet really alive to God. Dew does nothing for stones, nor a dead leaf. It falls on little fading plants, whose leaves absorb life, renewing moisture, and closed blossoms open out again with fresher fragrance than before. Dryness is more to be dreaded than darkness. Be trustfully content to let the dew fall in the dark. Believe the Word, when you read the dim page or lie still through long hours of the night, with no power to meditate on halt-recollected verses that cross the mind and leave no influence.F. R. Havergal.
Softly the dew in the evening descends,
Cooling the sun-heated ground and the gale;
Flowrets all fainting it soothingly tends,
Ere the consumings of mid-day prevail.
Sweet, gentle dewdrops, how mystic you fall,
Wisdom and mercy float down in you all.
Rev. W. H. Havergal, Last Hymn, 1870.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Deu. 32:2. My doctrine.
1. Its nature.Rain, dew, small rain, and showers.
2. Its operations. Drop, distil. Rain, emblem of Holy Spirit.
1. A timely blessing. When inheritance is weary. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass.
2. Bestowed in special seasons. Early and latter rain In youth and manhood in conversion and maturity.
3. Beneficial in results. Softens earth and prepares it for seed. Thou makest it soft with showers. Thou, O God, didst send (shake out) a plentiful (gracious) rain, whereby thou didst confirm (refreshedst) it, when it was weary, Psa. 68:9.
Dew, an emblem.
1. In origin. As a dew from the Lord that tarrieth not for man, nor waiteth for the sons of men.
2. In method of operations, (a) silently and imperceptibly. Not with observation, not in the thunder of his power; (b) Efficiently and beautifully. Vigour and freshness to the Church, the dew unto Israel. Not in sweeping, destructive showers, but in gentle, penetrating influence; (c) resulting in good or evil. The savour of life or of deathcursing or blessing, Heb. 6:7. My speech, etc. My familiar, friendly, and affectionate speeches, shall descend gently and softly on the ear and. heart, as the dew moistening and refreshing all around. In hot regions dew is often a substitute for rain; without it no fertility, where rain seldom falls. In such places only can the metaphor here used be felt in its perfection.A. Clarke. No doubt these various expressions point out that great variety in the Word or Revelation of God, whereby it is suited to every place, occasion, person and state; being profitable for doctrine, reproof, and edification in righteousness.Ibid.
Deu. 32:4. God a rock.
1. An immovable foundation for hope. Foundations of rocks, hidden, unsearchable to mortal eye, depths past finding out.
2. An abiding security. Protection and safety from burning, heat of the sun and hostile invasion of enemies. A hiding place from the wind, covert from the tempest, &c. (Isa. 32:2.) An image of Gods omnipotent power, immutable purpose, faithfulness in mercy, truth and love, Psa. 119:89-90. A firm and everlasting refuge, a Rock of Ages, Isa. 26:4. One age passeth away, and another, and a third, etc., but the rock remains. The name of the Lord is a strong tower (Pro. 18:10); munition of rocks (Isa. 33:16); rocks so deep, no pioneer can undermine them; so thick, no cannon can pierce them; so high, no ladder can scale them (Trapp).
Deu. 32:5. Spots of Gods children. Impatience, anger, idolatry, sectarian bitterness and prejudices, etc. Sin generally.
1. Spots of deepest dye. Not on surface, but ingrained like leopards spots and Ethiopians skin.
2. Spots which corruptall flesh corruptuniversal prevalence of disease, the whole head sick and the heart faint, voluntary debasement and death.
3. Spots which cannot be washed away by man. Not even with nitre and much sope, Jer. 2:22. Only the blood of Christ can take away the stain and make whiter than snow.
Deu. 32:6. Requite. Ingratitude for mercies innumerable, distinguished, affectionate, and long continued. Good turns aggravate unkindness, and our guilt is increased by our obligations. It is ingratitude that makes a godly mans sin so heinous, which otherwise would be far less than other mens, since his temptations are stronger and his resistance greater Trapp. Thy father? Consider. I. That God sustains a fatherly relation towards us. See him our Father in:
1. The work of Creation.
2. The redemptive plan.
3. The workings of Providence. II. That as such we owe him peculiar duties:
1. As our Father we ought to be like him.
2. We ought to obey him.
3. We ought to love him. III. That this relationship involves certain duties with regard to our fellow men. They are of the same family as we are. Then there should be:
1. Family union;
2. Family correspondence;
3. Family love. (Bib. Museum.)
RECOLLECTION OF PAST MERCIES.Deu. 32:7-14
Remember days of old, from the beginning until now what God has doneProper review, true enquiry into past history will lead to gratitude and trust.
I. Special inheritance allotted to Israel by Divine Wisdom. God the Great Proprietor made and peopled the earth.
1. To each nation He assigned its portion. Divided to the nations their inheritance.From the sons of Noah separate nations were formed (Gen. 10:32). In growth and settlement they were not left to chance, permitted to scramble, nor to prey one upon another. Powerful states should never invade weak ones. Forced acquisitions are unjust, insecure; become sources of restlessness, corruption and revolt. He hath determined the bounds of their habitation (Act. 17:26).
2. To Israel He had special reference, in this arrangement. Placed in the midst of the earth, Canaan was admirably suited for their residence. From this common centre, the report of Gods wonders and the glad tidings of salvation were easily spread to every part of the globe.
3. In this arrangement the interests of the people themselves were secured. The land gradually gainedits tribes depossessed according to the number of the children of Israel. They were preservedbecame the most favoured, the most important nation upon earth. By position, training and divine wisdom made depositaries of revealed religion and prepared the world for the Messiah.
II. Special Honour conferred upon Israel by Divine choice. They were the Lords portion, and the lot of his inheritance. The Lord hath chosen Jacob unto himself, and Israel for a peculiar treasure (Psa. 135:4). Separated from heathens, elevated by privileges they were chosen a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth (Deu. 7:6). Others were aliens, they were children sons of God. Honours bestowed, special relationship indicate obligation to God. We are not to engross divine favours, but intended to be mediums, diffusers of it; not only to be blessed ourselves, but to be blessings to others. I will bless thee and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing.
III. Special training of Israel by Divine Grace. The beautiful figure sets forth Jehovahs care and method of training his people.
1. He sought them in solitude. What sovereign grace! Few and lonely God desired and chose them. At this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.
2. He instructed them in ignorance. Cut off from surrounding nations, God alone taught them: in laws and ordinances, rulers and prophets, events painful and pleasing. He gave also his good spirit to instruct them (Neh. 9:20).
3. He guarded them in journeys. Led them about, not in the most direct, but in zigzag way, backwards and forwards. None are carried to heaven, directed in the way without hindrance, deflection and trouble. I will bring the blind by a way they know not; I will lead them in paths they have not known.
4. He preserved them in danger. He kept him. He healed the serpents bite; defended in assault; frustrated divination and enchantment; reproved kings for their sakes, saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.
5. Trained them in love. Gods diligence and tender compassion set forth. As the least touch of the eye would be painful, so God feels when the humblest is illused, afflicted or assailed. He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye.
IV. Special exaltation of Israel by Divine Providence. He made him ride, etc. In Egypt they were oppressed and enslaved; in Canaan exalted and honoured.
1. In victory over our enemies. With a high hand were redeemed (Exo. 14:8); and by the might of God did they conquer numerous foes. I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father.
2. In superabundant provision. The fields gave their increase and the rock its honey; oil from olives on rocky clefts, butter of kine and milk of sheep; lambs well-fed and cattle of finest breed; bread of the finest wheat and drink of purest grape that he might eat. Most abundant, most fruitful are the rewards of obedience. The service of God is a land of beauty and productiveness. He maketh peace in thy borders and filleth thee with the finest of the wheat (Psa. 17:4-14; Psa. 81:16).
THE ROYAL SIMILITUDE.Deu. 32:11
The king of birds combines more admirable qualities than any other fowl, and forms a royal similitude. It has strength to mount above all, swiftness to outstrip all, an eye that penetrates the very fountain of light, affection that draws forth its blood for its young, and a sagacity almost human in instructing and disciplining them, which is specially noted in our text.
Notice four things without doing violence to the similitude.
1. God uses Divine admonitions. As the eagle stirreth up her nest. When time for young to leave nest, she moves it with gentleness and affection; she sees them sleeping, and unwilling to leave their first home, makes a noise, strikes her wings against surrounding branches, and then, having awakened them, disturbs them still further, and finally stirreth up, turns the nest inside out, and compels them to take to crags of rocks, or boughs of trees. Thus did God to Israel, by moving the heart of Pharaoh against them when at ease by the fleshpots of Egypt. God now stirs up his people, who are unwilling to think of better things, and refuse to hear the call, Rise and come away. Sickness and death invade the dwelling, a darling child blighted in bud, or husband or wife dies in vigour of life, yet in vain. The sails of commerce rent; business blighted, schemes frustrated, and property wasted, to destroy the nest. God admonishes by knocking the world from under them, and places them in altitude to look for a better. Arise, this is not your rest.
2. God uses Divine allurements. The eagle fluttereth over her young, hovers over them, and excites them to imitate her, and take their flight.Cruden. Thus the Lord moved Israel to leave Egypt, and thus speaks of their restoration from Babylon, and their conversion to Christ. I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness (Hos. 2:14-15). He declares unwillingness that any should perish, reveals anxiety, and more than parental love for our salvation. Like the eagle rising to the sun, the Lord Jesus teaches us to rise to a better, brighter world. Enough in the Gospel to woo from sin and the world. Can you find a better portion than God and heaven?
Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace,
Rise from transitory things
Towards heaven, thy destined place.
3. God assures of Divine assistance. When the eagle sees its young weary or fearful, it takes them upon its back and carries them.Cruden. God bare Israel on eagles wings, and brought them unto himself (Exo. 19:4). So strength is made perfect in weakness; God upholds and makes grace sufficient. But as the eagle rejects as unnatural its young that do not fix their eyes upon the bright orb of day, and rise, so God may swear they shall not enter into my rest.
4. God promises Divine protection. The eagle bears its young on its wings for protection as well as aid. The archer must first penetrate the body of the old bird before he can touch the young. Naturally it is more out of danger than other birds when in its proper element; security is doubled when on its mothers wings. Difficult to kill an eagle. If down on earth, with its head on turf, and longer at fountains, then a noble mark and easy prey. Just as the heaven-born soul, if in his proper place, and after his proper object, is out of reach of the wickedabove the world, with its pomps and vanities, which fade away in the distancefiery darts of Satan must penetrate Jehovahs wings before they touch him. The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath. We see, then, why God disturbs with the ills of life that we may obey his call. He sends winds and rain, takes away the warm down of earthly comforts, and pulls down our tabernacles, that we may leave to dwell in mansions above.Rev. William Jackson.
GODS WORK OF GRACE IN THE REDEMPTION OF MAN.Deu. 32:10-12
I. The Condition of the Sinner. Set forth in expressive terms.
1. In a distant state. If found he must be lost. Lost to God, of no service to him; to self, missing the great end of life; to others, of no benefit, but injurious.
2. In a barren statea desert place. The world, the unregenerate soul, a moral waste, sterile without God.
3. In a dangerous state. Howling widerness, great, terrible, and filled with fiery serpents (Deu. 8:15; Jer. 2:6). Howling with the roar of beasts and the blasts of tempest.
4. In a hopeless state. Away from the camp and company of God. Without a star in heaven or a footprint on earth. Fit emblem of the wretched, unregenerate condition of the sinner.
II. The Method of Deliverance. Strikingly illustrative of Gods method of redeeming men.
1. God seeks. He found him. He seeks discovers men in departure and sin. Adam, where art thou? His people are sought out. (Isa. 62:12). Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.
2. God guides He led him. When he seeks he is sure to find, bring to himself, guide through life and duty to heaven. I did know (care for thee and love) thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought (Hos. 13:5.)
III. The Place of Destination. A land flowing with milk and honey, the city of habitation. No home, no rest nor shelter in the wilderness. A country prepared and in reserve. God brings the believer into a large and wealthy place of highest hopes and joysa place where unpropitious circumstances yield unexpected blessings. But heaven the fulfilment, the perfection of all.
From Deu. 32:11-12 learn
I. Needful disturbance. As an eagle stirreth up her nest.
1. As to our outward condition in the world.
2. As to our selfrighteous confidence.
3. As to our departure from life.
II. Divine example. Fluttereth over her young to exite and teach them by example. The eye does more than the ear. God must be seen by example of parents, teachers and ministers. God in Christ, humanised example. Render religion attractive that men may see it.
And as the bird each fond endearment tries
To tempt her new-fledged offspring to the skies
Employ each art, reprove each dull delay,
Allure to brighter worlds, and lead the way,
III. All sufficient assistance. Spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings. This to aid and secure them. Not always aware of her design, away she sails with them and shakes them off her wings. She follows after, hovers near them, and when their pinions flag and they cannot fly, she darts and places herself under them, prevents their fall, succours their weakness and refreshes them for another flight Our dependence is entire, but our sufficiency is of God.
IV. Gods sole agency. So the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. God conforms himself to our modes of apprehension and expression. This necessary, but not degrading. He speaks unto us as unto children, with whom imitation is everything; and levies a tax upon the world of nature to furnish images of himself. He assumes relation of parents, the affection of a father, the tenderness of a mother. He borrows images from animals, and especially the feathered tribes. As a hen gathereth her chickens. Observe a divine agencythe Lord led him. See also exclusive application of this work. The Lord alone did lead him. A resemblance of the manner in which it was done. So the Lord, etc. How? As an eagle stirreth up, etc. Three things here ascribed to the mother eagle, not in providing for her young, but in educating themin teaching them to fly she stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth her wings, taketh them and beareth them on her wings This applicable to God in dealing with us, and preparing as to seek things above.(Condensed from Jay.)
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Deu. 32:8-9. The most high divided nations.
1. God originally divided nations their inheritance.
2. Divine purpose is revealed in this division.
3. Israel was discovered and distinguished from all other nations. A nation, the depository of Gods will, from which the Church and the Christ were to spring. Recognise a brother in every human being, for God has made of one blood all nations upon the face of the earth. In the worst of times God has preserved a few for himself.
Deu. 32:9. The Lords portion. His purchase.
2. His conquest
3. His glory.
4. His heirs. The value God sets upon His people. As bought by blood, re-generated by grace, and designed for heaven. What an astonishing saying. As holy souls take God for their portion, so God takes them for His portion. They are infinitely happy in and satisfied with God; He represents Himself as happy in them. This is what is implied on being a saint. He who seeks an earthly portion has little commerce with the Most High.A. Clarke.
Deu. 32:10. I. The primary application of the text as a summary of all that had been suffered by the Israelites, and all that had been done by God on their behalf. II. The peculiar manner in which it adapts itself to our own times and to our own cases.
1. We have the picture of the believer in his natural state, in a desert land.
2. In his regenerate state, found of God, and instructed.
3. In his guarded state. Kept.Hy. Melvill.
Deu. 32:11. The method of Divine training. I. Its object. To secure development of our own powers, by action wise, divinely prompted, self-reliant, and adapted to constitution and circumstances. II. The means. Gentle, affectionate, stimulating, and exemplary. The purpose of life is development; the process of development is discipline; the result of discipline is a full and many-sided manhood.
For human weal, Heaven husbands all events.
ISRAELS INGRATITUDE, APOSTACY AND PUNISHMENT.Deu. 32:15-25
Israel requited God for benefits, by forsaking him, and serving worthless idols. God is offended by their conduct and resolves to punish.
I. Base Ingratitude to God. Do ye thus requite the Lord? The heathens deemed ingratitude a sin so great as to include every other. Lycurgus asked why his laws did not notice it, replied, I have left it to the gods to punish.
1. Ingratitude displayed in self-indulgence. Thon art waxen fat, thou art grown thick.
2. Ingratitude begetting pride. According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled and their hearts were exalted, therefore have they forgotten me (Hos. 13:6).
3. Ingratitude ending in rebellion. Waxed fat and kicked. Like pampered and well-fed cattle they grew insolent, became wanton and ungovernable. They were disobedient and rebelled against Thee and cast Thy law behind their backs (Neh. 9:25).
II. Shameful Apostacy from God. Then he forsook God who made him. Departure from God a tendency in fallen nature. But the sin is aggravated by light, privileges and advantages of instruction.
1. Forsaking God who made them. No regard to our Creator, no thought for the end of our being. How deplorable to ignore our makersource of intelligence and joyin whom we live and move and have our being.
2. Sacrificing to gods which cannot help them. Gods which were strange, new and vanitiesGods whom their fathers feared not and to whom they owed no obligation whateverGods termed abominations and devils, repulsive in their nature and destructive in their influence.
3. Exciting to jealousy God who loved them. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods. This jealousy, says Calvin, rests upon sacred and spiritual marriage tie, by which God had bound the people to Himself.
III. Terrible punishment from God. God will severely visit his people for their apostacy. The Lord saw it, abhorred and resolved to reject Israel. This punishment is set forth in the form of righteous judgmentRetribution not always adequate, nor invariable, but real and manifestan instinct of justice in the divine nature, a law of providence and of conscience. Be sure your sin will find you out.
1. They had offended God and other nations should offend them. A foolish nation would provoke them to anger (Deu. 32:21). A people whom they deemed foolish, or who really were foolish though they thought themselves wise, would eventually be received against their wish.
2. They had provoked God, and God would provoke them to jealousy. Gentile nations, whom they despised, not only conquered them and became their masters, but entered a covenant from which they were excluded (cf. Mat. 21:43; Rom. 10:19).
3. They had rejected God, and God would reject them. I will hide my face from them (Deu. 32:20). God would withdraw his favour and transfer it to a despised nation. As they had turned their back upon him he would turn his back upon them (cf. Jer. 18:17; Jer. 2:27). They thought lightly of God, forsook him and then made substitutes for him. A picture of sins progress, the sinners folly and the way to righteous judgment.
DIVINE ANGER.Deu. 32:19-27
These may be figurative expressions, but cannot be explained away, to make the Supreme Being incapable of feeling against sin and the sinner, destitute of pleasure or displeasure, without concern for His glory, or the welfare of the universe.
I. The anger of God is caused by the sins of men. They have provoked me to anger. It exists in Divine perfections, and is manifest in Divine government. Gods eye is a flame of fire, and its lofty jealousy rests upon every form of sin, negative and positive. For the wrath of God is revealed (displayed in judicial vengeance) against all ungodliness (impiety, non-recognition of God) and unrighteousness (deviations from truth and moral rectitude) of men (Rom. 1:18).
II. Execution of anger is reserved to God Himself. I will provoke, I will move, agents secondary causes. God is the avenger. We are not to usurp His place, and recompense evil for evil. He knows how to punish without passion, and without injustice. Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
III. Anger, when roused in God, is terrible in its effects. Most severe judgments are threatened (Deu. 32:22-25).
1. Judgments extensive in operation. Sweeping the earth, penetrating the lowest hell, and like a fire of universal conflagration.
2. Judgments irresistible in might. Set on fire the foundations of mountains. Strong fortresses subverted, holy cities destroyed, and the Jewish Constitution overturned. Who knoweth the power of Thine anger? Even according to Thy fear, so is Thy wrath, i.e., equal to all that a man can fear from it (Psa. 90:11).
3. Judgments destructive in results. Swept together, heaped up, and falling upon young men and maidens, children and old menswift as arrows, and hot as fire; in the field and in the home destruction came. It falls upon men like wild beasts upon victimsto crush, destroy, and carry in triumph. This is not an overdrawn picture of the danger and the anger of God against presumptuous sins. Consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver
For guilt, no plea! to pain, no pause, no bound!
Inexorable all! and all extreme.
Young.
IV. The anger of God is often restrained by mercy. Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy (Deu. 32:27). God can make a full end, but desires not the death of sinners. In the midst of wrath He remembers mercy.
1. Restrained in regard for His own honour. Lest their adversaries should say, Our hand is high, etc. If God destroyed Israel, the enemy would take the credit to themselvesbecome proud and boastful. Hence He regards His own name; will not permit its profanation and pollution (cf. Exo. 32:12; Num. 14:13; Isa. 10:5).
2. Restraint in the interests of His people. Unworthy as they are, a nation void of counsel, He was concerned for their welfare. (a) For their protection. Their adversaries would injure them, behave themselves strangely; but He defends, restrains the wrath of man, and causes remainder to praise Him. (b) For their correction. He desires to teach and make them wise (Deu. 32:28). My people is foolish; they have not known Me. (c) For their continuance (Deu. 32:26). No desire to blot out their name, but to perpetuate their existence, honour, and bless them for ever.
THE DANGERS OF PROSPERITY.Deu. 32:15-18
Consider I. How men are affected by abundant prosperity in their social capacity, and with respect to their general worldly interests. History is full of instances to show how national character has deteriorated as the wealth and power of a nation have increased. II. How our churches are affected by such prosperity. Note the various religious errors of the century; antinomianism, &c. Note also the pride of enlightenment, which is the besetting temptation of the present day. III. How the injurious tendencies of long good fortune may be corrected. Let us:
1. Constantly recollect with gratitude the source and giver of our prosperity;
2. Use our resources and advantages as God intends they should be used;
3. Not desire prosperity for itself.A. Thomson, M. A.
Another outline may be given.
I. Prosperity is not real happiness. Nature knows nothing of moral distinctions; treats all alike. But distinguished rank, long life, abundant wealth and ripe scholarship, do not satisfy inward craving. A millionaire may be miserable. Prosperity is like salt water, the more you drink of it the thirstier you are (Talmage).
II. Prosperity profits very little. The wealth of empires cannot add to stature of body or mind, nor secure health and virtue. It is insecure and exposes to envy. Envious at the prosperity of the wicked. Earthly possessionsvanitydo not fill, protect nor continue.
III. Prosperity is spiritually dangerous. The prosperity of fools shall destroy them, (Pro. 1:32.)
1. In leading to self-dependence.
2. In begetting contempt for God. Lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
3. In causing apostacy for God. Then he forsook God. Guard against selfishness. Be watchful and humble. In all time of our wealth, good Lord deliver us.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Deu. 32:15. Jeshurun. A dishonoured name given to Israel several times (ch. Deu. 31:16, Deu. 33:5; Deu. 33:26), meaning upright, righteous; a term also of endearment and indicating close relation to God.
1. They forsook God, who is just and right and had chosen them to walk in righteousness (Isa. 64:2.) By placing the name of righteous before Israel, he censured ironically those who had fallen away from righteousness, and by thus reminding them with that dignity they had been endowed, he upbraided them with the more severity for their guilt of perfidy.(Calvin).
2. They degraded themselves. Forsook the ways and the God of their fathers, became corrupt in manners, unworthy of confidence, and abominable in conduct. A rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord. (Isa. 30:9.) Waxed fat and kicked. The figure is admirably supported, through the whole verse. We see first, a miserable, lean steed, taken under the care and into the keeping of a master, who provides him with an abundance of provender. We see secondly, this horse waxing fat under this keeping. We see him thirdly, breaking away from his master, leaving his rich pasturage, and running to the wilderness, unwilling to bear the yoke or harness, or to make any returns for his masters care and attention. We see fourthly, whence this conduct proceeds, from a want of consciousness that his strength depends upon his masters keeping, and a lack of consideration that leanness and wretchedness must be the consequence of leaving his masters service and running off from his masters pasturage. How easy to apply these points to the Israelites! and how illustrative of their former and latter state and how powerfully do they apply to many called Christians, who having increased in riches, forget that God, from whose hand alone those mercies flowed.A. Clarke.
Deu. 32:17. Not to God.
1. Man, a religions being, will worship, must have a God. If there be no God, we must invent one, cried a leader in the French revolution.
2. Right conception of God restrains, elevates, and preserves.
3. When God is cast off, abominable wickedness and awful degradation ensues. Things that are no Gods, devils chosen as substitutes. Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth. (Jer. 2:26.)
Deu. 32:18. Unmindful.
1. Men outwardly prosperous, but spiritually destitute.
2. Men enjoying every favour, but acknowledging no obligation to God.
3. An offence most unnatural, unreasonable, and provoking. Thou hast forgotten the rock of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy Strength. (Isa. 17:10.) My people have forgotten me days without number. (Jer. 2:32.)
Deu. 32:19. Lord saw. Divine inspection of Human Life.
1. God remembers the sins of men. Remembrance minute, constant and universal.
2. Men think God is indifferent to their sins. Forget him in thought and disregard him in conduct.
3. When men disregard God in their ways, they become more sinful in their lives. Proud and corrupt, false and unjust, children that are corrupters, they have forsaken the Lord, Isa. 1:4.
For want of faith,
Down the steep precipice of wrong he slides,
Theres nothing to support him in the right.
Young.
Deu. 32:21-22. Mine anger.
1. An element of wrath in Divine Government.
2. This wrath may overtake men suddenly.
3. When it does overtake men they cannot escape. When a great ransom cannot deliver thee.
Deu. 32:23-25. Gods arrows. Judgments from the gods represented by arrows in Scripture and heathen writers. Apollo is pictured as bearing a bow and quiver full of deadly arrows, and in answer to prayer coming to smite the Greeks with pestilence (Hom. II. I. 5:43).
1. Innumerable in variety. Famine, pestilence, wild beasts, poisonous reptiles, and war.
2. Direct in their aim. Never fall on wrong persons, never miss the Mark 3. Deadly in their effect. Wounds of poisoned arrows intensely painful and internal. No greater suffering than arrows sharp in the hearts of the Kings enemies, (Psa. 45:5). The arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit (destroying vital energy, certain death) (Job. 6:4).
Deu. 32:26-27. Influence of Mans conduct on the Divine Mind. If God sees, he must, speaking after the manner of man, feel and act. I. Mans sin rouses Divine opposition. Gods anger not a passion but a principle, not against existence but against the sins and sufferings of existence. Op-position, hatred and sin revealed in judgment upon individuals and communities. II. Mans sin restrains Divine procedure. Jealousy indicates love. The wrath of God, says Meyer, is the holy love of God (who is neither neutral nor one-sided in his affection) for all that is good in its energy is antagonistic to all that is evil. The expression the wrath of God simply embodies this truth that the relations of Gods love to the world are unsatisfied, unfulfilled. The expression is not merely authropopathic, it is an appropriate description of the Divine pathos necessarily involved in the conception of a revelation of love, restrained, hindered and stayed through unrighteousness (Martensens Christian Dog.)
1. If not loved and obeyed he feels wronged, therefore does not show mercy.
2. If wronged or insulted he does not revenge himself, lest the enemy should rejoice, his people be destroyed, and his glory tarnished. Let the righteous hope, the wicked trumble, for Divine wrath is only partially poured out in this world. It will be perfectly displayed in the final judgment.
MARKS OF WISDOM.Deu. 32:28-30
God complains of Israels folly. If they had been more considerate, wiser, they would have foreseen and avoided evil. A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished.
I. Wisdom gives understanding in the events of life. Wise men value and improve life. Their wisdom is not intuitional, abstract, and speculative. The inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding (Job. 32:8). Hence it is sound and practical; fixed on a right end (Php. 3:13), and regulated by right principle (Psa. 119:105). The prudent man regards the events of life, discerns the signs of the times, learns coming judgments from the Word of God, and prepares to meet them. It is reckless folly to walk blindly, carelessly, in the midst of greatest evils. Men that had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do (1Ch. 12:32).
II. Wisdom is superior to natural strength in the conflicts of life. One chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight (Deu. 32:30). A few taught by God are mightier than they in arms. As Gideon (Jdg. 7:22) and Davids worthies (2Sa. 23:8). Knowledge is power is Bacons famous aphorism. Physical and mechanical forces increase the power of man. Intellect wisely applied gives moral ascendancy. But a wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength (Pro. 24:5); by faith and dependence upon God puts to flight the armies of the aliens. The battle is not to the strong. Wisdom is better than strength. Athanasius against the world! Wisdom is better than weapons of war (Ecc. 9:18).
III. Wisdom leads to consideration of the end of life. That they would consider their latter end (Deu. 32:29). We know not the end, but it will come. To each, time will close. The last day, the most solemn of all, fast approaches. Instinct leads animals to prepare for the future. Worldly wisdom urges readiness for emergency. God loudly speaks in Providence, and warns in Scripture. O that they were wise. Oh, that My people had hearkened unto Me, and Israel had walked in My ways (Psa. 81:13).
Be wise to-day; tis madness to defer;
Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Young.
GODS REPROOF OF HUMAN FOLLY.Deu. 32:28-29
I. As a fact men are extremely foolish. Sinners are shortsighted, regardless of the inevitable consequences of their conduct.
1. They are wilfully ignorant. That they understood. We are naturally ignorant, limited in thought and being; but not forced to err and sin. Ignorance may be removed by Scripture and the Holy Spirit. But the careless worldling, immersed in pleasure and playing with trifles, is a man without understanding, and like the beasts that perish. Wilful ignorance is the centre of all evil and the precursor of ruin. Fools die for want of wisdom (Pro. 10:21).
2. They are strangely conceited. Trust to reason; resist Divine teaching because authoritative and practical and would be their own guides. Vain man (empty and ignorant) would be wise (Job. 11:12), forgets that all knowledge is disjointed, partial, and worthless, without the fear of God. Sages of antiquity professing themselves wise became fools (Rom. 1:22). Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him (Pro. 26:12).
3. They are habitually indifferent. Accustomed to sin, deaf to the voice of God; nothing stirs or restrains. Rooted habit has become ruling principle. The heart not kept, thoughts not rightly centered, control is lost over actions. O that they would consider!
II. God seeks to make foolish men wise. He does not compel, but reproves, expostulates. Wisdom in its very nature cannot be given by force. Wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting, get understanding.
1. By striking providences. Such mentioned here (Deu. 32:24-25). Affliction and misfortune, inward darkness, distress, and insanity. Providences which alarm and make us think. Providences which create joy and gratitude. all overruled for good and designed to instruct.
2. By inspired teaching. The Bible, an inspired guide, declares the providence and justice of God. A teacher unerring, free, and common to all. Written for our learning, and recording events which are warnings. All these things happened unto them for ensamples (types), and they are written for our admonition, &c. (1Co. 10:11). O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments!
THE CONSIDERATION OF DEATH.Deu. 32:29
I. Take account of the general insensibility of men to the grand fact that they are mortal. Note:
1. How little effect the fact that whole races are dead since the beginning of time till now has upon us.
2. How seldom we are struck with the reflection that many things and small things too might cause our death.
3. How soon a recovery from danger sets aside the serious thought of death.
4. How schemes are formed for a long future time, without any thought of possible death. II. See what can be brought in explanation of this.
1. The insertion in the human mind, by the Creator of a principle counteractive in some degree to the influence of this prospect of death.
2. The fearful, radical depravity of our nature.
3. The perfect distinctness of life and death.
4. Even the certainty and universality of death.
5. Our utter inability to form any defined idea of the manner of existence after death.
6. A general presumption of having long to live.
7. The endeavours of men, by occupying their whole thoughts with other things, to preclude a thought of their end. III. Briefly remonstrate against it. To end our life is the mightiest event that awaits us in this world, and it is that which we are living but to come to. To have been thoughtless of it, then, will ultimately be an immense calamity. (John Foster).
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Deu. 32:28-29. The Folly of Men. I. Men are not wise.
1. They prefer shadows to substance, worldly happiness. What shadows we are and what shadows we pursue (Burke).
2. They avoid not danger when before them.
3. Admit facts, yet live as if they were not facts. II. Gods provision to make men wise. Life the school of God, who provides teachers and gives lessons.
1. In tender appeal.
2. In wonderful events. In patience, perseverance and affection, who teaches like him?
Deu. 32:29. Latter End. End of certain actions, end of sin, end of life generally considered not. What will ye do in the end thereof? (Jer. 5:31). She remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully (in astartling, singular way) (Lam. 1:9).
Heaven gives the needful, but neglected call,
What day, what hour, but knocks at human hearts,
To wake the soul to sense of future scenes.
GOD A ROCK OF CONFIDENCE.Deu. 32:31
The gods of the heathen not wise, powerful and gracious, like Jehovah. Enemies and friends can prove that He alone is worthy of confidence.
I. Men chose a rock in whom to have confidence. Wealth, the world and our fellow-creatures. Friends lack sympathy, prove unfaithful and pass away, confidences vain and false, abound and disappoint. Broken reeds which fail, pierce and wound the hand that leans upon them (Isa. 36:6).
II. God alone is worthy of confidence. A rock the most abiding and unchanging object in nature. God the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. None like him proved.
1. By testimony of friends. Who enjoy shelter, comfort and rest. Who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? Not any rock like our God (1Sa. 2:2).
2. By the testimony of enemies. Our enemies themselves being judges. Compelled by dear experience to acknowledge Gods power and supremacy. Egyptians (Exo. 14:25), Balak and Balaam (Numbers 23), Philistines (1Sa. 4:8). O, Galilean, thou hast conquered! was the forced confession of the Emperor.
III. God as a rock of confidence should be recommended to others Accessible to all; no steep rugged height to climb to reach ita fit shelter from the wind and covert from the tempest (Isa. 32:2). Millions h sheltered and yet room. Blessedness beyond description to those who flee and find. Blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted (Psalms 18; Psa. 31:21; Isa. 17:10.
DEMORALIZATION OF MEN.Deu. 32:32-33
I. In falling short of the end of Existence. Israel well-pleasing to God at first, a noble vine became a degenerate plant (Isa. 5:2-7; Jer. 2:21). Like the vine of Sodom emblems of utter depravity (Isa. 1:10; Jer. 23:14). Not merely frail, but morally corrupted, degraded; unprofitable and unable to answer the end of existence; not living to the praise of his glory, but for selfish, useless ends. Sin is degradation of character, perversion of lifes purpose. Other creatures fulfil their mission. All Gods works praise him. But all men have sinned (Jew and Gentile, best and worst) and come short of (failed to attain to, disqualified for) the glory of God (Rom. 1:23).
II. In becoming pernicious in life. These terms most expressive, indicative of principles and practices most abominable.
1. Offensive in character. Grapes of gall; worse than wild grapes, bitter and vexatious to God and man.
2. Mischievous in conduct. Poison of dragons, secreted malice, ready to dart forth upon others. They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent (to sting); adders poison (most destructive) is under their lips (Psa. 140:3; cf. Psa. 58:4; Rom. 3:13.
3. Fatal in influence. Asps a species of snake whose bite is immediately fatal. Nothing could be imagined worse or more to be abhorred than that nation (Calvin). But this wickedness ripens for judgment. The thought of Sodoms destruction is suggested. Those who imitate Sodom bring forth the worst fruits of impiety, and will perish like Sodom. When great cities sink and great nations morally degenerate, they are doomed to judgments, righteous and complete overthrow. Turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample (not an exception to the regular laud of the Divine Government) unto those that after should live ungodly, (2Pe. 2:6.)
GODS SUPREMACY IN THE WORLD.Deu. 32:34-43
God is represented as killing and making alive (Deu. 32:39); as judging men and punishing gods; as swearing to heaven and calling upon nations to rejoice in His supremacy.
I. Supremacy asserted in the Physical World. God is not quiescent but active in the world, doing marvellous things without number.
1. In appointing agents to maintain it. All creatures under His command, mightiest and meanest; gods and men; the glittering sword and arrows drunk with blood; life and death. He arranges and directs all agencies to work in the circumstances, bodies and souls of men; in the departments of creation and the history of nations.
2. In fixing times to display it. Days of calamity and of joy. In the wheel of nature (Jas. 3:6), in the revolutions of time, to every thing there is a season. The world not ruled by chance, fate, or accident. Events most casual under control. Every work its part, and a time to every purpose under heaven. He changeth the times and the seasons. God hath determined the times appointed (Act. 17:26).
II. Supremacy vindicated in the Moral World. In the physical world law, abstract principles set up in opposition: in the moral, reason, heathen gods, humanity, and the heavenly bodies. The heavens do rule
1. In the experience of men. Nebuchadnezzars royal testimony, Belshazzars judgment, and Napoleons downfall. Man is subject to law as well as creation. In whose hand is the soul (life) of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind (flesh of man), Job. 12:10.
2. In the customs of society. Social and religioussociety is barbarous or civilised, progressive or stationary, degraded or elevated, as it recognises and depends upon God.
3. In the history of nations. God the Supreme Ruler and Proprietor. Nations increase as Rome, Israel, England, and America; or decay as Israel for its idolatry, Rome for its luxury, Spain for its persecutionsaccording to His purpose. The rise, growth, and ruin of nations with Him. He increaseth the nations and destroyeth them: He enlargeth the nations and straiteneth them again (Job. 12:23).
III. Supremacy in its influence in the world. Two effects chiefly.
1. A source of joy to Gods people. Rejoice, O ye nations, with His people (Deu. 32:43). His rule is not lawless authority, tyrannical and evil, but just and benevolent. Hence the Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.
2. A source of terror to his enemies. Render vengeance to his enemies (Deu. 32:43). When He wounds by loss (Deu. 32:39); strikes according to the manner in which He swears (Deu. 32:40); and becomes the archer and the arrow, who can resist? Say to the righteousit shall be well with him. Woe unto the wicked, etc. (Isa. 3:10-11).
VENGEANCE IN STORE.Deu. 32:34-38
This (Deu. 32:34) not only includes the sins of the nation, but also the judgment of God. The apostacy of Israel, as well as the consequent punishment, is laid up with Godsealed up in His treasuries; therefore they have not yet actually occurredan evident proof that we have prophecy before us, and not the description of an apostacy that had already taken place, and of punishment inflicted in consequence (Keil).
I. In store, as a natural consequence of a sinful course. Natural for sin to produce resultsresults destroyed, checked, or treasured up. Sins stored up in human conscience (Psa. 51:3) Gods providence, and at day of judgment, (Rom. 2:5). None lost or left unpunishedall repaid. Dost thou not watch over my sin (to visit it)? My transgression is sealed up in a bag (as evidence preserved against me); and thou sewest up mine iniquity (to keep it carefully and punish it justly), Job. 14:16. The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up; his sin is hid. (Hos. 13:12).
II. In store, to be revealed in due time. Justice pledged to avenge broken law upon disobedient. Time and manner may be sealed up. Long suffering must not be taken for forgetfulness. Recompense in due time. Retribution.
1. Terrible. Kill, and none can make alive.
2. Near. At hand. Instruments of judgment, like weapons of war, are taken in hand.
3. Swift. The things make haste. Judgment lingereth not (2Pe. 2:3).
4. Certain. Shall come. I will render vengeance. As surely as I live for ever.
III. The revelation of stored up vengeance will be just and wise. True and righteous are His judgments. Restrained and educational; yet sufficient.
1. To convince Gods people of their folly. In forsaking Him for idols which are vain and impotentin relying upon earthly props which are destroyedin showing Himself to be the arbiter of life and death.
2. To warn the wicked of their sin. Reward them that hate me. No power can avert or escape His anger. They may think themselves to be immovably fixed, but their foot shall slide. They shall totter and fall. Refuge, strength, and hope shall fail them. In God only can these be found. The Eternal God is thy refuge. Flee to Him.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Deu. 32:31. God a rock. A contrast between God and idolsin existence, attributes, and conduct.
Deu. 32:35. Sliding feet. Risks of carnal security.
1. Men fix themselves firmly, feel secure, and think nothing can shake them.
2. This is tremendous risk. Contempt for misfortune of others first sign of insecurity (Job. 12:5). Sin overbalances, providence shakes the feet, and the fall begins.
3. Results most sad. Imagine a slip into the abyss from alpine heights! To slide and fall is in a thousand places certain destruction; and no threatenings against the workers of iniquity are more terrible than that they shall be set in slippery places, that their feet shall slide in due time (Dr. Thom. Ld. and Bk.).
4. God alone can prevent sliding. Hold thou me up, etc. (cf. Psa. 38:17; Psa. 94:18).
Deu. 32:35-36.
1. A warning against self revenge. Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto (the) wrath (let it spend itself and have free space; or give place, by stepping aside as a man attacked by a wild beast); vengeance is mine (Rom. 12:19).
2. God has power to punish. I will repay, saith the Lord. Put off indulgence, make room for the judgment of God, who will execute in due time.
Anger is like
A full hot horse; being allowd his way,
Self-mettle tires him.Shakespeare.
Deu. 32:36. The Lord shall judge. Judicial acts of God.
1. As judge for His people in mercy.
2. As judge against or upon them to correct.
3. As judge of all men in righteousness.
Deu. 32:34-35. Iniquity reserved for future punishment.
1. Treasured up. Noticed, not forgotten, never forgiven without repentance.
2. Treasured up to be punished. Evil pursueth sinners. An order of sequence in moral as physical law. Punishment fixed, certain and near. Avenging deities are shod with wool, but never pause nor mitigate their judgments.
3. Be wise and escape. Fatally unwise to delay repentance and return to God!
Defer not till to-morrow to be wise,
To-morrows sun to thee may never rise.
Deu. 32:36-38. Learn
1. Afflictions of Gods people. Their power gone, reduced to shame and helplessness. Gods whom they worshipped and supported despised and unable to defend them.
2. The pity of God for His afflicted people. Judge, i.e., plead their cause, protect and deliver them. Repent of evils brought against them, and deal in mercy, not in judgment, with them.
3. Lessons to be learned from this experience. The folly of forsaking God. The impotence of idols. The insecurity of any hiding place against the justice of God. The design of mercy to awaken a sense of ingratitude and rebellion. Experience is the best master. Experience teaches fools; and he is a fool, indeed, that does not profit by it.
Deu. 32:39. Learn
1. Gods self-existence. I am He.
2. Gods sole rule. No God with me.
3. God as arbiter of life and death. I kill and I make alive, etc.
4. Gods absolute power. Neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
Deu. 32:40-42. A terrible God.
1. Threatening vengeance.
2. Ratifying sentence with an oath.
3. Preparing to execute.
4. No resistance when vengeance comes! The Lord will take vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserveth wrath for His enemies.
THE LAST DISCOURSE.Deu. 32:44-47
These are the last words, the repetition of the law of Moses, the ultimatum to the people.
I. The subject of the discourse. All the words of this law. Words of warning, promise and command. The law with its claims and authority. Religion represented by law.
1. Its fulness. All the words needed. Nothing kept back. Testimony clear and sufficient, enough to satisfy intellect and heart, to guide and bless.
2. Its importance. Not a vain thing, an empty, worthless profession; a mere shadow of the good and true, but the highest and only good. The one thing needful.
3. Its necessity. Your life. Not a philosophy, a mere system of morality, but a power of spiritual life. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Christianity is not a theory or a speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.(Coleridge). It is the highest life possible to men, an impartation of power by which eternal life may be finally attained.
II. The attention which the discourse requires. Attention and interest should be according to the importance of a thing.
1. A fixed purpose of mind. Set your hearts. Heart and mind must be centered on it. Constant thought and application, a firm and earnest resolve. Through decision, not passing feelings and vacillating purpose. His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord (Psa. 112:7).
2. A due performance in life. Observe to do. Hear and practice. Business men say life means energy and work. Idleness and sloth are marks of death. Christ quickens, constrains and becomes the principle of action and obedience. When Christ lives within us, obedience is prompt and loyal. Keep My commandments and live.
III. The blessings of thus heeding this discourse. If religion is the essence of wisdom possession must be advantageous.
1. It gives enjoyment of life. Your life in its joy, happiness and usefulness. Lifemiserable existence without God. Noble and glorious the life of him who loves God and feels that God loves him.
2. It prolongs life. Prolong your days. If this promise does not really belong to us, yet religion tends to length of life, in preserving from sins which shorten it, in promoting health, cheerfulness and activity. The fear of the Lord prolongeth days, but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.
3. It prepares for eternal life. Heaven not only eternal existence but eternal enjoyment. True religion an earnest and foretaste of it. More than dry formalism, cold assent, barren orthodoxy. It is essentially the fountain of life, the kingdom of God within.
THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF OBEDIENCE TO GODS COMMANDS.Deu. 32:46-47
I. Earnest purpose is essential to personal obedience to Gods law. Set your hearts, etc. Without a purpose no strength in the will, no direction in effort. Power and activity valueless without a clear aim. To fix our hearts on one great end, to make thought and duty define position and relation to this centre principle are chief means of improvement, advance and obedience in life. My heart, O God, is fixed (prepared, set up) my heart is fixed (Psa. 57:7).
II. Obedience to Gods law will secure happiness and prosperity. It is not a vain thing for you. The life of individuals, the security and elevation of the nation. Obedience better than gigantic schemes of trade, and colonization than enlargement of frontier and increase of armies. If thou wilt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments, which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all the nations of the earth.
III. It is our duty to render obedience ourselves and to teach our children. Ye shall command your children. Instruct by precept and personal example. Affection and divine law should urge to this. This will secure their interests here and welfare hereafter. Not mere talk, teaching to read, but practical training required in present day. Train up (instruct, dedicate) a child in the way he should go (Pro. 22:6).
THE LAST DAYS OF MOSES
I. The last days of Moses were marked by sublime self-forgetfulness, and deep solicitude for the well-being of the people. When informed that the time of his departure was at hand, he exhibits no concern for himself, utters no regret because of his great privation, or anxiety as to future destiny. Sublimely he rises above personal and selfish considerations, and applies mind and heart in a last effort to promote good of the people. Asks Jehovah to appoint a successor in his great office (Num. 27:15-22); solemnly recapitulates the law to the people (Deu. 31:7-8; Deu. 31:23); pours forth this lofty and solemn song (Deu. 32:1-43); and blesses the several tribes (Deuteronomy 33.).
II. The last days of Moses were shadowed and saddened by sin. Why die at this time? Why not permitted to complete his work by leading the people into the promised land? Not because physical strength exhausted or body worn out or diseased (Deu. 34:7). Because he sinned against God (Deu. 32:31, cf. Num. 20:2-13). Sin imparted mournful interest to last days of Moses.
III. The last days of Moses were relieved and cheered by the mercy of God. Gods kindness exhibited in three things.
1. In the aspect in which He represents his death to him. Die and be gathered unto thy people.
(1.) Death is not the end of our life. Gathered, etc., not a poetical phrase for death; often used in addition to the record of death as a fact (cf. Gen. 25:8; Gen. 25:17; Gen. 35:29; Gen. 49:33; Num. 20:26). Nor does the expression relate to burial. In this sense not true of Moses, Aaron, or Abraham (cf. Gen. 15:15; 1Ki. 2:10; 1Ki. 11:43). The only assignable sense says Alford, is that of reference to a state of further personal existence beyond death.
(2.) To the people of God death is the way to congenial social life. Moses about to pass neither into isolation nor uncongenial society of strangers, but to His own peoplepersons of kindred sympathies, purposes, and interests.
2. In reminding him of the death of Aaron. Moses witnessed the close of Aarons course on Mount Hor. Recollection of that scene would tend to make his own death less formidable and more familiar. Aaron passed away peacefully; why should Moses dread the some journey?
3. In permitting him to see the promised land (Deu. 32:52). Surely this sight, one of the fairest and widest prospects in all the eastern lands, must have been a source of consolation and joy to the departing spirit of the man of God. Conclusion.
1. See the beauty and nobility of overlooking self in doing good to others; and imitate it.
2. See how one sin may cause grief and loss to a good man; and abstain from every form of evil.
3. See how in Gods dealings with men mercy is mingled with judgment, and thankfully trust Him.
4. Our last days will come; by the grace of God let us endeavour so to live, that they be like those of Mosesgodly, useful, and inspiring in their prospects.William Jones.
HOMILETIC HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Deu. 32:46-47. True Religion.
1. Not empty profession.
2. A life conformed to Gods will.
3. Real enjoyment. Religion is the dominion of the soul. It is the hope of life, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil (Napoleon I.) Duty and its Enforcement.
1. What the duties? Personal religion and instruction of posterity.
2. What are the arguments to enforce it? a Importance of the thing. Your life. b. Advantage of it, &c.
The path of duty is the way to glory.
Tennyson.
Deu. 32:49-50. Moses on Mount Nebo, or a Ministers death scene. This is the record of a striking death scene. It presents to usI. The common destiny of our race, Gathered unto thy people. This phrase denotes the twofold change which death effects in our condition.
1. The corporal;
2. The spiritual. II. The rigorousness of moral rule. The reason why Moses was required to die now, was because he had committed a sin at Meribah. III. The agency of God in mans dissolution. Moses died from the determination of the Divine mind. All existence depends upon Gods will. IV. The termination of life in the midst of labour. V. The promptitude of Providence in supplying the place of the dead. This fact is
1. Encouraging to our faith;
2. Humbling to our pride. VI. The tears of a congregation over the grave of their minister. Well might they mourn (cf. Deu. 34:8-9).Adapted from Dr. Thomas.
Deu. 32:51. Trespassed.
1. In strange unbelief.
2. In unrestrained passion.
3. In open rebellion.
4. In publicly dishonouring God. Learn the jealousy of God; the possibility of failure in qualities in which we excel. Never think you are secure; guard temper. Though God pardons sin, yet will He mark His hatred even in His servants. A small sin may be followed by great punishment.
Must I then forward only look for death?
Backward I turn mine eye and find him there.
Young.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 32
Deu. 32:2. Dew and rain. It is the transformation of death unto life, and the raising of that which lives into higher and fairer form which is the end in view. The morning sun and the morning rain-cloud may seem wide apart in their purpose, may appear at times to obstruct each other, but they have one great aim. The sun and the rain come to the dying seed, and both together draw it from darkness to light and build it up into the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear, that Gods world may live and praise His name. Both are rich in times of refreshment; the sun after the dark night, the rain after the parched day; and after both, the flower raises its head, and the birds sing, and men are glad.J. Ker.
Deu. 32:7. Days of old.
The past lives oer again
In its effects, and to the guilty spirit
The ever-frowning present is its image.
S. T. Coleridge.
Deu. 32:10. Apple of his eye. Tender guardianship. This organ more watched than any other. Does it not appear to thee, says Socrates to Xenophon, to be a work of providence that, considering the weaknesss of the eye, He has protected it with eyelids, as with doors which, whenever there is occasion to use it, are opened, and are again closed on sleep? And that it may not receive injury from the winds, He has planted on it eyelashes like a strainer; and over the eyes has disposed the eyebrows, like a penthouse, so that the sweat from the head may do no mischief.
Deu. 32:15. Fat. The great bulk of mankind resemble the swine, which in harvest gather and fatten upon the acorns beneath the oak, but show to the tree which bore them no other thanks than rubbing off its bark, and tearing up the sod around it.Seriver.
Deu. 32:23-26. Mischiefs. Every action becomes more certainly an eternal mother than it is an eternal daughter. Richter. Vice ever carries with it the germ of its own ruin, and a retribution which is all the more inevitable from being often slow, awaits every violation of moral law.Farrar.
Deu. 32:29. Wise. If you ask me which is the real hereditary sin of human nature, do you imagine I shall answerpride or luxury, or ambition, or egotism? No; I shall sayindolence. He who conquers indolence will conquer almost everything.Lavater.
Deu. 32:34-35. In store. Anne of Austria, Queen of France, once said to Cardinal Richelieu, her implacable enemyMy Lord Cardinal, there is one fact which you seem entirely to have forgotten; God is a sure paymaster. He may not pay at the end of every week, or month, or year; but I charge you, remember that He pays in the end.
Deu. 32:39. I kill.
Make then, while yet ye may, your God your friend.
Deu. 32:46-47. Your life. Faradays religion was a living root. His standard of duty was supernatural. It was not founded on any intuitive ideas of right and wrong, nor was it fashioned upon any outward expediences of time and place; but it was formed entirely on what he held to be the revelation of the will of God in the written word; and throughout all his life his faith led him to act up to the very letter of it.Memoir by Dr. Bruce Jones.
Deu. 32:46. Children. John Eliot, on the day of his death, was found teaching an Indian child the alphabet as he lay on his bed; and when one tried to persuade him to rest, he saidI cannot preach now, but I have prayed God to keep me useful, and He has left me strength to teach a child.
Deu. 32:50. Die. Lifes evening, we may rest assured, will take its character from the day which has preceded it; and if we would close our career in the comfort of religious hope, we must prepare for it by early and continuous religious habit.Shuttleworth.
Deu. 32:52. Not go. The death of Moses, though it was to him an entrance into glory, was also a chastisement of his infidelity. How many noble proofs had he given of his courage and strength of faith! I How many gracious services had he done for his Master? Yet, for one act of disobedience, he must be gathered to his fathers. All our obedience cannot bear out one sin against God. How vainly shall we hope to make amends to God for our former trespasses, by our better behaviour, when Moses hath this one sin laid in his dish, after so many and worthy testimonies of his fidelity! When we have forgotten our sins, God remembers them; and although not in anger, yet He calls for our arrearages. (Bp. Hall.) See the land. It is the horizon that gives dignity to the foreground; a picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens above the tossing treetops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimnies, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on. But when we see that all paths lead to heaven, and that our eternity is affected by our acts in time, then it is blessed to gaze; it is possible to love the earthly shadows of the uncreated beautyit is worth while to work.Maclaren.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
C. THE SONG OF MOSES (Deu. 31:30 to Deu. 32:47)
The song is difficult to outline, but the main contents may be grouped as follows:
INTRODUCTION Deu. 31:30 to Deu. 32:2
1.
The greatness and faithfulness of God, in contrast with the faithlessness of Israel (Deu. 32:3-18)
2.
The chastisement and the need of its infliction by God (Deu. 32:19-33).
3.
Gods compassion upon his people in their low and humbled state (Deu. 32:34-42).
30 And Moses spake in the ears of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song, until they were finished.
1 Give ear, ye heavens, and I will speak;
And let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
2 My doctrine shall drop as the rain,
My speech shall distil as the dew;
As the small rain upon the tender grass,
And as the showers upon the herb:
GIVE EAR YE HEAVENS . . . LET THE EARTH HEAR (Deu. 31:1)another way of appealing to the witness of God. I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that ye shall utterly perish from off the land . . . (Deu. 4:26). The whole universe is called to witness the procedure. Let all eyes and ears testify to the reading.
3
For I will proclaim the name of Jehovah;
Ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
4
The Rock, his work is perfect; For all his ways are justice:
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
Just and right is he.
5
They have dealt corruptly with him, they are not his children, it is their blemish;
They are a perverse and crooked generation.
6
Do ye thus requite Jehovah,
O foolish people and unwise?
Is not he thy father that hath brought thee?
He hath made thee, and established thee.
7
Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations:
Ask thy father, and he will show thee;
Thine elders, and they will tell thee.
8
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
When he separated the children of men,
He set the bounds of the peoples
According to the number of the children of Israel.
9
For Jehovahs portion is his people;
Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
10
He found him in a desert land,
And in the waste howling wilderness;
He compassed him about, he cared for him,
He kept him as the apple of his eye.
11
As an eagle that stirreth up her nest,
That fluttereth over her young,
He spread abroad his wings, he took them,
He bare them on his pinions.
12
Jehovah alone did lead him,
And there was no foreign god with him.
13
He made him ride on the high places of the earth,
And he did eat the increase of the field;
And he made him to suck honey out of the rock,
And oil out of the flinty rock;
14
Butter of the herd, and milk of the flock,
With fat of lambs,
And rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats,
With the finest of the wheat;
And of the blood of the grape thou drankest wine.
15
But Jeshurun waxed far, and kicked:
Thou art waxed fat, thou art grown thick, thou art become sleek;
Then he forsook God who made him,
And lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
16
They moved him to jealousy with strange gods;
With abominations provoked they him to anger.
17
They sacrificed unto demons, which were no God,
To gods that they knew not,
To new gods that came up of late,
Which your fathers dreaded not.
18
Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful,
And hast forgotten God that gave thee birth.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS 31:30-32:18
551.
Who is The Rock of Deu. 31:4? Why use this name?
552.
There are some very strong comparisons and contrasts between Jehovah and Israel. List three of them.
553.
Israel has endearing names. List three of them.
554.
There are several figurative descriptions of Israel that will describe the Israel of God today. Mention two.
555.
Sin, Servitude, Sorrow, Salvation; this is the vicious circle of Israels history. How can this circle be broken?
AMPLIFIED TRANSLATION 31:30-32:18
30 And Moses spoke in the hearing of all the congregation of Israel the words of this song, until they were ended.
CHAPTER 32
Give ear, O heavens, and I [Moses] will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
2 My message shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the light rain upon the tender grass, and as the showers upon the herb.
3 For I will proclaim the name [and presence] of the Lord. Concede and ascribe greatness to our God.
4 He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are law and justice, a God of faithfulness, without breach or deviation, just and right is He.
5 They [Israel] have spoiled themselves. They are not sons to Him, that is their blemish. A, perverse and crooked generation!
6 Do you thus repay the Lord, you foolish and senseless people? Is not He your father Who acquired you for His own? Who made and established you [as a nation]?
7 Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.
8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of men, He set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the Israelites.
9 For the Lords portion is His people; Jacob [Israel] is the lot of His inheritance.
10 He found him in a desert land, in the howling void of the wilderness; He kept circling around him, He scanned him (penetratingly), He kept him as the pupil of His eye.
11 As an eagle that stirs up her nest, that flutters over her young, He spread abroad His wings; He took them, He bore them on His pinions. [Luk. 13:34.]
12 So the Lord alone led him; there was no foreign god with Him.
13 He made Israel ride on the high places of the earth, and he ate the increase of the field; and He made him to suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the flinty rock;
14 Butter and curds of the herd and milk of the flock, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan and he-goats, with the finest of the wheat; and you drank wine of the blood of the grape.
15 But Jeshurun [Israel] grew fat and kicked. You became fat, you grew thick, you were gorged and sleek! Then he forsook God Who made him, and forsook and despised the Rock of his salvation.
16 They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations they provoked Him to anger.
17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods lately come up, whom your fathers never knew or feared.
18 Of the Rock that bore you you were unmindful; you forgot the God Who travailed in your birth.
COMMENT 31:30-32:18
THE ROCK (Deu. 32:4)A central figure of God in the song (Deu. 32:13; Deu. 32:15; Deu. 32:18; Deu. 32:30-31). And note in Deu. 32:37-38 Israel is rebuked for placing their confidence not in the Rock but in the rock of their own makingan idol. God is the essence of immutable and impregnable strengthtraits this figure of speech depicts. Cf. Gen. 49:24, 1Sa. 2:2, Psa. 18:2, Mat. 16:18, Joh. 1:42, etc.
THY FATHER THAT BROUGHT THEE (Deu. 31:6)Thus, they were a redeemed people (Exo. 6:6). HE HATH MADE THEE, AND ESTABLISHED THEE (Deu. 31:6)As David could say
He brought me up also out of a horrible pit,
out of the miry clay;
And he set my feet upon a rock,
and established my goings.
Psa. 40:2
JEHOVAH ALONE DID LEAD HIM, AND THERE WAS NO FOREIGN GOD WITH HIM (Deu. 31:12)A verse that at once sets forth the strength and independence of Gods power. HE it was that led Israel, supplied Israel, preserved Israel, protected IsraelHE and no other! It was not a multitude of heathen gods that did it, it was THE ALMIGHTY God! And he depends upon no other source of power. Note Deu. 8:3 and notes, Deu. 4:35-39. Yet there was ever the tendency to attribute Gods power to heathen dieties: These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt (Exo. 32:4, 1Ki. 12:28-29). And throughout much of Israels history Jehovah-worship and idolatry were mixed together in a confusing and contradictory hodge-podge! Note, for example, the story of Micah and his house of idols (Judges, Ch. 17). It was not a matter of totally leaving Godor totally leaving Jehovah-worship. Rather, They feared Jehovah, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away (2Ki. 17:33). It should hardly need saying that such luke-warm dedication to God and his word is a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty.
AND HE MADE HIM TO SUCK HONEY OUT OF THE ROCK (Deu. 31:13)This phrase, along with Deu. 31:14, has a parallel in Psa. 81:16, He would feed them also with the finest of the wheat; And with the honey out of the rock would I satisfy thee. Rocks or ledges, of course, are places for bees to construct their honeycombs and deposit honeyespecially under them, or in the crevices between them. And it was this metaphor of prosperity and Gods goodness that led the song writer F. A. Graves to pen the words of his well-known hymn:
Have you tasted that the Lord is gracious?
Do you walk in the way thats new?
Have you drunk from the living fountain?
Theres Honey in the Rock for you.
Oh, theres Honey in the Rock, my brother, . . .
Theres Honey in the Rock for you.
Leave your sins for the blood to cover,
Theres Honey in the Rock for you.
OIL OUT OF THE FLINTY ROCK (Deu. 31:13).That is, olive oil would be plentiful in this new land, and olive trees, because of Gods blessing, would grow even in the most obstinate soil. It would be a land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey (Deu. 8:8). Olive oil was (and is) used widely for food in the near east.
BUT JESHURUN WAXED FAT AND KICKED (Deu. 31:15)Jeshurun is a symbolical or poetical name of endearment for Israel. Gesenius says it is a tender and loving appellation of the people of Israel. At the same time, he believes there is an allusion to the idea of rectitude or uprightness. He mentions the possibility of it being a diminutive form of Israel and meaning something like the righteous little people. Whatever its precise meaning, it is always used in place of Israel. It occurs only here, Deu. 33:5; Deu. 33:26, and Isa. 44:2.
THEN HE FORSOOK GOD (Deu. 31:15)i.e., the prosperity of Israel (though given by God) became their undoing. Cf. the warning of Deu. 8:11 ff.
19
And Jehovah saw it, and abhorred them,
Because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters.
20
And he said, I will hide my face from them,
I will see what their end shall be:
For they are a very perverse generation,
Children in whom is no faithfulness.
21
They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God;
They have provoked me to anger with their vanities:
And I will move them to jealousy with those that are not a people;
I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
22
For a fire is kindled in mine anger,
And burneth unto the lowest Sheol,
And devoureth the earth with its increase,
And setteth on fire the foundations of the mountains.
23
I will heap evils upon them;
I will spend mine arrows upon them:
24
They shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat And bitter destruction;
And the teeth of beasts will I send upon them,
With the poison of crawling things of the dust.
25
Without shall the sword bereave,
And in the chambers terror;
It shall destroy both young man and virgin,
The suckling with the man of gray hairs.
26
I said, I would scatter them afar,
I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men;
27
Were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy,
Lest their adversaries should judge amiss,
Lest they should say, Our hand is exalted,
And Jehovah hath not done all this.
28
For they are a nation void of counsel,
And there is no understanding in them.
29
Oh that they were wise, that they understood this,
That they would consider their latter end!
30
How should one chase a thousand
And two put ten thousand to flight,
Except their Rock had sold them,
And Jehovah had delivered them up?
31
For their rock is not as our Rock,
Even our enemies themselves being judges.
32
For their vine is of the vine of Sodom,
And of the fields of Gomorrah:
Their grapes are grapes of gall,
Their clusters are bitter:
33
Their wine is the poison of serpents,
And the cruel venom of asps.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XXXII.
(1) Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.Comp. the opening of Isa. 1:2, which is almost identical, excepting that the two words for hearing are transposed.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Witnesses Are Called On To Bear Witness To His Words ( Deu 32:1-3 ).
Deu 32:1-3
“Give ear, you heavens, and I will speak;
And let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
My teaching will drop like the rain;
My speech will distil like the dew,
As the raindrops on the fresh grass,
And as the showers on the vegetation.
For I will proclaim the name of Yahweh,
Ascribe you (ye) greatness to our God.”
First heaven and earth are called on to witness to what Moses will speak (compare Deu 30:19; Deu 31:28), such is the solemnity of his words. These are world fashioning events. Heaven and earth were in fact regular treaty witnesses among other nations (compare Deu 4:26; Deu 30:19).
Then the nature of his teaching is described. It is like the rain and the dew falling and bringing forth lush vegetation, bringing life and fruitfulness. His words should come as words of refreshing to their hearts. And the reason that it is like this is because He is proclaiming the name of Yahweh. They are therefore to ascribe greatness to ‘our God’.
In this teaching we have the germ of the later teaching about God’s word bringing forth new life and about the Holy Spirit as being like rain (Isa 55:10-11; Isa 44:3-5 compare Isa 45:8), and the basis of the teaching of John the Baptiser where he spoke of fruitfulness, and of the new birth of water and Spirit in the teaching of Jesus Himself. Here it is connected with ‘the name’, that is with the nature of, Yahweh. Yahweh is the living God, the life-giver.
This last is the teaching that is available to us. But we must ask ourselves the question, are we open to His divine influence on us?
“Proclaim the name of Yahweh.” This may have in mind Deu 6:4-5, ‘Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one’ and ‘Yahweh our God’, His name as the covenant God.
“Ascribe you greatness to our God.” Compare Deu 3:24; Deu 5:21; Deu 9:26; Deu 11:2; Num 14:19; Psa 79:11; Psa 150:2). This word for God’s ‘greatness’ is mainly limited to the Pentateuch.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Chapter 32 The Song of Moses.
Having written the Complaint Document as a song to be sung by the children of Israel until its words were fulfilled and it could be called on as a witness against them, and also be seen as a promise of hope, Moses read out the song to the people.
Analysis.
a And Moses spoke in the ears of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song, until they were finished (Deu 31:30).
b The Song of Complaint and Promise (Deu 32:1-43).
a And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun, and Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel (Deu 32:44-45).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Deu 32:1-43 The Song of Moses – Deu 32:1-43 is a song that God gave to Moses. Another song of Moses is found in Rev 15:3, “And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.”
Deu 32:8 When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.
Deu 32:8
[34] F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1963), 158.
Deu 32:8 Comments – Some scholars find within Deu 32:8 a reference to a time when God had men divide the earth by lots among the sons of Noah. We can find a reference to this allotment in the Table of Nations in Gen 10:25, which tells us that the earth was divided during the days of Peleg.
Gen 10:25, “And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided ; and his brother’s name was Joktan.”
We find an additional reference to this event in Act 17:24-26.
Act 17:24-26, “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;”
We can find a lengthy account of this story in extra-biblical Jewish literature. The Book of Jubilees says that in the days of Peleg, the nations were dividing themselves upon the earth. The divided the earth into three lots according to the inheritance of the three sons of Noah. Since this document dates a few centuries before the time of Christ, it shows to us how the Jews may have interpreted this passage in Genesis.
“And in the sixth year [1567 A.M.] thereof, she bare him son, and he called his name Peleg; for in the days when he was born the children of Noah began to divide the earth amongst themselves: for this reason he called his name Peleg. And they divided (it) secretly amongst themselves, and told it to Noah. And it came to pass in the beginning of the thirty-third jubilee [1569 A.M.] that they divided the earth into three parts, for Shem and Ham and Japheth, according to the inheritance of each , in the first year in the first week, when one of us who had been sent, was with them.” ( The Book of Jubilees 8.8-11) [35]
[35] The Book of Jubilees, trans. R. H. Charles, in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English With Introductions and Critical and Explanatory Notes to the Several Books, vol 2, ed. R. H. Charles, 1-82 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 25.
Deu 32:13 He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;
Deu 32:13
[36] Benny Hinn, “Fire Conference,” 5-6 June 2009, Miracle Center Cathedral, Kampala, Uganda.
Deu 32:30 How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?
Deu 32:30
Jdg 15:15-16, “And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith. And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.”
Also, see the feats of David’s mighty men recorded in 2Sa 23:8-23.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Israel’s Position and Apostasy
v. 1. Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth! v. 2. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, v. 3. Because I will publish the name of the Lord, v. 4. He is the Rock, v. 5. They have corrupted themselves, v. 6. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? v. 7. Remember the days of old, v. 8. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. v. 9. For the Lord’s portion is His people, Jacob is the lot, v. 10. He found him in a desert land, v. 11. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, v. 12. so the Lord alone did lead him, v. 13. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, v. 14. butter of kine, v. 16. But Jeshurun, v. 16. They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, v. 17. They sacrificed unto devils, v. 18. of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
SONG OF MOSES AND ANNOUNCEMENT OF HIS DEATH.
In accordance with the Divine injunction, Moses composed an ode, which he recited in the hearing of the people, and committed to writing, to remain with them as a witness for God against them. With this end in view, the ode is directed principally to a contrasting of the unchanging faithfulness of the Almighty with the anticipated perversity and unfaithfulness of his people. The poem may be divided into six parts.
1. An introduction (Deu 32:1-3), in which the importance of the doctrine to be delivered is announced.
2. The blamelessness and excellency of Jehovah are placed in contrast with the corruptness and perversity of Israel (Deu 32:4, Deu 32:5).
3. The folly and ingratitude of the rebellious people is dwelt upon (Deu 32:7-18).
4. The purpose of God to punish and reject the rebellious generation is declared (Deu 32:19-23).
5. The fulfillment of this purpose in the judgments which should come upon the rebels, whilst mercy and favor should be showed to those that repented and were humbled under the hand of God (Deu 32:24-34).
6. And finally, the judgment which God would execute on the enemies of Israel, and the mercy he would show to his servants (Deu 32:35-43).
In this ode”carmine plane divino” (Lowth)Moses displays the genius of the poet, as in the other parts of this book he has showed the sagacity of the legislator and the skill of the orator. Vigor of diction, elevation of sentiment, vivacity of representation, beauty and sublimity of imagery, characterize this ode throughout. Nor is the piety less noticeable than the poetry; zeal for God, earnest desire far his honor, and devout reverence of his majesty pervade and inspire the whole. Remarkable also is this ode in relation to the later prophetic utterances in Israel. “It is the compendious anticipatory sketch and the common watchword of all prophecy, and stands related to it as fundamentally as the Decalogue to all laws, and the Lord’s Prayer to all prayers. The legislator has here condensed in a song the prophetic contents of his last address (Deu 27:1-26; Deu 28:1-68; Deu 29:1-29; Deu 30:1-20.), wherewith he lives on in the memory and mouth of the people. He here sets before them their whole history to the end of the days. In this ode, each age of Israel has a mirror of its present condition and future fate. This mirror prophecy holds up before its contemporaries” (Delitzsch, ‘Jesaias,’ s. 33).
Deu 32:1
Heaven and earth are summoned to hearken to his words, both because of their importance, and because heaven and earth were interested, so to speak, as witnesses of the manifestation of God’s righteousness and faithfulness about to be celebrated (cf. Deu 4:26; Deu 30:19; Deu 31:28, Deu 31:29; Isa 1:2; Jer 2:12; Jer 22:29).
Deu 32:2
My doctrine shall drop as the rain. The Hebrew verb here and in Deu 33:28 is properly rendered by” drop;” it expresses the gentle falling of a genial shower or the soft distillation of dew. The clause is best taken imperatively, as it is by the LXX; the Vulgate, and Onkelos: Let my doctrine drop as the rain, let my speech distil, etc. The point of comparison hero is not the quickening, fructifying, vivifying influence of the rain and dew, so much as the effective force of these agents as sent from heaven to produce results. So might his doctrine come with power into the minds of his hearers. Doctrine ( from to take); that which takes one (Pro 7:21, “fair speech,” By which one is captivated), or which one takes or receives, viz. instruction (Pro 4:2; Isa 29:24). Small rain; gentle showers, such as conduce to the growing of herbs. The Hebrew word () primarily means hairs, and is hare used of rain coming down in thin streams like hair. Showers; heavy rain ( from , to be much or many, equal to multitude of drops).
Deu 32:3
I will publish the name of the Lord; literally, I will call, i.e. proclaim, or celebrate, etc. Ascribe ye greatness unto our God. The hearers of the song are summoned to join in the celebration of the Divine majesty. The word rendered” greatness” occurs only in this book (Deu 3:24; Deu 5:21; Deu 9:26; Deu 11:2), and in Psa 150:2. It is the greatness of God as the Almighty that is here celebrated.
Deu 32:4, Deu 32:5
He is the Rock, his work is perfect; rather, The Rock! his work is perfect, i.e. blameless, without fault. God is called “the Rock” (), as the unchangeable Refuge and Stronghold of his people, by which they are sustained, and to which they can resort for defense and protection at all times. The epithet is applied to God four times besides in this song (Deu 32:15, Deu 32:18, Deu 32:30, Deu 32:31); it occurs also frequently in the Psalms (cf. Psa 19:14; Psa 28:1; Psa 31:2, Psa 31:3; Psa 62:2, Psa 62:7; etc.). The Hebrew word, tsur, cur or zur, appears in several proper names of the Mosaic period, as e.g. Pedahzur, “Rock delivers” (Num 1:10), a name of the same import as Pedahel, “God delivers” (Num 34:28); Elizur, “God is a Rock” (Num 1:5); Zuriel (Num 3:35) and Zurishaddai, “the Almighty is Rock” (Num 1:6; Num 2:12). “Jehovah,” says Baumgarten, “is here called Rock, without any qualification, the reason is that he is the only true rock, and all the strength and firmness of earth’s stones is but an ectype of his unchangeable faithfulness and rectitude. If one cleaves to the dualism of spirit and nature, and regards the figure as a merely subjective, arbitrary union of the two, such an expression is simply unintelligible; but if we would understand Scripture and religious speech, we must with all earnestness accustom ourselves to recognize the spiritual ground in nature, and apprehend this in the Biblical expression.” It is remarkable that none of the ancient versions have retained this epithet here. The LXX. have : the Vulgate, Deus (“Dei opera“); the Targum of Onkelos, , “Mighty;” while the Peshito has simply the pronoun “his” appended to “works,” see word. For all his ways are judgment; i.e. accordant with rectitude (cf. Psa 145:17). A God of truth; rather, of faithfulness (, from , to stay, or be stayed, to be firm). They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. Of this difficult passage the following seems the best construction and rendering:A perverse and crooked generation not his children, [but] their spothas become corrupt towards him. The subject of the verb at the beginning of the verse is the “perverse and crooked generation,” at the end of it, and between the verb and its subject there is interjected parenthetically the clause, “not his children, but their spot.” Spot is here used in a moral sense, as in Job 11:15; Job 31:7; Pro 9:7. These corrupt persons claimed to be children of God, but they were not; they were rather a stain and a reproach to them (cf. 2Pe 2:13; Isa 1:4). The rendering above given is substantially that of De Wette, Knobel, Keil, and Herxheimer, by all of whom the “perverse generation “is regarded as the subject of the sentence. This is the view adopted also in the ‘Speaker’s Commentary.’ Some would make “God” the subject, and render, “He hath corrupted to him, or to himself” (margin, Authorized Version; Ibn Ezra, etc.). Others take “spot” as the subject, thus: “Their spot or blemish hath corrupted before him children not his” (Lowth, Dathe); but such renderings are forced, and proceed on constructions of the text which are illegitimate. Donaldson, following Lowth’s construction, appeals to (verse 20) as a similar inversion. But the two cases are not parallel. To make them so, we must have here , “his children in whom is no spot.” Ewald takes as the noun here, instead of , and tracing it to the Syriac, see Arabic word, juravit, renders “to him they, his not sons, have corrupted their oath,” i.e. have broken it; and this Furst approves. But the phrase, “to corrupt an oath” is unexampled in the Old Testament, and there is no ground for changing the noun. The ancient versions vary considerably here: LXX; : Aq; : Sym; : Vulgate, peccaverunt ei et non filii ejus in sordibus; Vert. Itala; peeca verunt non ei filii maculati; Syriac, “They corrupted but not him, children of defilement.” These various renderings indicate that probably the text is and has long been corrupt. Some of the older English versions are worth noting on this verse. Rogers [Matthew], “The frowarde and overthwart generation hath marred them selves to himward, and are not his sonnes for their deformitie’s sake;” Bishop’s Bible, “Frowardly have they done agaynst him by their vices, not being his own children, but a wicked and froward generation;” Geneva Version, “They have corrupted themselves towards him by their vice, not being his children, but a froward and crooked generation.”
Deu 32:6, Deu 32:7
Instead of gratefully acknowledging the Divine beneficence, and dutifully obeying the Divine will, Israel had perversely and foolishly requited the Lord for all his benefits, by apostasy from him. Do ye thus requite? The verb here signifies primarily to do to any one either good or evil, whether in return for what he has done or not (cf. Gen 1:15; 1Sa 24:18; Pro 3:30); then, as a secondary meaning, to reward, repay, requite, as here and Psa 18:21. To bring more forcibly to their view the ingratitude and folly of their conduct, Moses dwells upon what God was and had been to the nation: their Father, in that he had, in his love, chosen, them to be his people (cf. Isa 63:16; Isa 64:7; Mal 2:10); their Purchaser, who had acquired possession of them by delivering them out of Egypt (cf. Psa 74:2); their Maker, who had constituted them a nation; and their Establisher, by whom they had been conducted through the wilderness and settled in Canaan. Days of old; the times of Israel’s deliverance from bondage, and the times during which successive generations had lived and experienced the goodness of the Lord. The form of the word rendered “days” is poetical, and is found only here and in Psa 90:15, which is also ascribed to Moses. The years of many generations; literally, years of generation and generation; “aetatum singularum annos” (Rosenmller).
Deu 32:8, Deu 32:9
From the very beginning, when God first allotted to the nations a place and a heritage, he had respect in his arrangements to the sons of Israel, who were his portion, and had as it were kept their interest in view in all that he appointed and ordered. According to the number of the children of Israel. When the Most High portioned out to the nations the heritage of each, he reserved for Israel, as the people of his choice, an inheritance proportioned to its numbers. The LXX. has “according to the number of the angels of God,” an arbitrary departure from the original text, in accommodation, probably, to the later Jewish notion of each nation having its guardian angel. The Lord’s portion is his people (cf. Exo 15:16; Exo 19:5; 1Sa 10:1; Psa 78:71). The lot of his inheritance; literally, the cord, etc; the allusion being to the measuring of land by a cord, equivalent to the portion by measure which Jehovah allotted to himself as his inheritance (cf. Psa 16:6).
Deu 32:10
God’s fatherly care of Israel. In the desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; literally, in the land of the desert, in the waste (the formless waste; the word used is that rendered, Gen 1:2, “without form”), the howling of the wilderness. “Israel is figuratively represented as a man without food or water, and surrounded by howling, ferocious beasts, and who must needs have perished had not God found him and rescued him” (Herxheimer). The apple of his eye; literally, the mannikin () of his eye, the pupil; so called because in it, as in a mirror, a person sees his own image reflected in miniature (Gesenius), or because, being the tenderest part of the eye, it is guarded as one would a babe (cf. Psa 17:8; Pro 7:2; Zec 2:12). By Delitzsch and others this explanation of the word is rejected as not philologically justified, there being no evidence that the termination had a diminutive force; and as not in keeping with the earnestness of the passages in which this word occurs. They prefer the explanation man image to mannikin. Anyhow, the use of the word here must be taken as indicating that Israel is ever in the eye of the Lord, the object of his constant and tenderest care.
Deu 32:11
God’s treatment of his people is compared to that of an eagle towards its young (cf. Exo 19:4). In the Authorized Version, the apodosis of the sentence is made to begin at Deu 32:12, and Deu 32:11 is wholly understood of the eagle and its young. To this arrangement it has been objected that it overlooks the fact that the suffixes to the verbs “taketh” and “beareth” are singulars, and are to be understood consequently, not of the eaglets, but of Israel. It has, therefore, been proposed to render the passage thus: As an eagle which stirreth up its nest, fluttereth over its young, he spread out his wings, took him up, and carried him on his pinions. The Lord alone did lead him, etc. The comparison is thus made to pass into a metaphorical representation of the Lord’s dealing with Israel. One feels that there is something violent in this, for whilst God’s care for Israel might be fittingly compared to that of an eagle towards her young, it is less fit to speak of God himself as if he were an eagle with wings which he spread abroad and on which he bare Israel. The rendering in the Authorized Version is on this account to be preferred, if it can be grammatically vindicated. And this it may on the ground that the suffixes may be understood of the “nest” as containing the young; or the young may be referred to individually, “taketh it, beareth it,” i.e. each of them; or, if the nest be understood, the whole body of them as therein contained. Stirreth up her [its] nest i.e. its nestlings; provocans ad volandum pullos suos, Vulgate. This is the explanation usually given of the initial clause of this verse; but its accuracy has been questioned, Furst would render the verb by “watchesover; “but though , as the Hiph. of , to watch, may have this meaning, it is undoubtedly used generally in the sense of rousing, exciting, stirring up. Knobel retains this meaning, but understands the clause of the exciting of the nestlings by the parent bird coming to them with food. This is certainly more in keeping with what follows; for when the eagle nestles or broods over her young, she does not excite them to fly. Fluttereth over her young; rather, broods over, nestles, or cherishes (). Spreadeth abroad her wings, etc. “I once saw a very interesting sight above one of the crags of Ben Nevis, as I was going in pursuit of black game. Two parent eagles were teaching their offspring, two young birds, the maneuvers of flight. They began by rising from the top of a mountain, in the eye of the sun;it was about midday, and bright for this climate. They at first made small circles, and the young imitated them; they paused on their wings, waiting till they had made their first flight, holding them on their expanded wings when they appeared exhausted, and then took a second and larger gyration, always rising towards the sun, and enlarging their circle of flight, so as to make a gradually ascending spiral” (Davy, ‘Salinertia;’ see also Bochart, ‘Hierozoicon,’ 2.181). The general reference is to God’s fostering care of Israel, and especially his dealing with them when “he suffered their manners in the wilderness” (Act 13:18), disciplined them, and trained them for what they were appointed to do.
Deu 32:12
The Lord alone did lead him (cf. Exo 13:21; Exo 15:13). With him; i.e. along with Jehovah, as aiding him.
Deu 32:13
He made him ride on the high places of the earth. To ride over or drive over the heights of a country is figuratively to subjugate and take possession of that country (cf. Deu 33:29; Isa 58:14). Israel, having subjugated Canaan, could eat of its produce, the increase of the fields, as his own. Honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock. Canaan abounded in wild bees, which had their hives in crevices of the rock, and in olive trees, which grew on a rocky soil; as is still the case in Palestine.
Deu 32:14
Butter of kine. The Hebrew word () here used designates milk in a solid or semi-solid state, as thick cream, curd, or butter. As distinguished from this is the milk of sheep; where the word used () properly denotes fresh milk, milk in a fluid state, and with all its richness (, fatness) in it (cf. Gen 18:8; Isa 7:22). Fat of lambs; lambs of the best, “fat” being a figurative expression for the best (Num 18:12). Rams of the breed of Bashan; literally, rams, sons of Bashan; i.e. reared in Bashan, a district famous for its cattle. With the fat of kidneys of wheat; with the kidney-fat of wheat; i.e. the richest fat, the best and most nutritious wheat. And thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape. The blood of the grape is the expressed juice of the grape, which, being red, is compared to blood. The rendering “pure” here is not inapt. The original word (, from , to boil up, to foam, to rise in bubbles) describes this juice as it appears when pressed into a vessel, when the surface of the liquid is covered with froth or foam. There is no ground for the explanation “fery wine” (Keil); wine in such a state was never among the Hebrews counted a blessing. That they had and used fermented wine is certain; but what they specially esteemed as a luxury was the pure unadulterated juice of the grape freshly pressed out and drunk with the foam on it.
Deu 32:15-18
Israel’s ungrateful return for the Lord’s benefits.
Deu 32:15
Jeshurun. This name, formed from , righteous, designates Israel as chosen to be a righteous nation; and in the use of it here lies the keenest reproach of apostate Israel, as fallen into a state the opposite of that to which it was destined. “By using the name righteous in place of Israel, Moses ironically censures those who had swerved from rectitude; by recalling to memory with what dignity they had been endowed, he the more sharply rebukes the perfidy which was their crime” (Calvin). This name appears also in Deu 33:5, Deu 33:26, and in Isa 44:2; but in these places without any implied censure. By some the word is regarded as a diminutive from , the same as , in the sense of rectulus, justulus, “the good little people” (Gesenius); others as a diminutive from , Israel, as a sort of term of endearment (Grotius). But the latter of these derivations is impossible; and as to the former, there lacks evidence of the termination un having a diminutive significance in Hebrew. Besides, neither here nor in Deu 33:5 would a term of endearment be suitable. Waxed fat, and kicked (cf. Deu 6:11; Deu 8:10; Deu 31:20). The allusion is to an ox that had grown fat through good feeding, and had become unmanageable in consequence (cf. 1Sa 2:26 : Hos 10:4). Lightly esteemed. The Hebrew is strongly expressive here: Thou hast treated as a fool (, from to be foolish (cf. Mic 7:6).
Deu 32:16
They provoked him to jealousy. God had bound Israel to himself as by the marriage bond, and they by their unfaithfulness had incited him to jealousy (cf. Deu 31:16; Exo 34:15; Isa 54:5; Hos 1:1-11; etc.). Strange gods (cf. Jer 2:25; Jer 3:13).
Deu 32:17
Devils; shedim, a word which occurs only here and Psa 106:37. It stands connected with the verb , to rule, and means primarily “lords.” The LXX. render by , demons. In Assyrian it is said to be a name for demigods. Not to God; rather, to a not God, a composite term in apposition to shedim; the meaning is rightly given in the margin of the Authorized Version, “which were not God.” To new gods that came newly up. The word rendered by “newly” () properly means “near;” it is an adjective both of place and of time; here it is the latter, equal to of a near time, recentlygods recently invented or discovered.
Deu 32:18
Moses here returns to the thought of Deu 32:15, for the purpose of expressing it with greater force, and also of leading on to the description he is about to give of the Lord’s acts towards the nation who had so revolted from him. Thou art unmindful; LXX; : Vulgate, dereliquisti. The Hebrew word occurs only here, and the meaning is doubtful. From the rendering of the versions, it would seem to be allied to the Arabic, see Arabic word, saha, oblitus est. That formed thee; literally, that brought thee forth or caused thee to be born; “qui te eduxit ex utero materno” (Jarchi. Cf. for the use of the verb, Psa 29:9). In the Samaritan Codex, , “who hath glorified or praised thee,” is the reading, instead of ; and this the Syriac also expresses. The other versions, however, support the Masoretic reading.
Deu 32:19-33
Because of their rebellion. God would cast them off and visit them with terrible calamities.
Deu 32:19
When the Lord saw how they had departed from him to serve idols, he abhorred (rather, spurned or rejected) them in consequence of the provocation which their unworthy conduct had given him.
Deu 32:20
God himself comes forth to announce his resolution to withdraw his favor from them, and to inflict chastisement upon them; he would withdraw his protecting care of them, and see how they would fare without that; and he would also send on them the tokens of his displeasure. A very froward generation, etc.; literally, a generation of perversities, an utterly perverse and faithless race.
Deu 32:21
(Cf. Deu 5:16.) Because they had moved God to jealousy and provoked him to anger by their vanities, their nothingnesses, mere vapors and empty exhalations (; cf. Jer 10:6; Joh 2:8; 1Co 8:4); as they had forsaken him for a no-God, he would send retribution on them by adopting as his a no-people, and giving to a foolish nation, i.e. a nation not before possessed of that true wisdom the beginning of which is the fear of the Lord, the privileges and blessings which Israel had forfeited by their apostasy. By “a no-people” is not to be understood a savage tribe not yet formed into a community, but a people without God, and not recognized by him as in covenant union with him (cf. Rom 10:19; Eph 2:12; 1Pe 2:10).
Deu 32:22
(Cf. Jer 15:14; Jer 17:4; Lam 4:11.) The lowest hell; the lowest sheol, the uttermost depth of the under-world. The Hebrew sheol () answering to the Greek , by which it is usually rendered by the LXX; is a general designation of the unseen state, the place of the dead. By some the word is derived from , to ask, because sheol is ever asking, is insatiable (Pro 30:16); but more probably it is from a root signifying to excavate, to hollow, and, like the German holle, means primarily a hollow place or cavern. The Divine wrath kindles a consuming fire, that burns down to the lowest depthsto the deepest part of sheolconsumes the earth’s produce, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. This does not refer to any particular judgment that was to befall the national Israel, but is a general description of the effects of the Divine wrath when that is poured forth in judgments on men.
Deu 32:23
I will spend mine arrows upon them; I will inflict on them so many calamities that none shall remain. The evils sent on men by God are represented as arrows shot on them from above. (Cf. Deu 32:42; Job 6:4; Psa 7:13; Psa 38:2; Psa 45:5; Psa 58:7; Zec 9:14; Homer, ‘Iliad,’ 1.45, etc.)
Deu 32:24, Deu 32:25
The evils threatened are famine, pestilence, plague, wild beasts, poisonous reptiles, and war. They shall be burnt with hunger, etc.; render: Sucked out by hunger, consumed with pestilential heat, and bitter plague; I will send against them the tooth of beasts and the poison of things that crawl in the dust. When hunger, pestilence, and contagious disease had wasted and exhausted them, then God would send on them wild beasts and poisonous reptiles. Shall be burnt. The Hebrew word occurs only here; it is a verbal adjective, meaning, literally, sucked out, i.e. utterly exhausted; LXX; . Tooth of beasts and poison of serpents; poetical for ravenous and poisonous animals (cf. Lev 26:22). Shall destroy; literally, shall make childless, shall bereave, viz. the land which is thought of as a mother whose children were destroyed. The verb is here sensu prsegnanti, shall bereave by destroying, etc. (cf. 1Sa 15:23; Lam 1:20; Jer 18:21).
Deu 32:26, Deu 32:27
Israel’s desert was to be utterly destroyed, but God refrained from this for his own Name’s sake. I said, I would scatter them into corners; rather, I should say, I trill blow them away, i.e. disperse them as by a mighty wind. The verb here is the Hiph, of , to breathe, to blow, and is found only here. The rabbins make it a denominative from , a corner, and this the Authorized Version follows; others trace it to an Arabic root, , amputavit, excidit, and render, “will cut them off.” The idea intended to be conveyed is obviously that of entire destruction, and this is not satisfied by the representation of their being scared or driven into corners. Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy. Various renderings and interpretations of this passage have been given.
1. Were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy, i.e. that I should be provoked to wrath by the enemy ascribing the destruction of Israel to their own prowess.
2. Were it not that I feared a wrath upon the enemy, with much the same meaning.
3. Were it not that I feared the fury of the enemy, i.e. against Israelfeared lest the enemy should be encouraged to rise up against Israel and ascribe their destruction to their own valor. Of these that most generally approved is the first. (On this reason for sparing Israel, see Deu 9:28; Exo 32:12; Num 14:13, etc.; Isa 10:5, etc.; Eze 20:13, Eze 20:14.) Should behave themselves strangely; rather, should mistake or falsely pretend. The verb is the Piel of , to look upon, to mark, and conveys the idea of looking on askance or prejudicially, hence being ignorant of, mistaking, feigning, or falsely pretending. Our hand is high; rather, was high, i.e. was mighty in power.
Deu 32:28-33
The cause of Israel’s rejection was that they were a people utterly destitute of counsel and without understanding. Had they been wise, they would have looked to the end, and acted in a way conducive to their own welfare, instead of rushing upon ruin.
Deu 32:29
Oh that they were wise, that they understood this; rather, If they were wise they would understand this. They would consider their latter end! i.e. the end to which they were going, the inevitable issue of the course they were taking.
Deu 32:30
If Israel were wise, they could easily overcome all their foes through the help of the Almighty (Le Deu 26:8); but having forsaken him, they were left by him, and so came under the power of the enemy.
Deu 32:31
The heathen had also a rock in which they trustedtheir idol-gods; but even they knew and felt that their rock was not as the Rock of Israel, for, having often experienced the almighty power of God, they could not but acknowledge that he was mightier far than the gods whom they worshipped (cf. Exo 14:25; Num 33:1-56; Num 34:1-29.; Jos 2:9; 1Sa 5:7). Moses is here himself again the speaker.
Deu 32:32
If the Rock of Israel was so much mightier than the rock of their enemies, how came it that Israel was beaten and put to flight by their enemies? The reason is here given: It was because Israel had become wholly corrupt and vitiated that they were forsaken of the Lord and left to the power of their enemies. Their vine; i.e. Israel itself (cf. Psa 80:9, etc.; Isa 5:2; Jer 2:21; Hos 10:1 ). The vine of Sodom. It has been supposed that there is reference here to a particular plant, and different plants have been suggested as deserving to be so named. But it is more probable that Sodom and Gomorrah are here advanced as types of what is depraved, and to the moral taste nauseous (cf. Isa 1:10; Jer 23:14). Gall (cf. Deu 29:18).
Deu 32:33
The wine of these grapes is poison and venom. Dragons; tannin (cf. Exo 7:9, Exo 7:10). Cruel [deadly] venom of asps. The pethen, one of the most poisonous of snakes, the bite of which was immediately fatal (Kitto, ‘Bibl. Cycl.,’ 3.494; Smith’s ‘Dict.,’ 1.21). These figures express the thought that Israel had utterly corrupted their way and become abominable; probably also it is intimated that, as they had imitated the impiety of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, they deserved to perish as they did (J.H. Michaelis).
Deu 32:34-43
Notwithstanding the iniquity of Israel and the judgments that should come upon them, God would have compassion upon them for his Name’s sake, and would appear for their vindication and defense. The “this” in Deu 32:34 is by some understood of the sinful doings of the Israelites which God should not forget or overlook. So the Targum of Onkelos: “Are not all their works manifest before me, kept against the day of judgment in my treasures?” So also Calvin, “Quanquam de poenis hunc versum quidam exponunt, acsi Deus assereret diversas earum species apud se paratas esse, quas depromat quoties libuerit: rectius tamen est de sceleribus intelligere.” But there is a more ‘comprehensive reference here. Not only the deeds of the transgressors, but the judgments that should come on Israel, and also God’s interposition on their behalf, were laid up in store with him, and sealed up among his treasures. All that had been done had been noted, and all that should happen was decreed, and should certainly come to pass. The “this’ has thus both a retrospective and a prospective reference; it includes both the sin of the nation and God’s dealing with them afterwards, as well as his judgments on their enemies.
Deu 32:34
My treasures. God’s treasures contain not only a store of blessing, but also instruments of punishment, which as he sees meet, he sends forth on men (cf. Deu 28:12; Job 38:22, Job 38:23; Psa 135:7).
Deu 32:35
Render: Vengeance is mine, and retribution for the time when their feet shall totter; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and that which is prepared for them maketh haste. The tottering of the feet represents the incipient fall. God would manifest himself as the Avenger when their calamity began to come upon them.
Deu 32:36
The Lord shall judge his people (cf. Psa 135:14; 1Pe 4:17). And repent himself for his servants; rather, and have compassion upon his servants. And there is none shut up, or left. The words rendered “shut up or left” are a proverbial expression for “every one, men of all sorts” (cf. 1Ki 14:10; 1Ki 21:21; 2Ki 9:8; 2Ki 14:26); but how the words are to be rendered or explained is uncertain. Rosenmller renders as in the Authorized Version; Gesenius has, “the shut up and the let go free, the bond and the flee;” so also Furst and De Wette; De Dieu, “married and single, conjugatus et coelebs,” referring to the Arabic usage in support of his conclusion, and this Keil approves. Ewald has “kept in (by legal impurity) or at large.” The explanation of Gesenius and Furst seems best.
Deu 32:37
The Lord would show his people the utter worthlessness of idols, and bring them to acknowledge him as the only true God. Their gods; the idols to which Israel had turned, the strange gods which they had foolishly and sinfully preferred to Jehovah.
Deu 32:39
See now that I am, even I am he. The Hebrew is more expressive, See now that I, I am; LXX; (cf. Isa 41:4; Isa 48:12; Joh 8:24 Joh 18:5). Their own experience of the utter impotency of these idol-gods to help them or to protect themselves from the stroke of the Almighty was enough to convince them that they were no gods, and that he alone was to be feared and worshipped.
Deu 32:40, Deu 32:41
These verses should be read continuously: For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, As I live forever, if I whet my glittering sword, and if my hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, etc. Lifting up the hand to heaven was a gesture intended to express that the person taking an oath appealed to God as a witness of his oath, and who would perish for falsehood (cf. Gen 14:22); and “as the Lord liveth” was a common formula in taking an oath (cf. Num 14:21; 1Sa 14:39, 1Sa 14:45; Jer 5:2). As God could swear by none greater, he swore by himself (cf. Exo 6:8; Num 14:30; Isa 45:23; Jer 22:5; Heb 6:17), that if he did come forth to avenge himself of his enemies, he would not spare, but would do thoroughly what he had come forth to do.Glittering sword; literally, lightning of sword (cf. Eze 21:10 [15]).
Deu 32:42
My sword shall devour flesh; literally, shall eat flesh; “the edge of the sword is called its mouth, because, like a mouth, it is said to eat and devour” (Gesenius). From the beginning of revenges upon the enemy. Different renderings of this have been given: LXX; , “from the head of the hostile princes;” “from the head of the chiefs of the enemy” (Geseuius, Furst, Rosenmller); “from the hairy head of the foe” (Keil, Herxheimer, Knobel). , the plural of , hair, locks, signifies primarily hairs, and a head of hairs, and may be taken as equivalent to “a hairy head;” but the word is also used in the sense of “princes” or “chiefs” (probably because such were distinguished by copious flowing locks; cf. Jdg 5:2); hence the rendering, “head of the chiefs.” The former is to be preferred here, for why chiefs or princes should be referred to in this connection does not appear (cf. Psa 68:22). The rendering of the Authorized Version is wholly unauthorized. This verse presents an instance of alternate parallelism; each half falls into two members, and of the four members thus constituted, the third corresponds to the first, and the fourth to the second; thus
a “I will make my arrows drunk with blood,
b And my sword shall devour flesh;
a’ With the blood of the slain and the captives,
b’ From the hairy head of the foe.”
Deu 32:43
“As this song commenced with an appeal to heaven and earth to give glory to the Lord (Deu 32:1-3), so it very suitably closes with an appeal to the heathen to rejoice with his people on account of the acts of the Lord” (Keil). Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people. The Authorized Version here follows the LXX; , and so St. Paul cites the passage in Rom 15:10. The Jewish interpreters generally render, Praise his people, O nations; and this several Christian interpreters adopt. But as Rosenmller remarks, it is the Divine righteousness manifested in the vindication of his people from their enemies that is to be celebrated, and not the people themselves, as what follows shows. Here as elsewhere the nations and the people are in contrast.
Deu 32:44-47
Moses, having composed this song, came, accompanied by Joshua, and they together spoke it in the hearing of the people; after which Moses took occasion to urge upon them anew the importance of keeping the commandments of God.
Deu 32:44
Hoshea the son of Nun. Moses invariably writes this name Jehoshuah (Jehovah is help; cf. Num 13:1-33; Deu 31:3, Deu 31:7, Deu 31:14, Deu 31:20, etc.). The use of Hoshea here is due to the fact that this account is part of the supplement added by another writer to the writing of Moses.
Deu 32:46
(Cf. Deu 6:7; Deu 11:19.)
Deu 32:47
It is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life; these are not mere empty words; they are of vital import (cf. Deu 30:20).
Deu 32:48-52
On the day on which Moses rehearsed this song in the hearing of the people, his death was announced to him by God, and the command was again given to him to ascend Mount Nebo, thence to survey the Promised Land, and there to be gathered to his people. The same in substance, the command as given here differs slightly in form and in some minor particulars from that as recorded by Moses himself (Num 27:12-14).
Deu 32:49
Abarim (cf. Num 21:10, Num 21:20). Nebo (cf. Num 32:3, Num 32:38). An idol Nebo was worshipped by the Moabites (Isa 46:1).
Deu 32:50
And be thou gathered unto thy people. “To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This signifies,” saith R. Isaac, “that he should be associated and joined to the souls of the just who are called his people. For the people of Moses were not buried in Mount Abarim, and therefore he doth not speak of gathering his body to their bodies, but of his soul to their souls (‘Chissute Emuna,’ 1. 11)” (Patrick).
Deu 32:51
(Cf. Num 20:13, Num 20:24.) Because ye sanctified me not (cf. Num 27:14; 1Pe 3:15).
Deu 32:52
Yet thou shalt See the land (cf. Heb 11:13).
HOMILETICS
Deu 32:1-4
God the believer’s Rock.
“Forms change: principles neverse” So have we had often to remark in discovering in and developing from this book the everlasting principles which are therein set in archaic forms. The song of Moses here recorded will yield us many illustrations of this kind of teaching. Its first four versos suggest three lines of thought.
I. THERE IS HERE A REVEALED DOCTRINE CONCERNING GOD. In the last song which the old man utters ere he climbs the mount of Nebo to die, he declares, “I will publish the Name of the Lord.”
1. This Name is “Jehovah.” The word involves self-existence, self-sufficiency, immutability, pure being, personality. “I am that I am” expresses all this. It would be a burning shame for any one to apply the term “anthropomorphic” to such a revelation as this. Such a conception may be revealed to man, but assuredly it borrows naught from him.
2. To this Being, greatness is ascribed; i.e. royal magnificence and splendor. The sovereignty of heaven and earth is there!
3. All moral perfections are in the” Name “of God (cf. Exo 34:6, Exo 34:7).
4. His work is perfect. The revealed attributes of God warrant us in drawing this conclusion. The intention of Moses here is to set the perfection of God’s work over against the sin of man’s.
5. His ways are judgment; i.e. they are according to justice.
6. He is the Rock. This epithet is a “piece of Mosaic.” It was indeed used by others long after. But the use of it began with Moses. On the rocks of Sinai was the Law proclaimed. In the rock-cleft was Moses hidden. From the smitten rock the waters gushed forth. How natural for Moses to apply this figure to the eternal God! In Deu 32:31, Moses speaks of God as “our Rock.” He was known to Israel as theirs, their own firm, changeless ground of strength, through all the changing years!
II. THIS DOCTRINE OF THE LIVING GOD AS THE ROCK IS FRAUGHT WITH COMFORT AND REFRESHMENT FOR MAN (Deu 32:2); i.e. what the rain is to the herb, what the showers are to the grass, that is this teaching concerning God to the soul of man.
1. Our heart wants God (Psa 84:2).
2. Such a Godthis God is as rain and as dew: refreshing, enlivening, restoring.
3. This doctrine of God is meant to make the heart productive of holiness. God’s revelation of himself is meant to draw men to himself; in doing this God saves them!
III. THE DOCTRINE THUS PROPOUNDED DESERVES TO BE UNIVERSALLY HEARD, LISTENED TO, AND BELIEVED. (Deu 32:1.) Moses would summon all to hear it. It is
1. For all classes.
2. For all lands.
3. For all the ages.
The day will never come when this doctrine of God will be obsoletenever!
Deu 32:5-14
Ungrateful men interrogated.
In almost every clause of this paragraph there is some specific allusion, for the elucidation of which the reader will refer to the Exposition. The commentary of Dr. Jameson thereon is very valuable. Our aim is strictly homiletic. The central words around which the preacher’s expository thoughts may gather are these”Do ye thus requite the Lord?” Three main lines of illustration are suggested.
I. HERE IS A REHEARSAL OF THE DIVINE LOVING–KINDNESS AND TENDER MERCIES.
1. There is the mercy of redemption. “Is not he thy Father that hath bought thee?”
2. There is the mercy of Divine choice of Israel as a people. “Hath he not made thee, and established thee?” (see also Deu 32:7, Deu 32:8).
3. There is Divine leadership. “He led him about,” etc.
4. There is Divine guardianship. “He kept him as the apple of his eye.”
5. There is Divine help and training of the most tender kind. A wonderful description is given thereof in Deu 32:11.
6. There is abundant Divine provision for the wants of the ransomed ones (Deu 32:13, Deu 32:14). Each one of these six points may be enlarged upon, as applicable to present gospel blessings and providential mercies.
II. HERE IS A STRANGE RESPONSE TO SUCH ABOUNDINGS OF MERCY, The burden of Moses here is not unlike that of a far later prophet, even Isaiah (see Isa 1:2-4). The moan of many of God’s prophets has been the same ever since; it is so now. The contrast between God’s bounty and man’s perversity causes a grief almost too heavy to be borne. Here are at least five complaints.
1. They are corrupt.
2. They are perverse, or false.
3. They are crooked, twisted.
4. They are foolish, not acting as reasonable men.
5. Instead of being like his children, they are a spot upon thema stain (see Hebrew).
The question may fairly be asked, Who are they of whom similar complaints may be made now?
We reply:
1. Those who profess to be the people of God, and who show no signs whatever that their profession is real.
2. Those of God’s children who are but half-hearted in their love and zeal.
3. Those who are ready with lip-service, but are grievously defective in Christian morality.
4. Those who have neither yielded themselves to God nor yet made any profession thereof. Of all such, similar complaints may be made to those here laid against Israel of old.
III. HERE IS A REASONABLE QUESTION. It is, indeed, a reproachful one. And if ever the servants of God now take it up and apply it to the heart and conscience of their hearers, it should be done with the utmost tenderness, even unto tears; remembering, on the one hand, how infinitely greater the mercies of God are now, compared with aught that Moses knew; and also considering themselves, how often they have been as ungrateful Israel of old, and that, if it had not been for almighty grace, would have been ungrateful still. The solemn and sorrowful interrogative”Do ye thus requite the Lord?”may be pressed home in a series of cumulative inquiries. It may be asked:
1. Is this the natural return for mercies so great?
2. Do not such love and care demand a holy and grateful life?
3. Can any reason whatever justify so poor a response as God has yet received?
4. Have men no remorse in the review of the contrast between God’s mercies and their sin?
5. Should not remorse lead on to repentance?
6. And shall not this penitent life begin now? It is quite certain that, though God is long-suffering, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance,” he will not always allow his mercies to be thus trifled with (see Amo 4:1-13.). But why, why should men compel us to present thus “the terrors of the Lord?” He would rather win by love. Judgment is “his strange work.”
Deu 32:15.-18
God provoked to jealousy by an unfaithful people.
(On the whole subject of “anthropomorphism,” which is alleged against the Old Testament representations of the Divine Being, see the Homily on Deu 32:1-4 of this chapter, and also Homily on Deu 4:21-24). This paragraph is a continuation of the same theme as that touched on in preceding verses. It not only sets forth the waywardness of the people retrospectively, but also prospectively. In fact, it is more of a prophetic forecast than otherwise. Moses sees the people in the enjoyment of all the blessings of God’s providence; he looks onward, and, with the seer’s eye, he beholds them in the Promised Land, their wanderings over, and their marches hither and thither exchanged for a settled life in a land of plenty and of delight. There they are prospering abundantly; and if they only used their prosperity aright they would be doubly blessed, even with that blessing which “maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow therewith.” But, alas! how different is the picture here drawn! And how precisely did the after-reality answer thereto! There is in these verses a logical order of thought, in the sketch given, first, of Israel’s downward course; and then, of the effect of that on the relations between them and their God.
I. HERE IS A GRIEVOUS PICTURE OF SPIRITUAL DEGENERATION IN THE MIDST OF WORLDLY PROSPERITY. There are four steps in the descent.
1. Prosperity generates willfulness, and a resistance to the Divine claims. If men can have their own way entirely, for a while, and secure precisely their own ends, such success, if not sanctified, will but create a self-will and self-assertion stronger than ever. “Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.” The restraints of duty, conscience, God, will be irksome, and will provoke to resistance. Men will “kick against the pricks.”
2. Another stage will surely follow on. The irritation which was at first felt will subside, and insensibility will steal over the soul. “Thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick.” Stubborn obstinacy without the former stings of conscience. “Past feeling.” The terrible symptom of a moral and spiritual paralysis!
3. To this there will follow a third stage. “He forsook God and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.” Here there sets in a thinking lightly of God altogether, and a forsaking of him. How true is the picture here given to the actual progress of sin in the soul everywhere!
4. To this succeeds not only neglect of God, but the substitution of other gods (Deu 32:16, Deu 32:17)! This actually came about (see Jer 2:1-37; specially Jer 2:13). The heart of man must have a supreme object of love; and if God be not enthroned in the heart, some rival will be seated there.
NoteHow very little all possible worldly good can do for a man unless there is a process of spiritual renewal and culture going on, which will enable him to sanctify all to the highest purposes! Yea, more. If worldly prosperity is not sanctified to God and by him, it will be as a dead weight upon the spirit. It will engender, first resistance, then deadness, then estrangement, then idolatry! This is the sure and certain effect of an accumulation of worldly good, when its possessor is not led by Divine grace to use it wisely and piously. It is an evil much to be lamented that so many glory in the accumulation of things, while neglecting the culture and education of their souls. Why, even in common life, there are no more awkward, ungainly, and impracticable beings than those who have grown rich while neglecting to educate themselves. They have acquired a prodigious strength of self-will, without the knowledge of self-government. And of all men in the world, they are of the least use to their generation.
II. HERE IS A STRANGE EFFECT OF SUCH DEGENERACY ON THE DIVINE BEING. “They provoked him to jealousy” (see remark in “anthropomorphism,” ut supra, and also Homily on Deu 4:24). Of all the attributes or epithets applied to God, there is no one which endears him to us more than this: “jealousy!” What does it mean?
1. That God has a heart of love.
2. That his love yearns to be reciprocated.
3. That the reciprocation of love for which he yearns is the whole undivided love of our hearts.
4. That if such devoted love is not accorded to him, he feels wronged.
5. That if supreme love is bestowed on any other than God, his holy love is outraged; his pure indignation is “jealousy.” And consider how great the wrong is which is thus committed against a gracious God. What would an earthly father think if his children, who lived on his bounty, thought only of eating and drinking, and cared not for him? What if the children thought more of their toys than of their father? Ought he not to be jealous? Would hecould he be a good father, and not be jealous? Surely not. It is easy to apply this in such a case. Christ teaches us to learn of the heavenly Father by means of earthly ones. Consider, moreover,
(1) the wrong done to God,
(2) the misplacement of things,
(3) the injustice and injury done to ourselves, and
(4) the injurious effect of wealth, brought about by such misuse of God’s benefits.
III. TWO INQUIRIES CANNOT BUT SUGGEST THEMSELVES.
1. How may such evil be guarded against? This question supposes that the evil has not yet been fallen into. “Prevention is better than cure.”
(1) Let us regard ourselves as of infinitely more moment than our possessions. What we are is beyond measure of more concern than what we have. Our culture for eternity is of the first importance.
(2) Let us from the outset of life regard God as the Author of all good, and as therefore having the first claim on our regard.
(3) Let us cultivate the devotional habit of receiving all our temporal comforts as from God. If we have used means to secure them, he it is who has given us the means to use; who has given us the power to use them, and who has made those means a success.
(4) Let us seek wisdom from above to hallow all our good for God, and to “honor the Lord with our substance, and with the firstfruits of all our increase” (see Homily on Deu 14:22).
(5) Conscious of the deceitfulness of the human heart, let us entreat our God to fill us with the power of the Spirit, as well as to give us providential mercies. Then, the first will ensure the sanctification of the second. The larger our possessions, the more we need of the Spirit of God, to ensure their becoming a blessing, and to prevent their becoming a snare.
2. If we have fallen into such evil, how may we be recovered therefrom?
(1) Let the very suggestion that a spiritual paralysis may have stolen over the soul, startle us into the inquiry. Is this the case with us?
(2) Let us inquire solemnly, “What shall it profit a man, if be shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?”
(3) Let us repent before God of the wrong we have done to him in seeking from creature comforts the joy which he alone can give.
(4) Taught by long and sad experience how a perverted nature may pervert all things, let us implore his renewing and sanctifying grace to enlighten our understandings, to regulate our affections, to mold our will, to empower and transform our life. If God fills us by his grace, then will earthly good be sanctified. Our God will be our richest joy of all, and every worldly comfort will yield us double joy, when hallowed by him and for him.
Deu 32:19-25
An unfaithful people provoked to jealousy by God.
This paragraph is the antithesis of the preceding one. In form the expressions are archaic. The principles underlying these ancient forms of expression are for all the ages. In fact, there are few of the Old Testament passages which are more pointedly referred to in the New Testament; and none, the principles of which are more frequently reproduced. The various clauses are seriatim explained in the Exposition. We propose but to develop the main thought, which is indicated in the heading of this Homily. Its contents are fourfold.
1. God was provoked to jealousy by his people choosing a no-God instead of him.
2. The time would come when he would, as a punishment to Israel, choose a no-people instead of them.
3. Those who had been exalted in privilege should be deprived of their privileges, and should pass through the bitterest sorrows.
4. At the thought of their privileges passing away from them, and passing on to others, Israel should be provoked to jealousy.
Now, it would be a most instructive and impressive exercise to compare what is here said by God in his Word with that which actually came to pass. What does history say? Does it not confirm Moses at every point? The facts of history are these
1. The people of Israel did fall away from the God of their fathers, and bring upon themselves the remonstrance of prophet after prophet, and were made in the course of God’s providence to suffer sorrow upon sorrow.
2. The time did come when the kingdom of God passed away from them, and when they were no longer, as they once had been, the favored people.
3. That kingdom of God passed over to the Gentiles.
4. At its so passing over, the Jews were exceedingly jealous and angry.
5. So much so was this the case, that Patti makes use of the fact in arguments to quicken both the Jew and the Gentile, as the case may be.
The following passages of Scripture should be carefully compared together, bearing as they do alike on the history, the principles revolved therein, and their everlasting application:Rom 10:19; Mat 8:11, Mat 8:12; Mat 21:31, Mat 21:43; Act 13:46; Rom 9:30-32; Rom 11:11; Hos 1:10 (latter part); Rom 9:25,Rom 9:26; 1Pe 2:10; Eph 2:11-13; Rom 11:13-25. From all which several all-important truths of permanent significance may be clearly deduced and powerfully applied.
I. THESE ARE TIMES OF GREAT RELIGIOUS PRIVILEGE WITH US. True, we are not exclusively a favored race, in the same sense as was Israel of old. But our advantages are not less because others share them with us. We have all that Israel ever had, and vastly more. “The kingdom of God is come unto us.” The “word of faith” is nigh us, in our mouth and in our heart. We are bidden to “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” etc.
II. IF THESE PRIVILEGES REMAIN UNIMPROVED, OUR NEGLECT THEREOF WILL BE A GRIEVOUS SIN IN THE EYE OF GOD. We have but to read the Epistle to the Hebrews in order to find such an argument as this repeatedly presented, though in varying forms: If the Law of Moses was trifled with by any one, they did not escape punishment. But Jesus Christ is greater than Moses. By as much as he is greater than Moses, by so much are the sin and danger of neglecting him greater than those of neglecting the lawgiver of old.
III. BOTH CHURCHES AND NATIONS HAVE A DAY OF PROBATION GRANTED THEM, DURING WHICH THEIR PRIVILEGES ARE CONTINUED. (See Isa 49:8; 2Co 6:2; Luk 13:6-9; Rev 2:5, Rev 2:21; Luk 19:42-44.) An unending probation is granted to no one.
IV. IF THE PERIOD OF PROBATION PASSES BY UNIMPROVED, OUR PRIVILEGES WILL BE TAKEN AWAY FROM US.
V. OTHER LANDS AND OTHER PEOPLES ARE READY, YEA, EAGER TO RECEIVE THE LIGHT WHICH SOME APPRECIATE SO LITTLE.
VI. MANY, MANY WILL COME FROM LESS FAVORED LANDS AND FROM LESS CULTURED RACES, AND WILL STEP INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AND BE SAVED; while many of the children of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. Hear what our Lord says to the Pharisees: “The publicans and harlots will go into the kingdom of God before you.”
Deu 32:20-28
The Divine mind influenced by reasons.
Moses, in uttering this song, is “borne along” (2Pe 1:21) by a power working through him and yet not of him, to make a most remarkable assertion in the Name of Jehovah; viz. that Israel’s Deliverer was moved by fear of the wrath of the enemy not to destroy them altogether! How is this to be understood? Some might perhaps pass it over as a piece of obsolete anthropomorphism. So will not we. To us, many a sentence in the grand old volume, which at first sight seemed uncouth and almost repellent in its archaism, has on further study yielded up treasures of delight with which we would not willingly part. Perhaps it may be so here.
NoteThe verb “I said,” in Deu 32:26, is rendered by Keil, “I should say.” This shows the sense more clearly, “I should say, I will blow them away, I will blot out the remembrance of them among men; if I did not fear wrath upon the enemy [i.e. “displeasure on the part of God at the arrogant boasting of the enemy, which was opposed to the glory of God” (Vitringa, quoted by Keil, in loc.)] that their enemies might mistake it, that they might say, Our hand was high, and Jehovah has not done all rids. For,” etc. If we analyze these words, we shall find that they are separable into six main thoughts, expressed or implied.
1. That Israel was a people void of understanding.
2. That they consequently tried the patience of God, as falling very far below his ideal and their duty and honor.
3. That it would have been no great loss to the world if they should therefore be blotted out of being, and should actually drop out of the remembrance of the nations.
4. That if this extreme punishment should be meted out, then the adversary would glory over them and against them, and say that Israel’s God either could not or would not guard the people whom he chose: that their enemies were mightier than their Redeemer.
5. That such a result would veil the glory of Jehovah, and make men uncertain whether God had a special people in the world or no.
6. That consequently, for his own sake, God would punish, but in measure; he would scourge, but not destroy. Hence there stands forth this great and glorious truth, God will so govern and discipline his people as to reveal his own glory in them and by them. This is the thought we now propose to develop in a series of considerations arranged according to the structure of the text.
I. GOD HAS AN ISRAEL NOW. (Eph 2:1-22.; Heb 12:18-28.) The redemption from Egypt, the march through the wilderness, the formation of a commonwealth, the inheritance of Canaan, are all at once symbolic and typical of a greater deliverance, a nobler commonwealth, a spiritual pilgrimage, a heavenly home.
II. During the march of the Church of God through the wilderness of this world, GOD‘S PEOPLE OFTEN FALL VERY FAR BELOW THE IDEAL SET BEFORE THEM. They try the patience of God, and excite the wonder, the laughter, and the ridicule of man. Think of what has been done in the name of religion! Think of the sharp controversies, the angry words, and the prolonged strife of Christendom! Think of the number of inconsistent professors, who cause our enemies to laugh among themselves! etc.
III. SO GRIEVOUS HAVE BEEN THE STAINS AND BLOTS THUS BROUGHT ON THE CHRISTIAN NAME, THAT MEN HAVE BEEN TEMPTED EVEN TO THINK THAT GOD‘S CHURCH WAS AN INCUBUS IN THE WORLD; yea, that it might, with advantage to mankind, have ceased to exist. For certain it is that the great God could, even if his Church should become extinct, create a purer and nobler people in their stead, who would honor him and bless the world!
IV. MANY OF THE ADVERSARIES ARE WISHING FOR AND SEEKING TO BRING ABOUT THE CHURCH‘S EXTINCTION. They would destroy the fellowship by sapping the life thereof. They would sap the life by undermining the faith. And never more eagerly than nowthey are at work to educate men into the belief that God never had a people, that the people never had a God, and that all the faith they have been cherishing for ages has been based on a delusion and a lie!
V. IF SUCH A RESULT WERE TO ACCRUE, HOW WOULD THE ENEMY GLORY! They would say, “Our hand is high, and the Lord hath not done all this.” If only the Church should be driven from her moorings, if her anchor of hope should become unusable, and she should be difted out to a wild, pathless, shoreless sea,what glorying there would be in the enemy’s camp! “Ha, ha! so we would have it!” “How would the powers of darkness boast if but one praying soul were lost!”
VI. SUCH A POSSIBILITY IS GUARDED AGAINST IN THE DIVINE COUNSELS. It is just such a provision that is indicated in the text. God will not let the “adversaries behave themselves strangely“ in this way. They will never have the chance! The Church is built on a rock, from which it can never be dislodged. The day will never come when it will cease to exist; And ever will God remember the word on which he has caused us to hope!
VII. GOD GUARDS AGAINST ANY SUCH POSSIBILITY, BY DOING WHAT HE DOES FOR HIS OWN SAKE. The revelation of his own honor and glory in the eyes of men is too precious in his eye for him to let things so move on that all trace thereof is lost to his own people (cf. Isa 43:1-28 :45; Eze 36:21, Eze 36:22, Eze 36:32; Psa 106:7, Psa 106:8; Eze 20:9, Eze 20:14, Eze 20:22). See too what argument Daniel uses in prayer (Dan 9:19). David also (Psa 25:11).
For the sake of his own honor, God will purify his Church from all corruption by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning; and while thus jealous for his people’s purity, he will as jealously watch over them, so that “upon all the glory there shall be a defense” (Isa 4:2-6; cf. 1Co 11:32; 1Pe 4:17).
IN CONCLUSION.
1. Let the righteous rejoice, yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. God’s supreme aim is that his glory shall he revealed. The bringing of it forth to clear light is the aim and tendency of events, without let or pause.
2. Let all men clearly distinguish between the two providential processes which are ever, ever in process of fulfillment. One, the purification of the Church. The other, the condemnation and confusion of the world.
3. Let the wicked tremble. Or if they are too benumbed to tremble, let them at least cease to make merry over the corruptions of the Church. They may laugh now. They will not laugh always. The severing processes of God’s judgment are going on now, and they will issue in “everlasting contempt” to the ungodly, and in the redemption of Israel from all his iniquities!
Deu 32:29-35
The short-sightedness of sinners.
“Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” Such is the moan with which this paragraph begins. By “this” is meant the consequence which will certainly follow on their departure from God. By “their latter end” is meant the latter days of their history, when sins which were beforehand in germ should have wrought out to full development. We need not again recount the historical aspects of this serious outlook. We will but note, in a series of consecutive thoughts, the truths which are here indicated, and which are of universal and perpetual application to individuals, families, and nations.
I. IT IS A MARK OF A VICIOUS SHORT–SIGHTEDNESS TO TAKE NO HEED TO THE CONSEQUENCES OF A COURSE OF CONDUCT. If men take no reckoning of their “latter end,” it is the reverse of wise. Our Savior asks, “What shall it profit a man?” etc. To take heed only to present appearances and to avoid all preparations for the future, is folly in the extreme.
II. WHETHER WE WILL OR NO, CERTAIN CONSEQUENCES ARE BOUND UP WITH CONDUCT BY A LAW WHICH NO CREATED POWER CAN AVERT OR MODIFY. They may be “sealed up“hidden from sight at present, but they are “laid up in store” (Rom 2:5; 1Th 5:3).
III. THE MOST HIGH RESERVES TO HIMSELF THE EXECUTION OF HIS OWN LAWS. “To me belongeth vengeance.” Vengeance cannot safely be entrusted to frail and passionate man. Only in the hands of “the Judge of all the earth” is there an absolute guarantee that in its infliction there will be neither excess nor defect. No weakness will cause delay or halt. No vindictiveness will induce any variation from the right.
IV. HOWEVER LONG VENGEANCE MAY BE DELAYED, IT WILL NOT BE POSTPONED TOO LONG. “Their feet shall slide in due time.” Time is on God’s side. In the moral world there is not a moment’s pause. Character is ripening for good or for ill, and great issues are working out at every tick of the dial.
V. IN THE RIPENING OF CHARACTER AND THE ADVANCED ISSUES OF CONDUCT THERE WILL BE AWFUL RESULTS ON THE SIDE OF EVIL. The figurative expressions in each clause are of terrific significance. They indicate:
1. The failure of the refuge to which they had fled.
2. The collapse of their strength in great emergencies.
3. Bitterness of misery.
4. Venomous poison as the fruit of their vine of Sodom.
Now is the day for accumulating; hereafter will be the day for the manifestation, of these hidden treasures of ill.
VI. THIS DAY OF AWFUL RECOMPENSE WILL COME UPON SINNERS SUDDENLY. “The things that shall come upon them make haste”. It is one remarkable feature of the Mosaic outlook, that the lawgiver scarcely ever refers to another life, but to the working out of God’s judgments in this. The future life comes into view in the New Testament. The law of sowing and reaping holds good for both worlds (Gal 6:7).
VII. WITH AN OUTLOOK SO GRIEVOUS, THE THOUGHTLESSNESS OF SINNERS IS AN EVIL GREATLY TO BE LAMENTED. “Oh that they were wise!” etc. (cf. Jer 9:1; Psa 119:136).
IN CONCLUSION. There is at least a threefold application of the text, which should be made use of to warn men against sin.
1. Those who have to direct or influence national affairs should remember that a wrong policy is a foolish one. No nation will continue to thrive that fights against God.
2. Heads of families should remember that, by a course of disloyalty to God, they are sowing the seeds of dishonor, grief, and shame in their families, and are entailing sorrow on the children of their care.
3. Let each individual learn that whatever a man soweth that shall he also reap, both in this world and in that which is to come. “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker!”
Deu 32:36-43
Jehovah reigns; be glad!
This paragraph has about it a remarkably martial ring. It is not to be looked at as bald and literal prose. It is part of a song; it is laden with imagery, in which the God of Israel is set forth as a mighty Warrior, whose march none can hinder, whose inflictions none can withstand or evade. The style of the song was precisely appropriate to the age in which it was composed, and suited to the people in whose hearing it was addressed. The truths clothed in such Oriental garb are for all lands and for all time. For though there is an abundance of figure, yet not all is figurative. There are at least two phrases which are plain in their phraseology, and which furnish us with the key for the right interpretation of the others. One of these is found at the beginning of the passage, the other towards its close. The first is in Deu 32:36, “The Lord shall judge his people.” The other is in Deu 32:43, “Rejoice, O ye nationshis people.” The former assures us that all the various processes of judgment to which the seer’s eye looks forward are in the hands of God. The second calls upon the nations to rejoice therein. Between these two, the varied details in the paragraph fall naturally into place. Our Homily will, therefore, be mainly an answer to one inquiry, viz. What materials for joy are here given us?
It is useless to bid any one to be glad unless a reason is given them why they should be so. A somewhat careful study of the paragraph in hand will show at least eight reasons for holy and grateful joy.
I. It is matter for joy that God reserves in his own hands the judgment of his people (Deu 32:36). Where else could it safely be? Who else has the power, the wisdom, the justice, the kindness, the knowledge required? If the scepter of power were in any other hands, the guarantee of righteous administration would cease.
II. We may rejoice that in his judging processes God will convince his people of the folly of relying on any but on himself (Deu 32:37, Deu 32:38). The reason of the peculiar imagery in these verses every student knows. The underlying thought is clear. It may be a sharp, but it is a necessary discipline, that every prop should give way which would prevent us from leaning on God alone.
III. We may rejoice in the severity with which a righteous God will deal with sin. Severity against sin is mercy towards the sinner (Deu 32:42). In the early conquest of Canaan, severity towards Aohan and his accomplices was mercy towards Israel. In the early Church, judgment on Ananias and Sapphira was mercy to the Church. In both cases the canker of dishonesty and hypocrisy needed to be cut out by a strong and firm hand.
IV. We may rejoice that the ruling motive and the ultimate intent of God’s dealings are love and mercy (Deu 32:43). Beyond the blackest clouds Moses sees in the horizon light and glory. The twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters of this book, with all their threatenings, are followed by the thirtieth, with all its promises. Wrath in the process, mercy as the product.
V. Let us rejoice that in this law of recompense there is mercy in the educational process therein ensured (see Psa 62:12). There is a wide difference between a fatherly correction and the infliction of a legal penalty. It is the former which God metes out towards his people. Their relation to him is one of grace, not of bare law.
VI. Let us rejoice that mercy will regulate the mode, the time, and the result of the chastisement, The mode: “Their power is gone,” i.e. their false props are destroyed. The time: “He will repent himself,” i.e. he will not be wrath forever; when the infliction has answered its end, he will change his dealings. Though God never changes a plan, he may plan a change. The result: “He will be merciful unto his land,” etc; i.e. he will be propitious. When his people are brought back from their wanderings, he will “cover” all their sin in eternal forgetfulness.
VII. Let us rejoice in the clear and perfect discrimination which will mark all the Divine dealings with his people and with his adversaries; Deu 32:43, “vengeancemercy.” Both form part of God’s governmental methods. How can it be otherwise in a world of sin? The perfections of Jehovah guarantee that neither will infringe on the other. Tenderness will never weaken vengeance. Vengeance will never lessen tenderness. God alone knows the absolutely perfect adjustment.
VIII. Let us rejoice that the eye of the seer beholds brightness in the far distance. The gloom does but intervene; it does not cover the whole canopy of heaven, nor darken all the outlook. “Light is sown for the righteous.” “Joy cometh in the morning” (Deu 32:43).
Let all these several particulars be woven together, and they will make one glorious patternat the sight of which we may well shout aloud for joy.
Learn
1. In such a review of the methods and outcome of God’s providential dealings only those who are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ are in a position to understand them. Enmity cannot understand love. And where men are “enemies in their mind by wicked works,” they are certain to misunderstand God’s nature, and to misinterpret his ways. Man‘s first duty is to repent of sin and obey God. Till he does this the mysteries of God will not be unveiled to him.
2. When we understand something of the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, then the true key to the interpretation of providence is in our hands (Rom 8:34). Hence we can “rejoice in the Lord” (Psa 33:1; Php 3:1; Php 4:4; Psa 97:1; Psa 96:1-13.; 98.).
3. In proportion to the greatness of the love which furnishes the key for unlocking providential mysteries is the greatness of the sin which turns away from and finally rejects God. (See the use of this paragraph in Heb 10:30, Heb 10:31.) However deep the gloom which Moses depicts, he sees a rim of golden glory in the horizon, as if another dispensation were to follow. But the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews sees no after-light for those who turn away from Christ. “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” The contest of the sinner with God must end in the guilty one’s ignominious and hopeless defeat; Amo 4:12, “Because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.”
Deu 32:44-47
Life at stake!
This paragraph-concerning which Keil is probably right in his surmise, that it proceeds from an editor’s handsets before us in a quiet and incidental way, one of the most important transitions Israel had yet experienced. We have seen in Deu 31:7, Deu 31:8, that Moses gave Joshua a charge, and told him that he must lead the people into the Promised Land. After that came the utterance of this song. When it was uttered, Joshua stood side by side with Moses. Thus, just for once, the two leaderships overlap. The joint presence of both the old and new leaders this signifying, that, though the earthly administration changed hands, the same message would be passed, and not a word of Jehovah’s would be lost. There are six feature’s about this closing public scene of the life of Moses, which open up an invaluable line of thought.
1. Here is an assembly, met to hear Moses’ last song.
2. Though it is the last, there is in it nothing new. It is the one messageGod’s goodness, faithfulness, and love, calling for their reciprocation and obedience.
3. This old message is reimpressed on their hearts.
4. The people were to command their children to observe it. The children were, in their home life, to receive an education for God.
5. This is urged upon them by the consideration that all that is precious to them in life depends on their obedience to God’s message.
6. Moses and Joshua appear together before the people, as if to declare to them that the same teachings which the aged leader had laid down, the younger one would accept, enforce, and transmit. There was a change in human leaders, but not in Divine laws or the Divine message. And to all the solemn sanctions with which Moses guarded the Law, Joshua here pledges himself before the people and before his God. Hence we get this themeAmid all changes we have an unchanging message from above, on the observance of which our life depends.
I. Let us clearly declare and show that there is at this moment a message of law and a revelation of grace, which have come to us, not of man, but by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, by the manifestation of God in Christ, and by the power of the Holy Ghost on and since the day of Pentecost. This message is, in sum and substance, given in Joh 3:16; 1Ti 1:15; Rev 22:17; Tit 2:11-13. This message is the development of that which through Moses was given but in germ (Joh 5:46, Joh 5:47; Mat 5:17).
II. Here past and present generations meet, giving out the same words. We have now “the faith once [for all] delivered unto the saints.” Aged patriarchs in their declining years do reiterate the same message they gave when in the vigor of youth. And young men, filled with the same spirit, and having their hearts kindled with the same fire, take it up with the earnest hope and prayer that it may suffer no loss in their hands! Often have a Moses and a Joshua thus stood side by side.
III. The message now is far fuller and clearer than it was when given to Israel of old. How much, Christian preachers and teachers can tell. Yet in three respects they are similar.
1. Both reveal the love of God, and recount a great deliverance.
2. Both solicit, in Heaven’s name, the response of the peoples’ hearts (see Rom 12:1; 2Co 5:14-21; Rom 5:8).
3. Both require, on the ground of Divine love to man, love to the redeemed brotherhood, and good will to all men (1Co 13:1-13.; Joh 4:10-19).
IV. The commanding force of the gospel message through our Lord Jesus Christ is far greater than that sent through Moses. True, there was terror at Sinai; there is tenderness in Calvary. Moses orders; Jesus pleads. Moses speaks in thunderings; Jesus with tears. Yet must we not mistake tenderness for weakness, nor gentleness for lack of authority or of power. (See the entire argument in the Epistle to the Hebrews.)
V. All that can give fullest value to this life and joy to the next, depends on how we treat this message from God. “It is not a vain thing for you; it is your life” (verse 47). The expansion of this would require many Homilies. We can but hint.
1. The enjoyment of peace with God (Rom 5:1).
2. The growth of character in holiness.
3. The true enjoyment and use of this earthly life, as families, as nations, as individuals, depend on loyalty to God. “Godliness is profitable unto all things; having promise of the life that now is.”
4. All our hope for the next life depends on our response to God; hence the close of the verse just quoted”and of that which is to come.” Apart from the acceptance of Jesus Christ by faith, and a life of loyalty to God, there is not a gleam of light or hope for the next life (see Heb 2:3). If God did not allow his message through Moses to be slighted with impunity, certainly he will not suffer men to “trample under foot the Son of God,” and then leave them unpunished!
VI. What dread, what awful possibilities as to the fate of immortal souls are trembling in the balance, while they refrain from “yielding themselves unto God!” How earnestly and frequently may we with reason reiterate the words, “It is your life!“ All that ensures life here and hereafter being a blessing, depends on the way men treat Jesus Christ and his salvation.
VII. However many changes there may yet be in the bearers of this message, yet, down to the end of time, God will never send a greater. Moses and Joshua. The old generation passing away, the new coming on the stage. They meet and greet. The faithful and tried veteran passes on the word. The younger messenger, with solemn vow to God before his brother man, receives it, and swears before high heaven that he will maintain the message unimpaired, and in his turn “commit it to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.”
“Thus shall the bright succession run,
Till the last courses of the sun.”
Deu 32:48-52
Death immediately in view.
The utterance of the sublime song which we have just treated on, was the last recorded public act of Moses. His work is all but done. He receives an intimation that the time is nigh at hand for him to “go up and die.” The circumstances which gather round that death are most suggestive. The following passages should be compared together:Num 20:12; Num 27:12-14; Deu 1:37; Deu 3:23-28; Deu 4:21, Deu 4:22; Psa 106:1-48 :82. Historically, the following points are indicated in this paragraph:
1. Moses recognized the call to die, as well as the call to work, as from God; Psa 106:48, “The Lord spake,” etc.
2. His joy in death would be checked by the remembrance of faults in life (verse 51). It is by no means clear to us why so severe a sentence was imposed on Moses for one outburst of temper. Dr. Jameson suggests that there may have been other circumstances, which are unrecorded, to account for it. Possibly, however, the phrases, “for your sakes,” “for their sakes,” furnish a clue to the reason. The people might need thus to be guarded against presumptuous sin.
3. Visions of the glorious land in store for God’s people would be granted him ere he quitted the earth. His joy would be rich, though not unalloyed (verse 52).
4. The work which he had thus far carried forward must be completed by other hands. This is implied, and elsewhere expressed.
5. Moses, like the saints of God who went before him, must plunge into the unknown realm. He must “be gathered unto his people,” as Aaron had been (verse 50).
6. He would do so under the eye of the same God whom he so long had served. Till the very last he lives in fellowship with God. At the last he will die in fellowship with him.
No Christian expositor can fail to take note of the different aspect which death has to believers, since “life and incorruption” have been brought to light by Jesus Christ. The believer, at death, enters the invisible world. The names for it are “Sheol” and “Hades.” The former is a Hebrew word, the latter Greek. Both mean (practically) the same, though they present the mysterious realm of the departed under different aspects. To the Hebrew it is the all-demanding world. To the Greek, the unknown region. In the New Testament (Revised Version) the word Hades is reproduced. But though the word is reproduced, its meaning is changed. The heathen view of Hades was that of a mysterious under-realm of the deadgloomy and without hope. The Jewish view of Sheol (LXX. Hades) was also that of a mysterious under-realmgloomy, but with a hope of glory “in the awaking’ (Psa 17:15). The Christian view of Hades is that of an invisible realm of departed souls, who are entirely under the mediatorial administration of the Son of God; a region without gloom, of perfect rest and of glorious hope for the believer. “Absent from the body: at home with the Lord.” “Whether we live or die, we continue to be the Lord’s.” Let us thankfully make use of this new light which Christ has thrown on the death of believers, in meditating on” Christian dying.”
I. THE CHRISTIAN IS ABSOLUTELY AT THE DISPOSAL OF HIS LORD, FOR WORK OR FOR REST, FOR LIVING OR FOR DYING. (Rev 14:9; Php 1:20.) He will be prepared to say, “Lord, it belongs not to my care, whether I die or live.” Work is worth doing only so long as Christ has it for us to do. Life is worth living only as we can serve Christ thereby.
II. THE CHRISTIAN‘S JOY IN DEATH MUST SURELY BE CHECKED AT THE THOUGHT OF NUMBERLESS DEFECTS, FAILURES, AND FAULTS IN LIFE. Whether or no there have been any such serious outbreaks as that of Moses, there must come rushing into memory so much defective work, so much mixed motive, such an utter lack of anything done or said which rose up to even his own ideal, that he would despair of his future, if it were not for the abounding grace of God; and even then, though this grace keeps him from sinking, and he may feel assured that his sin is forgiven, yet it must bring a shade over his spirit to think there has been so much for which he needed forgiveness!
III. ACTIVE WORKERS AND LEADERS IN GOD‘S CHURCH OFTEN LAY DOWN THEIR WORK WITH A STRANGE FEELING OF INCOMPLETENESS. Moses had brought the people thus far, just to the verge of the Promised Land I He would gladly have finished the work. But it was well for Moses to feel how entirely the work was of God and not of man. How many a worker would like to see this or that controversy closed, this or that Church settled, this publication completed, this convert a little more-established in the faith! But no. It is as God wills, and that will is best.
IV. THOUGH GOD SUFFERS THIS SHADE OVER LIFE‘S CLOSING HOURS, YET HE OFTEN CHEERS HIS SERVANTS BY BRIGHT VISIONS OF THE GLORY WHICH IS IN STORE FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD. Verse 52, “Thou shalt see the land before thee.” Yes, and Moses knew that, though he must leave the work incomplete, there was yet a great future for God’s Church, when the wilderness life was over. And so now. However decided may be the sense of unfinished work, with which God’s servants close their earthly career, they have no misgiving as to God’s finding others by whom the work will be carried on, nor have they a doubt as to the future triumphs of Christ and his cause. From the top of faith’s Pisgah, they “see the laud before them,” and though it lieth afar off, yet the sight ravishes them. Lo! “a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
V. MEANWHILE, THE SAINT MUST BREATHE HIS LAST BREATH, AND QUIT HIS HOLD OF EARTH, ENTER THE “GATES OF HADES” (Mat 16:18, Greek), AND FIND HIS PLACE, TILL THE LORD COMES, IN THE INVISIBLE WORLD. Like Moses, he must be “gathered to his people;” but he knows a great deal more than it is probable Moses did, of what that means. The words in Rev 1:18 are enough for faith, till God reveals the rest.
VI. HE WILL DO SO, LIKE MOSES, UNDER THE EYE AND CARE OF THE SAME GOD WHOM HE HAS SERVED IN LIFE. By directions from God, Moses would go up to die. And what he thought thereon may be gathered from the words of his own blessing. “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Moses would notcould not fail to take the comfort of all this for himself. We have a like comfort more clearly given (1Th 5:10). Once Christ’s we are never out of his hands!
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
Deu 32:1-3
Beneficial teaching.
Moses was directed to instruct the people by composing for their use a song (Deu 31:19, Deu 31:21). A song is:
1. Memorable.
2. Easily handed down from mouth to mouth.
3. Of singular power to awaken sympathetic feeling (cf. influence of ballads, of Jacobite songs, of the ‘Marseillaise,’ of popular hymns). The action of song is not violent, but gentle and persuasive. It steals about the heart like rippling water or like sunlight, trickles into its pores, works as if by spirit-influence on its seats of laughter and tears, explores its innermost labyrinths of feeling. Here compared (Deu 32:2) to the gently distilling dew and rain.
I. THE DEW AND RAIN AS EMBLEMS OF THE TEACHING MOST LIKELY TO PROVE EFFECTIVE. Their action is:
(1) gentle,
(2) silent,
(3) pervasive,
(4) kindly; yet:
1. Invigorative. They revive, refresh, stimulate.
2. Powerful Rocks shattered by drops of water in their pores and crevices.
3. Deep-reaching. They act on plants by watering their roots. Take a lesson from them. It is not the best kind of teaching which is loud and violent, which tries to force men’s convictions. Convictions must have time to grow. Teaching must be loving. The earthquake, the whirlwind, the fire, have their own place, but “the still small voice” is needed to succeed them. The Lord is peculiarly in that. Angry scolding, petulant rebuke, biting censure, clever satire, seldom do much good. Love alone wins the day.
II. THE DEW AND RAIN AS EMBLEMS OF THE TEACHING MOST SUITABLE IN THE INSTRUCTIONS OF RELIGION. Moses employed it here. Christ employed it. “He shall not strive nor cry,” etc. (Mat 12:19). Paul commends “truthing it in love” (Eph 4:15). “The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves” (2Ti 2:24, 2Ti 2:25). This kind of teaching harmonizes best:
1. With the subject of religion”the Name of the Lord” (Deu 32:3). God had revealed his Name to Moses (Exo 34:6, Exo 34:7), and the attributes of mercy preponderate.
2. With the end of religionthe ascription of greatness to God (Deu 32:3). Religious teaching fails if it does not inspire men with such convictions of God’s greatness as will lead them to fear, honor, worship, praise, and serve him.
3. With the special theme of the gospelpeace, love, good will to men. This song of Moses has to deal with stern truths, but even in its sternest passages it breathes the pathos of tender and sorrowful affection. It dwells largely on God’s kindnesses and the people’s ingratitude, and ends with loving promises. The song has numerous echoes in Isaiah.J.O.
Deu 32:4
God the Rock.
(Cf. Deu 32:15, Deu 32:18, Deu 32:31, Deu 32:37.) This name for God occurs chiefly in this song of Moses, and in the compositions of David and of later psalmists. It was a name full of significance to those familiar with the desert. RockrockrockIsrael had seen little else during the thirty-eight years of wandering. The older men could remember the seclusion and granitic sublimity of the rock sanctuary of Sinai. The congregation had mourned for Aaron under the shadow of Mount Hor, “rising high aloft into the blue sky, like a huge, grand, but shattered rock-city, with vast cliffs, perpendicular walls of stone, pinnacles, and naked peaks of every shape.” They had witnessed the security of Edom in the hills in which now stand the wondrous rock-hewn ruin of Petra. They had traversed the defiles of the terrible and precipitous Arabah. When David was hunted in the wilderness, he, too, was often led to think of God, his Rock (Psa 18:2; Psa 61:2; Psa 62:2, Psa 62:7, etc.). It is wilderness experience which still makes the name so precious.
I. ROCK A NATURAL IMAGE OF DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. The image is not an arbitrary one. Nature abounds in shadows of the spiritual. It is what the mind puts into the objects of its survey which makes them what they are. “The Alps and Andes are but millions of atoms till thought combines them, and stamps on them the conception of the everlasting hills. Niagara is a gush of water-drops till the soul puts into it that sweep of resistless power which the beholder feels. The ocean, wave behind wave, is only great when the spirit has breathed into it the idea of immensity. If we analyze our feelings, we shall find that thought meets us wherever we turn. The real grandeur of the world is in the soul which looks on it, which sees some conception of its own reflected from the mirror around it; for mind is not only living, but life-giving, and has received from its Maker a portion of his own creative power” (Dr. John Ker). Rock is thus more than rockits awfulness, grandeur, immovability, everlastingness, strength, are born of spiritual conceptions. These attributes do not in reality belong to it. Rock is not everlasting, moveless, abiding, etc. Old rocks are being worn away, new rocks are being formed; the whole system had a beginning and will have an end (Psa 90:2). It is not that these attributes belong to rock, and are thence by metaphor attributed to God; but these attributes of God, being dimly present in the mind, are by metaphor attributed to rock. We clothe the natural object with shadowy attributes of Deity. God is the true Rock, the other is the image. God is rock, in virtue of:
1. The eternity of his existence (Psa 90:2).
2. The omnipotence of his might (Dan 4:35).
3. The wisdom of his counsel (Isa 40:13).
4. The immutability of his purpose (Psa 33:11; Isa 46:10).
5. The faithfulness of his Word (Psa 119:89, Psa 119:90).
6. The rectitude of his government (Psa 145:17). Whence:
7. The perfection of his work. Christ is like the Father, eternal (Rev 1:11), unchangeable (Heb 13:8), all-powerful (Mat 28:18), faithful (Joh 13:1; Joh 14:18-20), righteous (Rev 19:11), wise (Isa 9:6).
II. ROCK A NATURAL IMAGE OF WHAT, IN VIRTUE OF HIS ATTRIBUTES, GOD IS TO HIS PEOPLE.
1. A shelter (Psa 61:3).
2. A defense (Psa 18:2; Psa 62:6).
3. A dwelling-place (Psa 90:1).
4. A shadow from the heat (cf. Isa 32:2).
5. A move-less standing-ground (Psa 40:2).
6. A foundation (cf. Mat 7:24). The rock smitten in the wilderness furnishes the additional idea of:
7. A source of spiritual refreshment.
Apply throughout to Christ, the Rock on which his Church is built (Mat 16:18; 1Co 2:11), the smitten Savior (1Co 10:4; 1Jn 5:6), the spiritual Refuge and Salvation of his people (Rom 8:1, Rom 8:34-39). Toplady’s hymn, “Rock of Ages.”J.O.
Deu 32:4-7
God’s righteousness and man’s iniquity.
The sin of man is only fully seen in contrast with God’s righteousness and love. The light is needed to bring out the depth of the shadow. It reveals the “spot.”
I. GOD‘S FAVOR TO ISRAEL. God’s dealings with Israel had been marked by:
1. Rectitude (Deu 32:4). He had done everything that was just and right to them. His ways had been equal. He had given them just statutes. His covenant-keeping faithfulness had been signally manifested. There was not the shadow of a pretence for accusing God of injustice or of infidelity to his engagements.
2. Love. Love and grace had been more conspicuous in his treatment of them than even justice. It was shown in their election, in the deliverance from Egypt, in the guidance of the desert, in pardon of offences, in the many and undeserved favors which had been heaped upon them (cf. Deu 32:9-14). Rectitude and love have reached their fullest manifestation in the gospel. The cross displays both. It harmonizes their apparently conflicting claims, and exhibits them in new glories. God’s character, revealed in Christ, is the condemnation of an unbelieving world.
II. ISRAEL‘S REQUITAL OF GOD‘S KINDNESS. (Deu 32:5, Deu 32:6.) Their requital was an incredibly base one. They corrupted themselves. They wantonly departed from the ways of right. They behaved ungratefully. Instead of imitating God in the example of rectitude he had set them, and walking before him “as dear children,” they flung to the winds the remembrance of his mercies, and brought disgrace upon his Name. He was their Father (Deu 32:6), but instead of reflecting the features of his image, they dishonored and discredited it (cf. Isa 1:2-4, which appears to be based on this passage). Their sin was:
1. Self-caused. There was nothing which they had seen in their God to cause it, to account for it, or to excuse it.
2. Irrational. Their powers, given by God, ought willingly to have been devoted in his service. Obedience is the normal condition. Heaven and earth, undeviatingly obeying the law of their existence, condemn man’s apostasy (Deu 32:1). The very brute creation testifies against him (Isa 1:3).
3. Ungrateful. God had bought them for himself, had made a nation of them, and established them in Canaan. Yet, without compunction, they cast off his yoke.
4. Foolish; for the way they chose was the way of death, whereas in God’s favor was life (Deu 32:47), with every blessing that heart could wish for. The same remarks apply to sinnersdespising the gracious overtures which God makes to them, with all the favors, temporal and spiritual, he has actually shown them, and careering on to their eternal ruin. “O foolish people and unwise!”J.O.
Deu 32:8
The world ruled for the benefit of the Church.
What this verse asserts is that in the providential distribution of the nations, and assignment to them of their special territories, respect was had from the beginning to the provision of a suitable dwelling-place for the chosen race. Our subject isThe government of the world conducted with a view to the interests of the Church.
I. A TRUTH FREQUENTLY TAUGHT IN SCRIPTURE. Both by facts of history, and by express statement. Israel’s position brought it into contact, not only with petty neighboring states, but with the mightiest empires of East and West. These appear in Scripture only as they affect the chosen race, but it is then made manifest how entirely their movements are directed and controlled by Divine providence. And the center of God’s purposes is always Israel. “For your sake,” says God, “I have sent to Babylonia, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships” (Isa 43:14; cf. Isa 43:3, Isa 43:4). Is Egypt visited with famineswith scarce years and good years? The design is the working out of a certain plan in the chain of God’s appointments for Israel. Is a Cyrus raised up in Persia? God saith of him, “He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure,” etc. (Isa 44:28). So is it throughout. Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome, appear in all their relations with Israel as ministers of the Divine will, as simple executors of the Divine purposes, and their power is strictly limited by their commission. In harmony with this prophetic teaching are the express testimonies of the Epistles (e.g. Rom 8:28; Eph 1:20-23; Eph 3:9-11).
(1) Nature,
(2) history, are ruled for the benefit Of the Church.
II. A TRUTH IN ITSELF REASONABLE. Once admit the goal of history to be the establishment on earth of a universal spiritual kingdoma gathering together in one of all things with Christ as Head (Eph 1:10), and it is certain that herein must lie the key to all historical developments, the explanation of all arrangements and movements of Divine providence. The center of interest must always be that portion of the race with which for the time being the kingdom of God is identified. “Just as, in tracing the course of a stream, not the huge morasses nor the vast stagnant pools on either side would delay us: we should not, because of their extent, count them the river, but recognize that as such, though it were the slenderest thread, in which an onward movement might be discerned; so is it here. Egypt and Assyria and Babylon were but the vast stagnant morasses on either side of the river; the Man in whose seed the whole earth should be blessed, he and his family were the little stream in which the life and onward movement of the world were to be traced They belong not to history, least of all to sacred history, those Babels, those cities of confusion, those huge pens into which by force and fraud the early hunters of men, the Nimrods and Sesostrises, drove and compelled their fellows where no faith existed but in the blind powers of nature and the brute forces of the natural man” (Archbishop Trench).
III. A TRUTH FRAUGHT TO THE CHURCH WITH COMFORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT.
1. When the powers of the world are threatening.
2. In times of internal decay.
3. Under long-continued trials.J.O.
Deu 32:10-14
A panorama of grace.
How Israel was found, led, taught, kept.
I. WHERE GOD FOUND HIM. (Deu 32:10.) Partly metaphoricalthe state of Israel in Egypt being likened to that of a man perishing in the desert; partly literalit being in the desert that God found the people when he took them into covenant. An image of the helpless and hopeless condition of the sinner. Cut off from life, without shelter, provision, resting-place, or final home.
II. HOW GOD DEALT WITH HIM. (Deu 32:10, Deu 32:11.) That Israel was kept in the wilderness so long was his own fault. But grace overruled the discipline for good. The long sojourn in the desert made Israel’s case, also, a better type of our own. There are ends to be served by this sojourn (Joh 17:15). God showed himself:
1. Condescending to Israel’s feebleness (Hos 11:3, Hos 11:4).
2. Mindful of his ignorance. “Instructed him.”
3. Watchful of his safety. “Kept him.”
4. Careful of his training (Deu 32:11).
The love and solicitude implied in such phrases as, “kept him as the apple of his eye” (Deu 32:10), and “as an eagle stirreth up,” etc. (Deu 32:11), specially deserve notice. The apple of the eye is a sensitive part, which we protect with the utmost care, and from the slightest injuries. (On the eagle, see below.)
III. WHITHER GOD CONDUCTED HIM. (Deu 32:13, Deu 32:14.) To a land of plenty and rest. Made his defense the munitions of rocks. Provided him with all that heart could desire. So does God bring the believer to a large and wealthy placea place of “fullness of joy,” of richest satisfactions, of most perfect delights. Spiritually, even here, where the most unpropitious circumstances yield him unexpected blessings. Eternally and in perfected form hereafter. Note: God alone did all this for Israel. (Deu 32:12).J.O.
Deu 32:11
The eagle.
“The description is of a female eagle exciting her young ones in teaching them to fly, and afterwards guarding with the greatest care lest the weak should receive harm” (Gesenius). In this picture of the eagle’s treatment of her young, note
I. HER AIM. She aims at teaching them self-reliance. It is not God’s wish that his children should go in leading-strings. They must be trained to prompt, fearless, self-reliant action. This was an aim of the discipline of the wilderness. Our action is to be in a spirit of dependence, but it is to be active, not passive dependence.
II. HER METHOD. She stirs up her nest. She does not leave her brood to the ignoble ease they would perhaps prefer. So God rouses his people to action by making their place uneasy for them. By placing them in trying situations, by removing comforts, by the stimulus of necessity, by the sharp provocation of afflictions, he goads them to think, act, and put forth the powers that are in them. It is not for the good of Christians that they should have too much comfort.
III. HER CASE. The experiment is not carried to the point of allowing the young to hurt themselves. She hovers over them, supports them on the tip of her wings, etc. God tries us, but not beyond our strength.J.O.
Deu 32:15-18
Jeshurun.
I. A GOOD NAME BELIED. Jeshurun, equivalent to righteous. An honorable name, but sadly falsified by the conduct described. How many Jeshuruns have thus forsaken the God of their early vows! Notice, a good name is of no account without the good character. Balaam praised Israel’s righteousness, and wished to “die the death of the righteous” (Num 23:10, Num 23:21); but it is the being righteous, not the being called so, which makes the happy deathbed.
II. As EVIL EFFECT OF PROSPERITY. “Waxed fatkicked.” How common! The effect foretold or warned against in earlier chapters (Deu 8:12-18, etc.). Prosperity, then pride, then stubborn self-willedness. The self willed heart refuses to submit to God’s government; throws off the memory of past obligations, and treats God with ill-concealed indifference and dislike; turns from the true God to gods of its own choosing. Two steps in the great apostasyforsaking the fountain of living waters, and hewing out broken cisterns, etc. (Jer 2:13). Such conduct is
(1) wicked,
(2) ungrateful,
(3) irrational,
(4) fatal (Deu 32:22-25).
III. RESULT OF AS ITCH FOR NOVELTY. (Deu 32:17.) The newness of the gods was a chief attraction. The worship of them was a change, a novelty. It pleased them by variety.
1. When God has been abandoned, men are at the mercy of the most trivial influences. “Itching ears””every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4:14; 2Ti 4:2).
2. When God has been abandoned, novelty is greedily accepted as a substitute for truth, in theories, in creeds, in styles of worship, in religious nostrums.
3. Apostasy from God means transference of the affections to that which is degrading. In this case to “destroyers,” so the word means; devils, malignant deities. But we worship devils, or the devil (Mat 4:9), when we bow in spirit to the world’s modes and shows; when we serve gold, or fashion, or the opinion of society; when we are slaves to lust of power; when we bow to a false ghosts, etc.J.O.
Deu 32:19-27
A God provoked.
Consider here
I. THE REALITY OF WRATH IN GOD. Let it not be minimized or explained away. “Instead of being shocked at the thought that God is wrathful, we should rather ask, With whom? and For what? A God without wrath, and a God who is wrathful on other accounts than for sin, is not a God, but an idol” (Hengstenberg). It is only, as this writer observes, when “man himself is not displeased with sin, when it assumes to him the appearance of a bagatelle,” that he no longer perceives why God should feel wrath at it. But man, we may observe, is by no means disposed to treat lightly sins against himself. He never feels that he does not “do well to be angry” on account of these or against the person who does them. A very slight wound to his honor makes him clamor for satisfaction. A God who is incapable of moral indignation would be equally incapable of moral love, and could not, with truth, be spoken of as dispensing mercy. Wrath and love are opposite poles of one affection. Where there is no offence, there needs no forgiveness.
II. WRATH IN GOD, WHEN IT BURNS AGAINST MEN, IS TERRIBLE IN ITS EFFECTS. Two aspects of its operation:
1. Leaving men to themselves (Deu 32:20). When God hides his face from them, there need be little doubt what the “end” will be. Yet can the sinner complain if he is at length permitted to eat the fruit of the devices which nothing will persuade him to give up?
2. Heaping on them positive inflictions (Deu 32:22-25). It is a fire, burning to destroy them. It is noteworthy that the conflagration of the Divine wrath is represented as not only taking in sheol, but as widening till it embraces the whole earth (Deu 32:22). This, in connection with the glimpse at the calling of the Gentiles in Deu 32:21, points to the future universal extension of the outward dispensation of grace. The extension of the kingdom of God brings all nations within the range of the Messianic judgment (Mat 25:31). The wrath of God is not represented in less terrible colors in the New Testament than it is in the Old. The individualized description of these verses (Deu 32:24, Deu 32:25) figures out terrors of a future life too painful to allow the mind to dwell upon them.
III. WRATH IN GOD IS, IN THIS LIFE, NOT DIVORCED FROM MERCY. Not at least so long as hope of recovery remains. He would fain make punishment subservient to conversion. This is the thought in Deu 32:21. Israel is not cast off forever. God is seeking to provoke it to jealousy by a transference of his regard to the Gentiles. His retaliation has a merciful as well as a wrathful design. Mercy waits on every sinner, courting his repentance.
IV. THE MANIFESTATION OF WRATH IN GOD IS LIMITED BY REGARD TO HIS HONOR. (Deu 32:26, Deu 32:27.) God is jealous of his honor. He will take from his adversaries the power of boasting against him, by marvelously restoring those who, had they received their full deserts, would have been utterly destroyed. This stays his hand from expending his wrath against them to the uttermost. We may read this otherwise, and say that zeal for his honor leads God to spare them, that he may glorify his Name by causing mercy to rejoice over judgment. There is more honor to God in saving men than in destroying them.
And what provokes this wrath in God? Sinsin only. Most especially the sins of his own people.
1. “No faith”want of fidelity to vows.
2. “Frowardness” persistence in sin (Deu 32:20).
Those who have stood in nearest relations to him, who have enjoyed most favors, are those who will be most severely punished (Amo 3:2).J.O.
Deu 32:28, Deu 32:29
The true wisdom.
Consider
I. IN WHAT WISDOM CONSISTS.
1. The choice of right ends.
2. Of right means to secure these ends.
3. In harmony with a just and proportioned view of all the circumstances of our situation.
When essential circumstances are omitted in the calculation, when the horizon is unduly narrowed, when all-important factors of the situation are left wholly out of account,it is vain to speak of wisdom. Absolutely, and as regards our standing as moral beings, wisdom embraces:
1. The choice of a true end, i.e. the choice, as our end in life, of that end for which we were created.
2. The practical sharing of conduct with a view to that end, and in the way best calculated to attain it. And this:
3. In view of all the circumstances of the case, i.e. with right apprehensions of God, of the issues of moral conduct, of eternity. What wisdom is more to be desired than this? What efforts ought to be put forth to attain it! What incalculable value ought to be set upon it!
II. SIN IS THE ABSOLUTE UNWISDOM.
1. For the true end of life it substitutes a false one. The end for which we were made was holinessthe service of God with all our powers of soul, body, and spirit. In this consists our life, our happiness, our well-being. In pursuit of this end, our nature works harmoniously with itself, and With the general constitution of the world. But sin substitutes for this an end which violates, disturbs, perverts the harmony of every sphere of our existence. It asserts a false independence of the creature. It bids us use our powers for self, and not for God. It holds up as an end a shadowy good which is never realized. It cheats with insincere promises. By perverting the nature, it gives to fleshly lusts a tyrannical predominance, and degrades the spirit to the position of a bondservant. For unity there is thus established anarchyeach lust, as its own master, seeking an independent gratification. Life in this way falls asunderit has a proper end no longerand the strife continues till a new equilibrium is established by one lust or passion usurping the mastery over the rest.
2. For the true conduct of life it substitutes a course of conduct resting on false bases. The false end yields its natural fruit in false principles of life. The sinner’s whole career, whatever he may think of it himself, is one tissue of errors and illogicalities. If measured by the end he ought to set before him, it is seen to be a course leading him wildly and hopelessly astray. The more skillfully and assiduously he applies himself to his ends, only the more conspicuously does he convict himself of folly.
3. Instead of taking all the factors of the case into account, it usually leaves God and eternity out of it. This is that which most convincingly brands the sinner’s course as folly. If God exist, and if he have the power to bless or blast our schemes, and if in the end we have to meet him as our Judge,it surely cannot be wisdom to leave this fact unnoticed. So, if we are beings made for eternity, destined to exist forever, he must be a fool who makes preparations for everything but for eternity. If, again, the issues of obedience and sin are on the one hand life, and on the other death, he must be insane who deliberately makes a preference of the latter. Even if the choice is not deliberately made, but the eyes are kept closed to the issues, this does not alter the unwisdom of the choice itself. We can see, therefore, how a man may be most wise as regards this world, and yet the veriest fool as regards the whole scope of his existence. He may be gifted, talented, energetic, a shrewd man of the world, sagacious in pursuit of earthly ends, yet totally blind to his eternal interests. He may be neglecting the “one thing needful,” making no preparation for a hereafter, missing the end of his existence, treasuring up wrath and sorrow for himself at the end. “Thou fool!” was the stern word of Heaven to a man who, in earthly respects, was probably deemed very wise (Luk 12:20). Men are fools who neglect the voice of religion.J.O.
Deu 32:31
The superiority of the believer’s Rock.
Few men but feel that they need a rock of some kind. Only when their mountain stands very strong do they feel as if they were absolutely secure and independent (Oba 1:3, Oba 1:4). Even then their trust is in acquired power and riches, which is a “rock” to them, though their confidence often proves delusive (Haman, Nebuchadnezzar, Wolsey). When men have lost faith in religion, they frequently take refuge in the “rock” of philosophy. The “rock” of the heathen is their idols and the arts of the soothsayer. Men tend to make a “rock” of those superior to them in power and wisdom. The “rock“ of nations is too often their military and naval defenses, with arts of diplomacy, and alliances with stronger powers (Isa 30:1-33.). The believer’s Rock, which is the best of all, is God.
I. THE SUPERIORITY OF THE BELIEVER‘S ROCK EVINCED.
1. From the nature of this Rock. Grant that God is, a Being, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable wise in his counsel, omnipotent in his power, faithful in his promises, righteous in his actions, infinitely gracious and merciful to those who put their trust in him, a “strong Rock,” “an House of defense” to save them (Psa 32:7), a “Hiding-place” to preserve them from trouble (Psa 32:7),and the superiority of this Rock to every other needs no further demonstration. It is self-evidently impossible to have a surer or a better. What can man ask more than that the “eternal God” should be his “Refuge,” and that underneath him should be the “everlasting arms”? (Deu 33:27).
2. From the advantages derived from this Rock. These are such as no other can pretend to give. The believer’s life being hid with God (Col 3:3) and guaranteed by the life of Christ in heaven (Joh 14:19), and his inheritance lying beyond death (1Pe 1:4), no hostility of man can reach either. No other “rock” can give the same security, the same peace, joy, shelter, strength, comfort, and refreshment, as the believer’s.
To which considerations add the following:
1. Many of these so-called “rocks” are nonentities. The idols of the heathen are of this description. So with the arts and charms of sorcery, prayers to the Virgin, etc.
2. The surest of these “rocks” are not to be depended on. “Wisdom is better than strength” (Ecc 9:16); but wisdom, strength, riches, rank, powerful friend, long-consolidated might,all sometimes fail those who put their trust in them.
3. Not one of these “rocks” can stand when God wills its overthrow. God’s help, on the other hand, is real, always to be relied on, and invincible against opposition.
II. THE SUPERIORITY OF THE BELIEVER‘S ROCK CONFESSED. It is often confessed, even by the enemy. How often, e.g. have ungodly men expressed themselves envious of the religious trust and peace of the believer! How often have they admitted its superiority to anything possessed by themselves! How often, again, have they owned to their own “rocks” failing them in time of need! How often, even, when it came to the end, have they lamented that they had not sought the Rock of the believer] Philosophy is admitted, even by those who take refuge in it, to be but a sorry substitute for religion. Passages could be culled from current literature showing very distinctly this need of the believer’s rockthe almost agonizing expression of a wish that belief were possiblethe confession that in the surrender of Christian beliefs a large part of life’s hopefulness and joy has gone forever (see in Mallock’s “Is Life worth Living?”).J.O.
Deu 32:31
Our Rock.
Apply to the religion of the Bible. Proved to be superior to every other system:
1. In proofs of supernatural origin.
2. In moral and spiritual power.
3. In the privileges it offers.
4. In the prospects it holds out.
Admissions and concessions on each of these points could be gathered from the writings of many of the most noted unbelievers.J.O.
Deu 32:32, Deu 32:33
The vine of Sodom.
Emblem of fruit of sin.
1. Tempting.
2. Deceptive.
3. Ending in disappointment and disgust.J.O.
Deu 32:34-43
Retribution.
I. VENGEANCE A PREROGATIVE OF DEITY. As just Judge of the earth, God must avenge transgression. Vengeance is to be distinguished from personal vindictiveness. Of that God is incapable. But Scripture, supported by reason and conscience, attributes to him a holy and inflexible determination to punish sinto visit on the wrong-doer the consequences of his transgression. The rule for individuals is, “Avenge not yourselves,” etc.; but the reason for this is not that vengeance is unnecessary, but that God will avenge (Rom 12:18). Magistrates, however, bear from God a certain delegated power to punish public offencesto “avenge” evil (Rom 13:4). He who “takes away vengeance from God, at the same time takes it from God’s servant, the magistracy, which carries the sword of vengeance over evil-doers” (Hengstenberg). God has his own time, as well as his own way, of avenging sin, and it is not for man to anticipate this.
II. VENGEANCE ASSUREDLY IN STORE FOR GOD‘S ENEMIES. However delayed by forbearance. Because judgment is not executed speedily, sinners take confidence (Ecc 8:11; 2Pe 3:9, 2Pe 3:10). But the sleepless eye of God is all the while upon them, and the stroke falls when they are least expecting it. Sooner or later, every transgression and disobedience will meet with its due recompense of reward.
Note:
1. “Judgment begins at the house of God” (Deu 32:35, Deu 32:36; 1Pe 4:17).
2. It will ultimately extend to all who are God’s enemies (Deu 32:41, Deu 32:42). We are taught that the Messianic kingdom will be established on earth amidst mighty displays of judgment (Rev 19:11-21). There will follow the general judgment of quick and dead”that day of wrath, that dreadful day”which will complete the work.
God’s vengeance is:
1. Assured. “As I live,” etc. (Deu 32:40).
2. Terrible. “My glittering sword;” “arrows drunk with blood,” etc.
3. No escape from it (Deu 32:39).
III. JUDGMENTS EMPLOYED TO CONVINCE BACKSLIDERS OF THEIR SINS. They tend:
1. To break up false confidences (Deu 32:37, Deu 32:38).
2. To create a feeling of the need of God’s help (Deu 32:39).
3. To convince of the folly of past conduct.
God compassionates even while he punishes (Deu 32:36). He would fain, through judgment, break a way for mercy. Illustrate this use of judgments from Israel in time of the judges, or from case of Manasseh (2Ch 33:11-14). This one use of the present exile. May we hope that the day of God’s “repenting himself” toward Israel is drawing near!
IV. THE RECOVERY OF ISRAEL THE INAUGURATION OF A TIME OF BLESSING TO THE WORLD. The nations are to share in the joy (verse 43). God is to be merciful to his land and people. The latter-day glory includes the conversion of the Gentiles (Rom 11:1-36.).J.O.
Deu 32:47
Your life.
The doing or not doing of God’s will, the obeying or not obeying of God’s Word, is a matter of life and death to us. This is the simple and solemn and uniform testimony of Scripture from its first page to its last. The gospel, with its revelation of “life and immortality,” only heightens the solemnity of the alternative. Instead of bare “life,” it is now “eternal life” which is proposed for our acceptance, and which is lost or forfeited by sin. If “life” is the promise, the counter-alternative is death, and “death” accordingly is denounced against the sinner in gospel, as in Law. “The wages of sin are death” (Rom 6:23). Eternity is a factor to be taken into account here, as well as in the case of “life.” Death, indeed, is not nonexistence, but it is the loss of all that makes existence a boon; the extinction in the soul of holiness, happiness, and love. Whatever the final state of the lost may be, whether one of active torment or not, it will be true death. The man loses his “soul”his “life””himself” (Mat 16:26; Luk 9:25). Oh that men were wise, that they understood these things, and acted on their choice as wise men should!J.O.
Deu 32:48-52
Moses’ end
(see Deu 34:1-12.).J.O.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR
Deu 32:1-14
The fatherhood of God.
In this first section of the Divine song, the predominating idea is God’s fatherhood. It comes out in Deu 32:6 in express terms; it is implied in the care that is attributed to him for his children of Israel; it passes into the still tenderer idea of motherhood in the illustration of the eagle (Deu 32:11); and may fairly be taken as the idea dominating the whole. It has been thought that the fatherhood of God is almost altogether a New Testament idea; but we have it here expressly stated, and it underlies many portions of the Old Testament. This whole song is, in fact, a paternal expostulation with children that have been wayward in the wilderness, and will be more wayward still in the land of promise. We shall notice in order the ideas suggested by this section.
I. FERTILIZING DOCTRINE. Divine doctrine, even in its severest forms, has a gracious and fertilizing influence like rain or dew. It comes down upon the wilderness of human nature, and makes it a fruitful field. It comes down upon the tender herb of implanted graces, upon the grass of humble and useful piety, and makes all to grow more luxuriantly. Nothing is so important as “good doctrine.”
II. THE ROCK–STABILITY OF GOD. This is the first inquiry. Can God be trusted as truly stable? The answer is that he is a Rock, and that upon his veracity and justice and helpfulness we can constantly rely. Moses and the Israelites had experienced this; as they wandered amid the rocky fastnesses of the desert, they had found him as firm and as reliable as the rocks. Up to this time, the figure had not been applied to God. The Israelites have, indeed, from the hard and flinty rock, had refreshing streams; the rock was to them a fountain of waters; and doubtless when here the figure is for the first time applied to God, they would find it delightful to associate refreshment and shelter with him. Then in course of time it became a favorite figure, as the Psalms in many passages show (cf. Psa 28:1; Psa 31:2, Psa 31:3; Psa 42:9; Psa 62:2, Psa 62:7; Psa 78:20, Psa 78:35; Psa 95:1, etc.). And we rejoice to call our Redeemer “Rock of Ages,” in the clefts of which, according to Toplady’s idea, taken from Exo 33:22, we can take shelter and feel safe.
III. PATERNAL APPEAL. Although God is so worthy of trust, the Israelites have corrupted themselves; they are unwilling to have upon them the mark or spot of the children of God, but the mark of some other tribe; and so as a Father he appeals to them because of their ingratitude. Has he not made them, bought them, and established them, and, in consequence, earned a right to different treatment from this? Fatherhood has rights by reason of service which no grateful child can overlook.
IV. PATERNAL FORESIGHT. He speaks next of the days of old, of the years of many generations, which the fathers and elders could testify about, during which time the Father was but evolving his glorious plan, separating and scattering the sons of Adam according to the interests and number of the children of Israel. At Babel and the subsequent migrations of men, “God so distributed the earth among the several peoples that were therein, as to reserve, or in his sovereign counsel to appoint, such a part for the Israelites, though they were then unborn, as might prove a commodious settlement and habitation for them.” Noble foresight, worthy of an everlasting and infinite Father.
V. PATERNAL INSTRUCTION. One element in fatherhood is a sense of possession in the children. The father rejoices that the children are his, and will not part readily with his portion. So with God. “The Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.” Out of this sense of property comes the improvement of the children by faithful instruction. Hence Israel were led into the wilderness, and their Father found them there, and led them about, instructing them, and keeping them as “the apple of the eye.” It was the Father educating them through his own companionship, and leading them onwards in safety towards their home.
VI. PARENTAL DISCIPLINE. The song introduces (Exo 33:11) the figure of the eagle, and the motherly discipline to which she subjects her brood. “Naturalists tell us that when her young are old enough to fly, the eagle breaks her nest in pieces, in order to compel them to use their powers of flight; fluttering over them, that by imitation they may learn how to employ their wings, but, when unwilling to fly, spreading abroad her wings, she bears them upwards in the air, and then shaking them off, compels them to use their own exertions.” From this Mr. Hull deduces the truth that “the Divine discipline of life is designed to awaken man to the development of his own powers.” We see thus the kindness of the parental discipline, and that it takes motherhood as well as fatherhood to illustrate the Divine relation (cf. Isa 49:15).
VII. PARENTAL BLESSING. Having exercised such parental care over the people, the result was abundant temporal success and blessing. This is beautifully brought out as a “riding upon the high places of the earth.” And then the whole panorama of agricultural prosperity is presented, “the increase of the fields” providing bread, the rocks affording shelter for the bees which extracted abundant honey from the flowers, the olives clinging to the flinty rocks and affording abundance of oil, while the kine in the fat pastures gave butter, and the sheep milk, and the lambs were choice food, and the rams of the breed of Bashan, while the finest wheat and the purest wine made the lot of Israel princely. It was a land of promise surely which supplied their wants in such a fashion. God’s goodness was exceeding great.
The “fatherhood of God” had thus its grand exemplification in the history of Israel. A Father who was firm as the rocky fastnesses around them and as reliable; who provided for his children long before they were born; who instructed and disciplined them, and brought them eventually to a splendid inheritance,might well look for their trust and obedience. The Lord shows a similar fatherly care still to all men, even those who do not return a filial spirit; and if, in his grace, they yield at length to his paternal appeals, then he comes and gives them a fellowship such as they never dreamed of. “He that loveth me,” saith Jesus, “shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him” (Joh 14:21).R.M.E.
Deu 32:15-18
The damager of worldly success.
Success, when granted, bids for men’s trust. They begin accordingly to insinuate that the reliable Rock who begat them is not the source of all success, and that the rill may be tracked to some nearer source. Hence new gods, novelties of man’s imagination, or demons from the waste, grateful for even a false faith, are worshipped; and the ever-living and true God forgotten. Apostasy and skepticism, we would repeat, are born of luxury and success. Men think, because they are rich, that they can do bravely without God.
I. IT IS WELL TO CONSIDER THE DANGER OF WORLDLY SUCCESS. Many a man was more religious when poor than after he became rich. Increase of riches needs increase of grace; and, if men are not watchful, riches only minister to backsliding. It is undesirable independence which proves independence of God. Better to trust God in the absence of wealth than to defy him or ignore him with it. Many a successful worldling would have had more success in a poor station, through increase of faith and of heart. The success was at the price of leanness being sent into his soul.
II. THOSE WHO WILL NOT SACRIFICE TO GOD ARE ALWAYS FOUND SACRIFICING TO THEIR FEARS. The credulity of unbelief is one of the most curious questions of the time. When men deny God his due reverence and ignore his existence, their fancy haunts them with new gods, and powers whom they must propitiatethe luck and chance that they advance to the throne. The man alone is free from vain fears who trusts in the living God; all others sooner or later prove adepts at new religions, and are devotees at fancy shrines.
III. THE DIVINE JEALOUSY IS JUSTLY PROVOKED BY SUCH FORGETFULLNESS. Jealousy is the anger of ill-requited love. It is what has been called, as already observed, “love-pain,” and is eminently worthy of him who is love itself. God cannot but feel he deserves man’s love; he cannot but desire it; he longs for it more intensely than ever love-sick one among the children of men has longed; and when he sees the love he deserves made over to another, when he sees his life of love and death of love ignored,is it not eminently reasonable that he should be jealous and have his holy anger stirred?
Herein lies the danger, then, of success. It may decoy the unguarded soul to mean fears and fancy shrines, and lead at length to the encountering of that jealousy which a God of love most justly entertains. Hence the prayer of souls should be that with success may come watchfulness; that with fatness may come faith; that out of goodness may come repentance. Then success may help and not hinder. Successful saints become a blessing to their kind, and make success a stewardship. “It takes a steady hand to carry a full cup;” so says the proverb. Blessed be God, amid many shaky hands, unequal to the task, there is a select few that carry their success in a cool, conscientious fashion!R.M.E.
Deu 32:19-47
Vengeance and recompense.
The reasonableness of the Divine jealousy being shown already, we can have little difficulty in recognizing the further reasonableness of the Divine vengeance. Paul’s treatment of the question is concise and conclusive. “Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man). God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world?” (Rom 3:5, Rom 3:6). Vengeance is recognized, therefore, as belonging to God’s justice, which shall be called into play as vengeance through the ingratitude and folly of many of mankind. Let us briefly indicate the course of the Divine vengeance as presented in the remainder of this song.
I. GOD PROPOSES TO MOVE HIS UNGRATEFUL PEOPLE BY INTRODUCING GENTILES TO THEIR PRIVILEGES. This is the first experiment of the holy jealousy, to see what effect the ingathering of the Gentiles will have. And to a Jewish mind there must be something striking and convincing in the history of Christianity. Surely the elevation and civilization of the heathen world must be due in large measure to that Divine favor which, as Jews, they despised and forfeited. Such a spectacle is calculated to lead them to earnest thought and deep contrition. Were their hearts not dull and gross, they would humble themselves before God, and acknowledge that they deserve other heirs to be put into their room.
II. THE ACTUALITIES OF THE DIVINE VENGEANCE HAVE BEEN TERRIBLE. The Lord represents his anger as burning to the lowest hell ( ), reaching manifestly to that “under world,” as Kahle would call it, where the spirits of the faithless are confined. But in the present life there is a foretaste given of the vengeance which embraces the life to come, which may be summed up, as given in these verses (Deu 32:23-25), in the terms hunger, pestilence, wild beasts, and war. The faithless nation experienced all these, as an earnest of the Divine vengeance which justly burns even to the lowest hell. The only limit to it is lest the enemies employed to execute part of the vengeance should say, “Our hand is high, and the Lord hath not done all this” (Deu 32:26, Deu 32:27). The Lord will modify and limit his vengeance, lest his instruments should regard it as their work and not his.
III. THE REGRET ABOUT POSSIBILITIES THROWN AWAY WILL FORM PART OF THE DIVINE VENGEANCE. Very pathetically is this put in this song (Deu 32:29-31). The Israelites, though in a vast minority sometimes, had been carried by their most faithful Father and God to victory, and this would have still characterized them had they remained faithful to him. They would have proved his “invincibles.” And no effort of faithless souls can keep regret at bay. We see Milton very properly putting it into the mouth of the archangel when he says
“Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells!”
and subsequently summons his associates from “the oblivious pool,” where they are lying astonished. Unholy spirits may doubtless see the vanity of regret, but they cannot dismiss it. Indeed, it is one of the test struggles of the Christian life to put regret away. We need the rousing words of the poetess continually
“Rise! if the past detains you,
Her sunshine and storms forget;
No chains so unworthy to hold you
As those of a vain regret.
Sad or bright, she is lifeless ever;
Cast her phantom arms away,
Nor look back, save to learn the lesson
Of a nobler strife today.”
How deep a sorrow this regret must be to all who despise God and reject his love we cannot in this life tell.
IV. APPARENT PROSPERITY WILL PROVE REAL DISASTER. Just as the osher plant, which flourishes best near the site of Sodom and Gomorrha, presents apparently most luscious and attractive fruit, which yet prove but bags of air and ashes, so the apparent prosperity of the faithless souls proves emptiness and bitter disappointment at last. All the investments, so to speak, which seem so fortunate turn into splendid mistakes and miseries. Upon the whole life, opposed as it is to God, there broods a curse.
V. THE PROGRAM OF VENGEANCE IS CAREFULLY PREPARED. This is the spirit of the remaining verses (Deu 32:35-43). God makes his calculations calmly and deliberately. The foot of his enemies shall slide in due time, and his work of vengeance, like all his other work, prove perfect. As God refuses to exercise “unprincipled mercy,” so will he refuse to execute random wrath. The great Jonathan Edwards has a remarkable sermon on Deu 32:35, entitled ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’ which may be distasteful to some easy-going theologians, but is nevertheless weighty with doctrinal and convincing truth. The idea should surely be got rid of that there is any difference in principle between the Old Testament and the New. The prerogative of vengeance so powerfully asserted in this song of the Lord, put into the mouth of Moses, has not been renounced nor laid down for an instant. The Lord still claims it, as Rom 12:19; Heb 10:30, and other passages show.
VI. THE POLICY OF THE LORD SHALL HAVE A SPLENDID CONSUMMATION. After the cycle is complete, Jews and Gentiles, as verse 43 distinctly indicates, shall be found rejoicing in concert before the Lord, who has shown himself merciful to his land and his people. We need not in this Homily enter upon the discussion of the great difference between the Hebrew of verse 43 and the LXX. It does not affect the truth we draw from the remarkable passage. However the individuals may suffer through the Divine vengeance, it will not be lost as a lesson upon the race. Jew and Gentile shall alike recognize its justice and the compensating mercy which always lay for men in the tender hands of God. The vengeance is forced upon himthe judgment is his strange work; but he delighteth in mercy.
VII. MOSES SUMS UP THE LESSON OF THE SONG BY URGING OBEDIENCE UPON THE PEOPLE AS THEIR LIFE. And when we remember that God is the source of life; that spiritual life lies in his favor and fellowship; then it is clear that the Israelites had but one duty to dischargeto obey God and live. All the energy of Moses and all the urgency of God are devoted to secure this obedience. The remembrance of God’s love, the recognition of his vengeance and deserved wrath, and the consummate wisdom manifested in the whole policy pursued, should move our hearts to love and obey. Let us accept of the mercy, and not force the Lord to judgment!R.M.E.
Deu 32:48-52
Death a judgment even to the most faithful servants of God.
After the solemn address to the people, God gives a personal address to Moses. It is about his approaching death. He is to see the land, but not to enter it, because he sanctified not the Lord at the waters of Meribah. It raises, therefore, the whole question of death as the portion even of the most faithful servants of God.
I. IT IS SURELY REMARKABLE THAT, WHEN SAVED THROUGH THE MERCY OF GOD IN CHRIST, WE DO NOT BECOME IMMORTAL. Salvation seizes on the spirit, it becomes life through the righteousness of Jesus, but the body is still dead (or mortal) because of sin (Rom 8:10). Why does salvation take our personality in installments? Save spirit first, and leave the body to the repairs of a resurrection? Can the procedure be vindicated? We think it can. For
II. IF WE BECAME PHYSICALLY IMMORTAL THROUGH THE RECEPTION OF SALVATION, A MERCENARY ELEMENT WOULD BE INTRODUCED INTO OUR MOTIVES, AND MEN WOULD SEEK SALVATION TO ESCAPE THE PAIN OF DYING. Under the present arrangement, saint as well as sinner has to pass the dark portal. Dying is made the general lot of man, and, if salvation is desired, it is for spiritual purposes. Just as God does not promise immediate success to our efforts or our prayers, lest we should be tempted to live by sight and not by faith.
III. IT IS NOT DESIRABLE THAT, WITH PARDON, WE SHOULD ESCAPE ALL SUFFERING FOR OUR SIN. It is a wise arrangement on God’s part, even when forgiving sinners, to take vengeance on our inventions (Psa 99:8). For suppose that, in praying for pardon, we escaped all physical consequences of our sin, the result would be that pardon would be used as a great physical agent and factor, and the physical escape would be more thought upon than the spiritual. It is better, therefore, that things should take their course so far as the body is concerned, and that, meanwhile, the spirit should be the chief recipient of the benefit. God does not take the seeds of mortality, therefore, out of our bodies: he leaves them there as sin’s own work; and he gives us the earnest of complete redemption in the resurrection and emancipation of our spirits.
IV. IT IS A SPLENDID TEST OF OUR FAITH IN GOD TO BE ASKED TO DIE. For up to the hour of death, we have found persons and things to lean upon in a measure; we have not as yet been left to lean on God alone. But when death comes, we are forced to lean on God only, if we are to have any support at all. God says, “Can you trust me, even when I take away your physical life?” “Though he slay me,” said Job, “yet will I trust in him.” Death brings us all to this test, and happy are we if we reach the same assurance.
“The real is but the half of life; it needs
The ideal to make a perfect whole;
The sphere of sense is incomplete, and pleads
The closer union with the sphere of soul.
“Then let us, passing o’er life’s fragile arch,
Regard it as a means, and not an end;
As but the path of faith on which we march
To where all glories of our being tend.”
R.M. E.
HOMILIES BY D. DAVIES
Deu 32:1-6
God’s vicegerent as poet.
The true poet is God’s messenger. He that sings not of truth and goodness is not a genuine poet; he is but a rhymester. As the swan is said to sing sweetly only in the act of dying, so, on the eve of his departure, Moses sings his noblest strains.
I. OBSERVE THE POET‘S AUDITORY. He summons heaven and earth to hear. We read in ancient story that when Orpheus made music with his lyre, the wild beasts listened, and the trees and rocks of Olympus followed him about. This may serve as a just reproof to some men, who, having ears, act as if they had them not.
1. Heaven and earth may denote both angels and men. For even “the principalities of heaven learn from the Church the manifold wisdom of God.”
2. Heaven and earth may denote all classes of the people, high and low. Frequently in Scripture great men are represented as the stars of heaven. The man of ambition is said to lift his head to the stars. The righteous are to shine as the brightness of the firmament.
3. Heaven and earth may denote the intelligent and the material creation. On account of man’s sin, “the whole creation groaneth;” and the effect of man’s obedience will be felt beneficially on the material globe. It will increase its fertility, its beauty, its fragrance, its music. “Truth” shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look “down from heaven.” “Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice.”
II. THE POET‘S BENEFICENT INFLUENCE. “My doctrine shall drop as the rain,” etc. (Deu 32:2). This imagery teaches us:
1. The silent, unobtrusive power of truth. It finds it way, quietly and unobserved, to the roots of human judgment and feeling.
2. It is refreshing. What a draught of clear water is to a thirsty man, truth is to a healthy, active soul.
3. It is fertilizing. It nourishes all good affections, and strengthens every virtue.
4. It is most suitable. No fitness can be more manifest than dew for tender grass. Poetic truth is suited to every grade of human understanding.
III. THE POET‘S LOFTY THEME. His theme is God; but God is only known as he reveals himself in his Name.
1. He descants upon his majesty, his supreme power, and the splendors of his state.
2. He touches upon his eternal stability. What the unchanging rock is amid the shifting sands, God isunalterably the same.
3. He dwells upon the perfections of his character (“just and right is he”); upon the perfection of his works, which are incapable of any improvement; upon the perfection of his government (“all his ways are judgment”); and upon the perfection of his speech. He is “a God of truth.” He alters nothing, retracts nothing.
IV. THE POET‘S MORAL PURPOSE. To restore harmony between man and God.
1. He proclaims man’s fallen state: “they have corrupted themselves.” Human nature is not as it was when it came from the hands of God. Man holds this tremendous power of ruining his own nature.
2. The mark of sonship has disappeared. “Their spot is not the spot of his children.” Childlike docility and submissiveness form the family lineament.
3. This depravity has spread like the virus of disease. The whole race is infected. “They are a perverse and crooked generation.”
4. Such conduct is suicidal folly. It is most antagonistic to self-interest. No madman could have acted worse.
5. Such conduct is the basest ingratitude. “Do ye thus requite the Lord?” Consider his claims. Did he not create thee? Has he not been a Father to thee? Has he not redeemed thee? Tender expostulation with the conscience is the poet’s mission. For this vocation he has been specially inspired by God. A heavenly spirit breathes through his every word. No higher honor can man attain on earth.D.
Deu 32:7-14
History’s testimony for God.
A defective character often results from mental indolence. Men do not use their faculties. Did they consider, reflect, and ponder, they would be bettor men. To call into activity all our powers is an imperative and sacred duty. For this purpose God has given them. Whose am I? whence have I come? what is my business in life? what are my obligations to my Maker?these are questions possessing transcendent interest, and are vital to our joy. Ask intelligently and thoroughly; then act upon the answers. God’s careful provision for Israel had been long-continued, thoughtful, special. No less, probably greater, has been his considerate and far-seeing provision for us.
I. WE NOTE A SPECIAL HABITATION PREPARED BY GOD.
1. Our earth has for untold ages been undergoing preparation as a suitable dwelling-place for man. Rocks have been formed for man’s use, treasures of coal and metals have been stored up for his advantage. The soil has been pulverized to receive his seed. A marvelous and painstaking preparation has been made.
2. Equally conspicuous is God’s wisdom in selecting special territory for special nations. Amidst all the hurly-burly of war, the unseen hand of God has “divided to the nations their inheritance.” Oceans and rivers, mountains and deserts, have been God’s walls of partition.
3. All these selections have been subordinate to Israel’s welfare. All the lines of God’s government met here. To Israel’s good everything was to bead.
4. The reason of this is declared. “The Lord‘s portion is his people.” Some location on earth was to be reserved for Jehovah. He too had chosen a dwelling-place, an inheritance. And his habitation was in the hearts of his people Israel. “For to that man will I look, and with him dwell, who is of an humble and contrite spirit.” “Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”
II. SPECIAL TRAINING BY GOD.
1. Apart from God, earth would be a barren desert. Man’s environment, where God is not, would be discordant, unsuitable, painful. The flowers and fruits of life are divinely provided.
2. Inscrutable are the methods of God’s training. “He led him about.” A masterly hand is in the matter, and we are very incompetent critics. Those marches and counter-marches in the wilderness were all needful to nourish robust courage and simple faith in the Hebrews. In God’s arrangements no waste is permitted.
3. Tenderest kindness is here expressed. “He kept him as the apple of his eye.” We count the eye among our most precious endowments. It is protected by the most clever contrivances. No part of the body is so delicate or so susceptible of pain. So God regards his chosen people. As a man guards from harm his eye, so God guards his own.
4. Consummate skill was expended to develop the best qualities of Israel. This is set forth by a piece of impressive imagery. As the eagle knows the perils of indolence, and is anxious to train her young brood to early self-exertion, she breaks up the nest, takes the eaglets on her strong pinions, bears them heavenward, shakes them free, then, as they sink, darts beneath them, bears them up again, and encourages them to seek the sun; so, by a thousand kind devices, God taught his people “to seek the things which are above.” So precious an end is worthy of the largest expenditure of means.
III. DOMINION OVER NATURE AND OVER MAN ACCORDED BY GOD. In proportion as man has loyally served his God, man has gained earthly dominion. To Adam was accorded sovereignty over all living things in air, or earth, or sea; and of the second Adam we read, “Thou hast put all things under his feet.”
1. Victory over enemies is secured. “He made him ride on the high places of the earth.” Every mountain fortress was, one by one, possessed. To ride is significant of military conquest. The triumphs of Israel were swift, signal, and complete.
2. The peaceful conquest of nature followed. To the arts of industry, the earth yielded in sevenfold profusion. The olives on the rugged hills filled their presses with oil. Wild bees toiled early and late to lay up stores of honey. Their cattle, plentifully fed, yielded butter and milk in abundance. Under the curse of civil strife and petty feuds of the Canaanites, crops had been devastated, and flocks had been destroyed. Now, peace reigned in every valley, and the very trees blossomed with ruddy gladness. Hill and plain poured their unceasing tributes at the feet of lordly man.
3. The sole Author of this splendid inheritance was God. “The Lord alone did lead him.” The deities of the Amorites (if they had any power at all) had bestowed on their votaries an inheritance of lust and war and ruin. In whatever respect Israel’s inheritance was a contrast, it was due to the beneficence of Jehovah. He had blessed them with an ungrudging hand. ‘Twas the indulgence of his native instinct to give and to make glad. No sane man among them could reach any other conclusion than that Jehovah was the royal Giver of all. And with one voice they should have made the clear welkin ring with hearty hallelujahs: “The Lord hath done great things for us.” The gift was unique. It was conspicuously a deed of grace.D.
Deu 32:15-25
Sowing and reaping.
The connection between sin and suffering is natural, organic, and universal. Suffering, in some form, is the proper development of sin. Like the plants of nature, sin has its seed within itself.
I. WE HAVE A CASE OF AGGRAVATED SIN.
1. It was a wanton abuse of special cloudiness. The splendid gifts of providence, which ought to have bound them by golden ties of obligation to God, were erected into barriers to shut out God from them. An inner principle of selfish perverseness turned all food into poison. Instead of gratitude, there was scoffing; instead of loyalty, there was insolence. So it often happens that earthly wealth is an injury instead of a benefit. It detains a man’s faith and delight on itself. He exalts his riches into a god. Entering a man’s heart, as his professed friends, riches become his secret foes: they sap the foundations of his piety; they degrade and stultify the man.
2. The flagrancy of sin is seen in the perversion of privilege. The Hebrews had been chosen by God to a place of peculiar honor. They had been admitted to a nearer access to his friendship than any other nation. God had called them his sons and daughters. Nothing of good had God withheld from them. For these privileged persons to turn their backs on God, and act as traitors to their Lord, was sin of more than ordinary flagrancy. If such fall from their allegiance, how great must be their fall!
3. The course of sin proceeds by perceptible stages. Sin often begins by culpable omissions. There is first negative good, then positive offence. The people began their downward course by being “unmindful” of their Maker. Their sense of dependence on God declined. Then they quite forgot the God who had so often rescued them. The next stage was openly to forsake God. They avoided his presence, neglected his worship. Soon they “lightly esteemed” their Deliverer. If they thought of him at all, it was only to look down on himyea, to despise him. Yet in a condition of atheism they could not long remain. Their nature demanded that they should worship somewhat. So they set up strange deities; they sacrificed unto demons. They provoked to jealousy, and to just indignation, the God of Israel. Beyond this it was impossible for human rebellion to proceed.
4. Sin leads to a terrible alternative, viz. the worship and service of devils. There is no middle place at which a man can halt. He either grows up into the image of God or into the image of Satan.
II. WE HAVE A CASE OF EQUITABLE PUNISHMENT.
1. It was the reversal of former good. He who aforetime had promised them prolific plenty now threatens to “consume the earth with her increase.” Instead of the sunlight of his favor, he was about to “hide his face from them.” The wheels of providence were to be reversed, and the effect would be to overthrow and to crush them.
2. God‘s judgments are tardy. He did not smite at once. His first strokes were comparatively light, and then he patiently waited what the effect might prove. “I will see what their end shall be.” The long-suffering of God is an immeasurable store. He “is slow to anger.” Attentively he listens, if so be he may catch some sigh of penitence. “I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself.”
3. We may observe here the equity of God‘s procedure. By making his punishments, in great measure, like the sins, the Hebrews would the readier detect their folly and guilt. They had forsaken God: therefore God will “hide his face from them.” They had “lightly esteemed” God: therefore he wilt abhor them. They had “excited his jealousy,” by choosing another object of worship: he will excite their jealousy by choosing another nation to fill their place. They had provoked his anger by their choice of vanities: he will provoke their anger by supplanting them with a “foolish nation.” The emotions which exist in man have their correspondences in the nature of God. Thus, by stupendous condescension, God accommodates his messages to human understandingemploys a thousand comparisons by which to impress our hearts.
4. God‘s agents to execute his behests are numerous and terrible. A few only are mentioned here, but these may serve as samples of others. Material forces are pressed into service. The atmosphere will be a conveyer of pestilence. Fire is a well-known minister of God. Earthquake and volcano have often been commissioned to fulfill Jehovah’s will. As a skilled warrior aims well his deadly arrows upon his foes, so God sends his lightnings abroad out of his quiver. Famine is decreed: “they shall be burnt with hunger.” Sickness and fever shall follow: they shall be “devoured with burning heat.” Pestiferous insects shall assail them, and wild beasts shall overrun the land. The sword of the invader shall fall with ruthless violence upon young and oldupon babe and veteran. They who escape from one peril shall fall under another. From the hand of God release is impossible.D.
Deu 32:20-29
The pleading of Divine wisdom.
The judicial anger of God is not an uncontrollable passion; it acts in harmony with infinite wisdom. The vast and varied interests of all God’s creatures are tenderly considered in the act of judicial retribution. We have here
I. GOD‘S ESTIMATE OF HUMAN DESERT. Were guilty men alone to be considered, no penalty would be too severe as the award for their high-handed offences. Every vestige of merit has disappeared. The consensus of all righteous beings requires unreserved condemnation. Nor can the condemned offender himself escape this conclusion. When his conscience awakes to ponder his guilt, he joins in his own condemnation; he confesses the justice of his sentence. If the demerit of the sinner were the only question to be solved, the answer would be at once forthcoming; the verdict would be complete destruction.
II. WE SEE GOD‘S FORESIGHT EMBRACING WIDER INTERESTS.
1. The advantage of other races is, by God, taken into the account. What effect upon other nations will the condign punishment of Israel have? Will it make them self-confident, arrogant, defiant? The true king has at heart the well-being of all his subjects.
2. The honor of God himself must be taken into account. The public reputation of God is indissolubly bound up with the well-being of his intelligent creatures. His honor is dear to him; for his honor is nothing more than his native excellence illustrated and made known.
3. How graciously the Most High accommodates his speech to suit the conceptions of men! As a man may fear the wrath of his foes, so God (to bring his doings within the compass of the human understanding) speaks of himself as the subject of fear. In our present state, we cannot rise to the comprehension of God as he is; our knowledge of him is conditioned by our limitations of mind.
III. GOD‘S GRIEF FOR HUMAN FOLLY. The tender affection of God in pleading with men to avoid sin is very impressive; but more impressive still are his exclamations of grief when the final step has been taken, and when, for many, recovery is impossible. Thus when Jesus looked down from Olivet upon the guilty metropolis, and knew that the die was cast, he nevertheless wept and said, “How often would I have gathered your children, as a hen her brood; but ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate!” So too in the Psalms God thus speaks, “Oh that my people had hearkened unto me! that Israel had walked in my ways!” The measure of God’s love transcends all known limits; its forms are infinite in their variety! When every remedial measure has been tried in vain, love can only weep.D.
Deu 32:29
God’s pathetic appeal to men.
Wisdom is far-seeing. Not content with estimating present experiences and fortunes, it embraces the remoter issues of our choice; it takes in all the possibilities of the future.
I. AS THERE HAS BEEN A BEGINNING OF THE PRESENT LIFE, SO THERE WILL COME AN END.
II. THE END OF PROBATIONARY LIFE DEMANDS OUR SERIOUS CONSIDERATION.
III. THE HIGHEST WISDOM FORECASTS THE WHOLE REACH OF LIFE, BOTH PRESENT AND FUTURE.D.
Deu 32:30-35
The devil’s counterfeit coin.
It is not in the power of Satan to originate any new thing. Knowing that his power is restricted, the utmost he can do is to make spurious imitations of God’s good things. His base purpose is to deceive man with spectral illusions. His nefarious design is to raise before the world’s eye an empty mirage of a carnal paradise.
I. EVERY MAN CRAVES FOR SOME GROUND OF CONFIDENCE, EXTERNAL TO HIMSELF. To the men of the East, this external foundation of trust was best described as a rock. What the solid rock is amid the loose alluvial soil of Egypt, or amid the shifting sand of the desert, that God is designed to be unto every man. Complete independence is impossible to created man. He can never be self-contained nor self-nourished. Pure atheism has never been a permanent resting-place for the human heart. When the invisible God is forsaken, the human mind swings toward idolatry. The carnal mind finds delight in a ground of confidence that is visible and tangible. Some god we must have, if it be only the shadowy deity named Fate, or Law, or Chance.
II. COMPLETE CONTRAST EXISTS BETWEEN THE OBJECTS OF HUMAN TRUST. The only point of similarity is the name. The devil borrows this, so as the better to throw dust in the eyes of his followers. Our God is a Rock; the world also has its counterfeit rock. By the judgments and verdict of worldly men, our Rock differs in toto from theirs. Their rock, they acknowledge, is unstable and unreliable. They trust it simply because they know not a better. It is misnamed a rock. Their rock ofttimes deserts them in the hour of greatest need. Ah! fortune, say they, is fickle. Very tyrannical and self-willed is fate. But our God is a Rock in very deed. He never forsakes his liege disciples. In the darkest hour he is nearestthe “shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Their misnamed rock encourages them to enter the battle-field, and then forsakes them. They are “sold to the enemy.”
III. NOTWITHSTANDING THE CONTRAST IN THESE OBJECTS OF TRUST, THE FALSE IS A CLEVER IMITATION OF THE TRUE. All through life, we find that the false counterfeits the true. The thief puts on the pretence of honesty. The villain trains himself to use fair speech. The adulterer wears the garb of virtue. Beauty is the robe of God, but the devil fabricates meretricious tinsel. He, too, has his “Promised Land,” but it is a fool’s paradise. He has his vine, but his vine is the vine of Sodom, which generates drunkenness and unchastity. He also has his fields, but they are fields of Gomorrah. The fruits are pleasant to the eye, but they turn to ashes in the mouth. There is the appearance of grapes, but lo! the juice is gallthe clusters are bitterness itself. And not only is the experience disappointing, it is even disastrous and deadly. This pretended wine is only poison, it is a gilded pill. Cruel deceit has provided this counterfeit banquet. Beneath the glamour of a fair exterior, there is the “serpent’s venom.” Thus fares it with all who leave their God. They find out the bitter mistake at last. So sang Byron in his last days
“The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone.”
IV. SUCH HUMAN EXPERIENCES OF THE FALSE, GOD USES IN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE WORLD. “Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?” God knew well what the effects of an idolatrous course would be, what bitter vexation and disaster would come at last. But he foresaw that it was better for men that they should pass through this experience than that he should remove the possibility of it. He might have prevented, by exercise of power, the stratagems of the tempter. He might have curtailed Satan’s freedom, and put on him chains of darkness from the first. But his infinite wisdom has decided otherwise. He foresees more glorious results from this method, so he patiently waits; he calmly watches the stages of the process. “Their foot,” says he, “shall slide in due time.” “The day of their calamity is at hand.” Now, it is difficult to discern between a grain of living seed and a grain of dead sand; but put both into the furrowed field, and give them time, so when the day of harvest comes, the man who sowed the sand will be covered with shame, while he who sowed good seed will bear gladly his sheaves into the heavenly garner. Our business now is to discriminate between God’s corn and the devil’s chaff. “The day will declare it.”D.
Deu 32:36-43
The final revelation of God’s supremacy.
In this inspired songan epitome of the BibleMoses looks adown the long vista of history, and discerns what will be the outcome of the whole, viz. to establish on a safe basis the acknowledged supremacy of Jehovah. Truth shall eventually conquer, whatever be her present fortunes; and the supreme authority of Jehovah is a fundamental truth, which must in duo time effectually shine forth.
I. HUMAN EXPERIENCE WILL ULTIMATELY CONFIRM THE VANITY AND FUTILITY OF IDOLATRY. Men will accept, at the close of a changeful and bitter experience, what they would not accept at the outset of their course, viz. that there is one Godinvisible, supreme, eternal. In the conscious pride of self-will, men will sound all the possible problems of life. They will not at first accept, with the docility of a child-like nature, the ipse dixit even of God himself. But when all trust in self and in created power has proved a failure; when all power is gone, and we lie on the battlefield, wounded and helpless;then we begin to give heed to the heavenly voice. Then the gentle message of God comes, with the charm of evening music, upon the earyea, as an anodyne and a balm upon the bleeding heart. In a mood of self-despair, we clutch the hope of the gospel, viz. God manifest to man. God invites us to earnest and profound inquiry. He asks us to give a mature deliverance touching the power and helpfulness of the God whom we have long trusted; and the final experience of men, in all lands and ages, is uniform. “The gods who have not created the heavens and the earth shall perish!”
II. HUMAN EXPERIENCE ATTESTS THE SUPREMACY AND TRIUMPH OF JEHOVAH. “See now, that I, even I am he, and there is no god with me.” The eye of man can clearly discern the factthe foundation-fact of all religionso soon as the veil of prejudice and sin is removed. The revelation is clear enough, if only the organ of mental vision be in healthful vigor. Without question, God is the sole Arbiter of life and death. No other deity has ever assumed an act of creation. The powers of evil have flourished the wand of a necromancer, and have pretended to effect sudden changes in the conditions of nature; but not one has ever pretended to create a star or to produce a single human life. God is still left upon the throne, as sole and undisputed Monarch.
Eternal existence is another prerogative of Jehovah. Where are now the gods of the heathen? Who now worships Jupiter, or Dagon, or Isis, or Moloch? Their names are historic only. They had a passing popularity, but it has long since vanished. But with solemn form of adjuration, the Most High lifts his hand and swears, “I live forever!” As in a court of justice men accept the testimony of a fellow-man, when that testimony is given under the sanction of a religious oath; so, in self-consistency, are we bound to accept the asseveration of the eternal God. In pity for his creatures, he also takes the form of oath, and since “he can swear by none greater, he swears by himself.”
III. THE ROYAL SUPREMACY OF JEHOVAH IS A GROUND FOR HUMAN JOY. Every perfection of God is suitable material for grateful praise. His power is a security for good men. All our interests are safe, being under the protection of such a Friend. His holiness also affords distinct ground for gladness. Because he is holy, we can cherish a confident hope that we shall be holy too. Hence we “give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.” We rejoice to know that the scepter of the universe is in the hands of a God who is absolutely and incorruptibly just. We know that “the right” will not long be trodden underfoot of the oppressor. We are assured that the malice and craft of Satan shall not triumph. We heartily rejoice that Jehovah is King of all the earth; for “all things must now work together for good to them that love him.”
“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies amid her worshippers.”
Most of all, we rejoice in his mercy. “He will be merciful to his land and to his people.” We are the very persons who need Divine mercy; for lack of that mercy we die. Not more urgently does the parched land need the liquid shower, than do we, who have so grossly sinned, need Jehovah’s mercy. Yet not more sure is the need than the supply. That mercy is made amply secure to all who desire it. As certainly as light streams from the natural sun, so freely and copiously does mercy stream forth from Jehovah’s heart. Therefore we do well to “rejoice and to be exceeding glad.” For saith Jehovah, “I will pardon your unrighteousness, and your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more.” God’s revelation closes with the theme of mercy.D.
Deu 32:44-47
Religion a reality.
The bulk of men treat religion as if it were a fancy or a myth. They deem it useful for the sick, the aged, and the dying. But for the healthful man and the active man of business it is voted a bore. Now, Moses puts religion in its right place when he declares it vital to human interestsvital, in the highest and largest sense. “It is your life.”
I. THE OBJECTS ABOUT WHICH RELIGION TREATS ARE REAL, NOT SHADOWY. “It is not a vain thing.” The eye of man cannot embrace God’s universe. The material kingdoms are not all. God’s creation extends above and beyond the reach of mortal sense. With respect to much that God has made, “eye hath not seen, nor car heard, nor mind conceived.” Science deals with one class of objects, religion with another class. The subject-matter of religion is the most excellent, substantial, and enduring. It treats of God, heaven, eternity, the soul of manits sins and sorrows, the way to holiness, the hope of everlasting life. These things come not under the cognizance of our sensuous organs; they are more substantial than the granite rocksmore real than jewels.
II. THE TRUTHS CONCERNING RELIGION ARE AUTHENTIC, NOT ILLUSORY. They come to us supported by abundant evidence, both internal and external. They come with s better title to belief than any books of equal antiquity. If we reject Moses and Isaiah, we are bound, in self-consistency, to reject Thucydides and Herodotos, Bode and Gibbon. But to every Christian, the most conclusive evidence is experimental. He has the “witness in himself.” The truth, admitted to his mind, has elevated his tastes, enlarged his views, purified his affections, ennobled and beautified his whole nature. As light suits the eye and music the ear, so the truth of Scripture exquisitely suits the needs and aspirations of the soul. It meets a real want.
III. THE HUMAN INTERESTS, WHICH RELIGION PROMOTES, ARE REAL AND PRECIOUS, NOT VAPID OR FANCIFUL. These interests are internal and external; they reach to the family and to the utmost limits of human society; they embrace the present and the unbounded future. Reconciliation with God, the removal of sin, the development of man’s best nature, the heritage of inward tranquility, the conquest of care, the extraction of blessing out of sorrow, a hope that conquers death,these are among the advantages obtained by religion. It makes men better husbands, better masters, better servants, better citizens, nobler, truer, wiser. It imparts a meetness for the society and the service of heaven. It brings advantage to every relationship and circumstance of human life. “It is not a vain thing;” it is life and health and joy.D.
Deu 32:48-52
Obedient unto death.
In Moses, Faith had achieved one of her most signal triumphs. From early youth to latest manhood, he had acted and “endured as seeing him who is invisible.” No earthly or visible honor had ever enchanted his vision. He had lived very simply “in his Great Taskmaster’s eye.” Therefore it was that he submitted to be deprived of the earthly Canaan without a murmur, “for he looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker was God.” To him death was but a darksome passage to an enduring home.
I. THE GODLY MAN DIES AT GOD‘S COMMAND. In this respect, Moses was a type of Christ, and has left us an example deserving our imitation. It should be enough for us to know that God requires it. It is no accidentno unforeseen event. Every circumstance touching the believer’s death is wisely arranged by God. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” Our Elder Brother has passed the dark valley before us, and his presence lights up the once gloomy way. “I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.” At the girdle of our Captain hang “the keys of death and of Hades.” “He opens, and no man shuts.” To the genuine disciple death is no terror. “It is my Father’s voice I hear. I see his beckoning hand. I feel his sustaining arm.” “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
II. THE GODLY MAN‘S DEATH IS PARTLY JUDICIAL, PARTLY MERCIFUL. To the full-grown and ripe Christian, earth has little attraction. Its joys pall upon the taste. We aspire after nobler and better things. “I would not live always.” A time comes in the good man’s history when he wishes the probation to close, and the real life to begin. The heir longs for his majority and for the ancestral heritage. The believer dies because death is the most convenient portal by which he can enter heaven.
Yet judgment is mingled with the mercy. Moses was on the tiptoe of earthly expectancyon the threshold of a great success, when God required him to relinquish all for heaven. To him it was revealed, in clearest form, that earlier sin required this late correction. For Israel’s sake, for the world’s sake, and for Moses’ sake, his trespass must bear fruitage in loss and sorrow. In the very nature of things, it is impossible that men can sin without privation of some kind. We may flatter ourselves, at times, that God has winked at our folly, and that no ill consequence has ensued. But judge not prematurely. Possibly, in our last hours of life, the remembrance of that sin will rob us of our peace, will impose some serious loss. In the moral realm, “whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap.”
III. THE GODLY MAN DEPARTS THIS LIFE FROM THE MOUNTAIN–PEAKS OF PERSONAL ATTAINMENT. There were solid reasons in the Divine mind (partly hidden and partly revealed) why Moses should die upon the mount. He might have viewed the magnificent prospects, and then have descended to die. But mountains have often been selected by God as the scene of grand events. On the summit of a mountain we are inspired with a sense of awe. We take in the sense of the infinite. We are constrained to worship. Thence we are already half disposed to mount and soar to heaven. This is suggestive. When through much active energy of faith we have climbed the heights of practical holiness, we feel that the work of life is done. We have finished our course. There has been steady advancement thus far, and now, what next? We feel that the world is beneath our feet; and from this pinnacle of moral elevation we wait the revelation of the future, we prepare for the strange transition.
From such an elevation of faith, too, we clearly discern the scene of the Church’s future conquests. The past is a light which irradiates the prospective triumphs of truth and holiness. “Much land remains to be possessed;” but the assurance of success is absolute. Already the foes of God are at our feet. “He must reign.”
IV. THE GODLY MAN‘S DEPARTURE IS NOT TO SOLITUDE, BUT TO SOCIETY. “Thou shalt be gathered unto thy people.” Whatever thoughts, or hopes, or fears this language of God suggested to Moses’ mind, it suggests to our minds one of the charms of heaven. We love to think of it as a home. Next to the ecstasy which God’s presence shall inspire, is the rapture of reunion with departed friends. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” No question need distress us touching mutual recognition. Moses and Elijah were recognized as such when they came down in glorified state, and conversed with Jesus on the mount. Not a faculty shall be wanting there which we possessed here. “Then shall we know, even as also we are known.” If men from distant climes shall “sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God,” one main element of honor and of joy would be missed unless these illustrious patriarchs were known.D.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Ver. 1. Give ear, O ye heavens Nothing can be more elegant and magnificent than the exordium of this divine ode: its whole disposition and form is regular, easy, and accommodated to the nature of the argument, in an order nearly historical. It contains a great variety of important matter: the truth and justice of God; his paternal love, and most propense benignity to his peculiar people: and, on the other hand, the ungrateful and rebellious temper of this people; then the ardour of the divine indignation; and the most alarming menaces, delivered under a fine prosopopoeia, than which nothing more sublime is extant in the choicest treasures of poetry. Yet those tides of indignation are, at the same time, tempered with compassion and lenity; and the song concludes, at length, with promises and consolations. Not to speak of the sublimity of the ideas, and the force of the diction and figures, we may observe, that the nature of the argument is such, that the style and manner of the prophetic poetry is greatly imitated; so that to all the strength and glowing spirit of the ode are added the variety and grandeur of images peculiar to that kind of poetry, concerning which we shall speak more when we come to the prophets. See Lowth, Praelec. Poet. 18, &c. It is not possible for us here to enter into a discussion of the metre of the Hebrew poetry in general, or of this ode in particular. Upon this head we beg leave to refer our readers, for full satisfaction, to Dr. Lowth’s third Praelection: observing only, as we have frequently done heretofore, that each succeeding clause corresponds to the preceding one; which the attentive reader will particularly remember, as it will serve greatly, not only in this, but in all writings of the same kind, to make them much more clear and intelligible. The three first verses should be read thus:
Ver. 1. Give ear, O ye heavens! and I will speak, And hear, O earth! the words of my mouth. Ver. 2. My doctrine shall drop as the rain; My speech shall distil as the dew; As the small rain upon the tender herb, And as the showers upon the grass. Ver. 3. Because I will publish the name of the Lord; Ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
See the notes on Genesis 49 and Num 23:24 :
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
THE SUPPLEMENTS
Deuteronomy 32-34
THE DIVINE SONG OF MOSES
Deuteronomy 32
1Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak;
And hear, O earth [hear shall the earth] the words of my mouth.
2My doctrine shall drop [Let my doctrine drop] as the rain,
My speech [words] shall distil [flow] as the dew,
As the small rain [showers] upon the tender herb [grass],
And as the showers [rain-drops] upon the grass [herb];
3Because [For] I will publish the name of the Lord:
Ascribe [give] ye greatness unto our God.
4He is the rock, his work is perfect [The rock, perfect is his work];
For all his ways are judgment [right];
A God of truth [faithfulness] and without iniquity [deceit],
Just and right is he.
5They have corrupted themselves 1[corruptly act against him],
Their spot is not the spot of his children [sons]:2
They are a perverse and crooked generation.
6Do ye thus requite the Lord,
O foolish people and unwise?
Is not he thy father [?] that hath bought thee?3
Hath he not made and established [prepared] thee?
7Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations [of generation and generation]:
Ask thy fatherand he will show thee;
Thy elders [thine old men] and they will tell thee.
8When the Most High divided to the nations [Gentiles] their inheritance,
When he separated the sons of Adam [men],
He set [firm] the bounds of the people
According to [with reference to] the number of the children of Israel.
9For the Lords portion is his people;
Jacob is the lot [cord] of his inheritance.
10He found him in a [the] desert land [land of the desert],
And in the waste4 [waste, the] howling [of the steppe] wilderness;
He led him about [surrounded him], he instructed him,5
He kept him as the apple of his eye.
11As an [As the] eagle [, he] stirreth up her [his] nest,
Fluttereth [settles] over her [his] young,
Spreadeth abroad her [his] wings,
Taketh them, beareth them on her [his] wings [pinions]:
12So [om. So] the Lord alone did lead him,
And there was no strange God with him.
13He made him ride [drive] on [over] the high places of the earth,
That he might eat [And eat] the increase [fruits] of the fields;
And he made him to suck honey out of the rock,
And oil out of the flinty rock;
14Butter [cream] of kine, and milk of sheep [the flock],
With [the] fat of lambs,
And rams of the breed [sons] of Bashan, and goats [bucks],
With the fat of the kidneys of wheat;
And thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape [blood of the grape, even wine].
15But Jeshurun waxed [was] fat, and kicked.
Thou art waxen [Thou becamest] fat, thou art grown thick,
Thou art covered with fatness [art full, gross];
Then he forsook [And forsookest, rejected] God, which made him,
And lightly esteemed [despised] the Rock of his salvation.
16They provoked him to jealousy, with [through] strange gods,
With abominations provoked they him to anger.
17They sacrificed to devils [shedim6], not to God [which were not God],
To gods whom they knew not,
To new gods that came newly up [from near at hand],
Whom your fathers feared not [did not shudder at].
18Of the Rock that begat thee [The Rock, he bare thee] thou art unmindful [thou forsookest],
And hast forgotten God that formed thee [turned thee round].
19And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them,
Because of the provoking of his sons and of his daughters,7
20And he said, I will hide my face from them,
I will see what their end [their last] shall be,
For they are a very froward [a generation of perversities] generation,
Children [sons] in whom is no [faithfulness] faith.
21They have moved me to jealousy, with that which is not God [through no God];
They have provoked me to anger [angered me] with their vanities;
And I will move them to jealousy, with those which are not8 a people [a no people].
22For a fire is kindled [burns] in [through] mine anger,
And shall burn9 [burns] unto the lowest hell [Sheol],
And shall consume10 [consumes] the earth with [and] its increase,
And sets on fire [devours] the foundations of the mountains.
23I will heap mischiefs [evils] upon them;
I will spend mine arrows upon [against] them.
24They shall be [or are] burnt [wasted, made lean] with [by] hunger,
And devoured with burning heat [fever heat], and with bitter [poisonous sting] destruction:
I will also send the teeth of beasts [wild animals] upon them,
With the poison of serpents [the creeping] of the dust.
25The sword without [From without the sword shall sweep thee away],
And terror within [From withinfrom the chambers of terror]
Shall destroy both the young man and the virgin,
The suckling also, with the man of gray hairs.
26I said, I would scatter them into corners11 [will blow them away],
I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men:
27Were it not that I feared the wrath of [upon] the enemy,
Lest [That] their adversaries should behave themselves strangely,
And lest [that] they should say, Our hand is high,12
And the Lord hath not done all this.
28For they are a nation void [ruined as to counsel];
Neither is there any understanding [judgment] in them.13
29O that they were wise, that [If they were yet wise, they would] they understood this,
That they [They] would consider their latter end!
30How should one [yet] chase a thousand,
And two put ten thousand to flight,
Except their Rock had sold them,
And the Lord had shut [delivered] them up?
31For their rock is. not as our Rock,
Even our enemies themselves being [And our enemies are] judges.
32For their vine is of the vine of Sodom,14
And of the fields of Gomorrah:
Their grapes are grapes of gall [poisonous grapes],
Their clusters are bitter [Bitter clusters have they]:
33Their wine is the poison of dragons,
And the cruel venom [gall] of asps.
34Is not this laid up in store with me,
And sealed up among my treasures [in my treasure-chambers]?
35To me belongeth vengeance and recompense [retribution for the time],
Their foot shall slide [When their foot shall slide] in due time,15
For the day of their calamity [destruction] is at hand,
And the things that shall come upon them [prepared for them] make haste.
36For the Lord shall judge his people,
And repent himself for [have compassion upon] his servants,
When [For] he seeth that their power [hand] is gone [vanished],
And there is none shut up, or left [set free].
37And he shall say, Where are their gods, [?]
Their rock [?] in whom they trusted [they trusted on him],
38Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices,
And drank the wine of their drink-offerings?
Let them rise up and help you,
And be your protection [covering upon you].
39See now that I, even I [for I, I] am he,
And there is no God with [besides] me;
I kill, and I make alive, I wound [crush] and I heal;
Neither is there any that can deliver [any deliverer] out of my hand.
40For I lift up my hand to heaven,
And say, I live forever!16
41If I whet my glittering sword,
And mine hand take hold on judgment,
I will render vengeance to mine enemies [adversaries],
And will reward [requite] them that hate me.
42I will make mine arrows drunk with blood,
And my sword shall devour [eat] flesh;
And that with [From] the blood of the slain and the captives,
From the beginning [the head] of revenges [of the hairy] upon the enemy.17
43Rejoice [Praise], O ye nations, with his people [Schroeder: om. with]].18
For he will avenge the blood of his servants,
And will render [repay] vengeance to his adversaries,
And will be merciful unto his land, and to his people [expiate his land, his people].
44And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he and Hoshea the son of Nun. 45And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel: 46And he said unto them, Set [place, direct] your hearts unto all the words which I testify among [against] you this day, which ye shall command your 47children to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing [word] for you: because it is your life; and through [in] this thing [word] ye shall 48prolong your days in the land whither ye go over Jordan to possess it. And the Lord spake unto Moses that self-same day, saying, 49Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against [before the face of] Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession: 50And die in [upon] the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people: 51Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel. 52Yet thou shalt see the land before thee, but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS
Literature.See Introd. pp. 44, 45.
Criticism.Knobel: The hints as to the religious and political condition of the people leave no doubt that it belongs to the post-Mosaic time. So also Vater, Gesenius, De Wette, Ewald, Bleek, and others. Fundamentally out of the assumption that there is no prophecy, and out of dogmatic prejudices (comp. Deu 31:16 sq.; Introd. 4, I. 18; Hengstenberg, Chris., 2d Ed., II., p. 196 sq.). The particulars cited by V. Lengerke, Ewald, and others, are either to be understood generally, or are directly a misunderstanding. For the rest, the striking remark of Lange upon the blessings of Jacob (Genesis, p. 650), as to the reckless disposition of our time, is of force here also. Knobel supposes it to be a remodelling; by the second Jehovist author, in the Syrian time, of a song found by him, and held to be Mosaic. Bunsen (Bibelwerk V.): It is an address at the time of the Mesopotamian captivity (Jdg 3:7 sq.). Bleek: The Deuteronomist has first given to this song, not originally published as Mosaic, its present relation and position. Comp. further Introd. 3.
The Mosaic Authorship.The most important thing here is that it breathes throughout the spirit of Moses, and in a measure seems to exclude any imitation. The manifold coincidences in the manner of representation, and in style with Deuteronomy are very noticeablenot indeed for those who believe that the authorship of this book by Moses must be rejected on independent grounds, but for those to whom these grounds or reasons are not satisfactory, and who find in the similarity as to style between this book and this song a proof of the Mosaic origin of Deuteronomy, while the Mosaic authorship of the song is not indeed for them conditioned or determined through that of the book, since that speaks indeed for itself. Sack. The ever-recurring figure which rules the whole song is that of the Rock, the firm, the faithful; without a figure, Jehovah (Exo 3:13 sq.; Deu 6:3 sq.). It is thus throughout, as is fitting the Song of God, as it were, a self-revelation of Jehovah. But that which thus corresponds to the divine origin testifies not less to the Mosaic authorship. The unity and simplicity of this fundamental thought, in the first place, guarantees the great antiquity of the song. With the sacred earnestnestness, to which nothing in the world approaches, save one only, the fitting yet overwhelming energy, the profound losing of himself in God and his glory (Schultz), appear precisely in the second place, as specifically Mosaic. Herder: No shepherd people, no mere shepherd ideas of God and the circle of life; a man born and educated in Egypt, to whom Arabia is a second fatherland, the scene of his preparation, deeds, journey, and wonders, stands out clearly before us. The spirit of poetry takes from thence also its form and imagery. No one can mistake the altered style compared with the patriarchal history. The desert of Arabia gives the tone throughout: God is a rocka burning, consuming fire. He whets the glittering of His swordHe shoots his arrows, which thirst for bloodHis angry messengers are serpents, etc. The poetry of Moses is stern, earnest, simple, as were also his life and character. It gleams as his countenance, but a veil hangs before it. The spirit is widely different from that of Job, David and Solomon. Here the rugged, zealous soul of Moses, vexed even unto death, reveals itself in his last flaming song. In this poem appear the flaming mountain, the pillar of fire and cloud which went before Israel, and in if, the angel of his face. The rock is his dwelling-place (Deu 33:27), Psa 90:1. The long residence of Moses upon the lofty rocks of Horeb, and the finding of his God upon it, is urged by Schultz in favor of this Mosaic authorship. Comp. also further Schultz, p. 648650. Lastly, the fact that this song, with its peculiar, fixed, and very perfect method, remains and gives tone to the post-Mosaic poetry, speaks in favor of its Mosaic authorship. The highest poetic images in the Psalms and the Prophets, says Herder, are derived especially from this last song of Moses; for this is, as the primitive prophecy, the type and canon of all the prophets.
[The objections urged against the Mosaic authorship rest either upon the style, or the ideas of the song. The differences in style between this song and the preceding chapters in Deuteronomy are obvious and striking, but they prove nothing as to its authorship. They are just such differences as would be natural in a passage of this kind, and which appear in all languages between the prose and lyrical passages of the same writer. They may fairly be urged in favor of the Mosaic authorship, since they indicate, as the critics themselves concede, a very great antiquity. In many cases, too, these peculiarities point back to similar expressions in other parts of the Pentateuch. Thus, as Keil says, The figure of the eagle, Deu 32:11, refers to Exo 19:4; the description of God as a Rock in Deu 32:4; Deu 32:15; Deu 32:18; Deu 32:30-31; Deu 32:37, recalls Gen 49:24; the fire of the wrath of God, Deu 32:22, points to Deu 4:24; the expression move to jealousy in Deu 32:16; Deu 32:21, recalls the jealous God, Deu 4:24; Deu 6:15; Exo 20:5; Exo 34:14, etc. The obvious similarity between this song and the 90th Psalm also confirms its Mosaic authorship. The Psalm claims to be the prayer of Moses, and in the judgment of the critics themselves there is no sufficient reason for denying the validity of this claim. Kamphausen indeed admits that if it were really certain that Deuteronomy was composed b]bout the authenticity of the song would be decided in the traditional way.
The objection drawn from the ideas taught in the song rests mainly upon the assumption that any foreknowledge and prediction of the future is impossible, and therefore does not lie against this part of Deuteronomy any more than against those other passages, both of this book and the other books of the Pentateuch, which so distinctly contemplate the apostacy of Israel, its fearful punishments, and its ultimate return and blessedness. These are more vividly set forth in this song, as its poetical character demanded; but they are no less certainly predicted elsewhere. And the question therefore, so far forth, as to the Mosaic authorship of the song, resolves itself into the wider question, whether predictions of the future are possible. The fitness of the song in its style and character, its imagery and ideas to the person, position and life of Moses; its relation to the later poetry of the Bible; its adaptedness to the end sought, i.e. to protest vividly and impressively against apostacy, and to testify to the faithfulness of God; and still more the divine seal set upon this song as the work of Moses, Rom 10:19, place its Mosaic authorship beyond reasonable question.A. G.]
The poetical form is in general the symmetry of the so-called parallelism of the clauses. This simple and elevated rhythm of the thought, as it was suited to the Hebrew poetry, was well calculated in the case before us to make a strong impression, to fasten on the memory, and also to aid to a better understanding, and on the other hand also fitted for the enunciation in song and with music. But in particular, three words (feet, ) nearly always form a clause, the small words, or those joined by Makkeph, not being reckoned; the two-membered strophes are partly used as grace-notes (Deu 32:1; Deu 32:3), and partly (Deu 32:9; Deu 32:12) they alternate parenthetically with the doubled four-membered strophes. The whole is arranged as a double song or dialogue between Moses and Jehovah. Comp. Deu 32:20; Deu 32:34; Deu 32:37.
The prophetical character. The song is poetry in this highest style, only possible in Israel (Sack), i.e. it has a prophetic character. If Genesis 49 is the prophetic life-picture of the future of Israel (Lange), so here Israel as a nation; the patriarchal family-prophecy gives place to the legal national prophecy. Israels position in the world is the prophetic element in this song, i.e. in particular, his being set for the world, his introduction into the world (Deu 32:6 sq.), his appearance in the world, his position yet to be presented to the world; the future position of the world to Israel in respect to retribution and promise (Deu 32:26 sq.). As in the succeeding prophets, the final judgment upon all the enemies of God is perfectly clear, so here already the prospect of it dawns upon us (Deu 32:34-35; Deu 32:41 sq.)personally presented here, because as to form, the fundamental tone of the song is Jehovah, and as to substance the realization of the idea of God through the kingdom of God in Israel was assigned to the following prophecies (at the same time there is a progress here in comparison with chap. 30)and this final judgment concerns every enemy both inward (Deu 32:35 sq.) and external (Deu 32:41 sq.), and is partly a retributory sifting, and partly a retributory destruction. The prophetic contents of the song close with this horizon, not avowedly, but essentially Messianic, namely, in the wider sense of that word.
Its character as to its contents. The point of departure, the basis in the present, that which Moses had sufficiently experienced, namely, the apostacy of the people still for the last time proclaimed, more especially the rejection of the first generation, is recalled to mind. Next follows the picture of the future. The approaching already manifoldly described enjoyment of the promised land, with its results in pride and idolatry, also already frequently repeated, is spoken of in the most fearful and monitory method, a real prophecy from Israels nature and way. The time of the judges gives already a satisfactory commentary upon it. The symbolical significance of this picture of the future for the wider history of salvation. The entire rejection, but also the restoration of an Israel, which shall be the true Israel, and indeed out of the Gentiles. Comp. Doctrinal and Ethical.
Deuteronomy 32 and Exodus 15. The distinction: here upon the threshold of Canaan, there upon that of the desert; there at the morning after the night filled with salvation, here with the look at the night, approaching with Canaan, of the corruption of Israel; there pre-eminently the subjection and terror of the heathen, here the judgment upon Israel and its consequences. The unity: as there so here, the rejoicing at the close of the song, because in both Jehovah is the fundamental thought (comp. Deu 32:3 and Exo 15:1 sq.). As the hallelujah has passed from Exodus 15 over to the Psalms (Herder), so the succeeding prophecy of Israel from Deuteronomy 32. If the song of Moses, Rev 15:3, has its bud and blossom in Exodus 15, the song of the Lamb finds the same in Deuteronomy 32. (We might say with Ziegler in reference to Exodus 15 and Deuteronomy 32 : that the latter is to the former as the old wine is better than the new.)
The Division.
Deu 32:1-5, the introduction and theme; Deu 32:6-14, Israels position through Jehovah; Deu 32:15-18, Israels apostacy; Deu 32:19-25, Jehovahs sentence; Deu 32:26-43, the execution of the judgment in vengeance and mercy.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. Deu 32:1-5. The introduction must indeed reconcile the actual divine address to Moses, with his human historical individuality. Hence, Deu 32:1, the truly deuteronomic invocation of the heavens and the earth. Comp. upon Deu 4:26 (32); Deu 30:19 (12); Deu 31:28. That they are summoned directly by the law-giver as witnesses is intelligible from his legal character (Deu 17:6; Deu 19:15); and still more historically from Deu 4:36, since they were participants in the law-giving, in the most solemn natal hour of Israel as a people. They were here invoked only as attentive hearers, as also in Isaiah 50, which is entirely appropriate, since not merely threatening, but promise also, appears in what follows. , in Hiph. is not used in the sense of to be pointed, to sharpen, prick up the ear, rather in the sense of ready, quick, to fasten, to hold fast, (hence the ear as that which receives, catches up); to hearken. Moses here, as Christ, Joh 15:22 : Had I not spoken unto them? The figure of the rain, dew, sq., is suggested by the mention of the heavens, as also that of the grass and the herb, through the mention of the earth. His song comes from above, whence all good comes which does good, all blessings which produce fruit. The earth should not receive the curse, nor misery, the law is not given for this (Rom 7:12), still less should this most peculiar, testamentary work of Moses, and indeed this dying strain of Deuteronomy tend to this end. () to seize, grasp; but the reception is necessary (1Th 2:13; 1Ti 1:15; 1Ti 4:9), and hence the term occurs here; and not merely to make prominent the dignity and worth of his word, as one received, 1Co 11:23; 1Co 15:3 (Schultz). Power generally, the heavenly (rain), the gentle, secret flow (dew), the mighty, copious (showers, or storm-torrents, heavy rain, thick rain-drops from the multitude of the drops); are the points of comparison, not the refreshing, fertilizing, enlivening, and the like (Keil, Knobel), which relate rather to the effects of the rain, dew, etc. (, only elsewhere, Deu 33:28; , only here.) Comp. Job 29:22-23; Isa 55:10-11; Psa 72:6; Hos 14:5; Mic 5:9. Deu 32:3 gives the reason for the demand, Deu 32:1, as also for the fulness of power which he wished, Deu 32:2, Let my doctrine drop. Luther: It is as if he had said, I will sing a song, which I will begin in so high a strain that no one under the sun can strike a higher strain, or be able to make a nobler song. My best song and best doctrine shall be the first commandment. (not , to invoke as the poets the muses, Ewald, not even to praise), but to proclaim, to make known to all the world, what he had said, the revelation of his being whereof heaven and earth should make confession, in case Israel should neglect it, who therefore is not directly addressed in the following clause: Ascribe, sq. Comp. Deu 3:24; Deu 5:21; Deu 9:26; Deu 11:2. This greatness is not His majesty generally, or as Luther: Ye shall not honor other gods, or ascribe greatness to any creature, all other gods are vain, false and nonentities, but in the transition to what follows, points out already as with all the fingers, His exalted nature, his glory as Jehovah. , the Rock, placed first absolutely, and thus given the greater prominence. , the thick, strong, firm. Herder: Derived without doubt from Sinai, where the covenant was made which on the side of God as the Rock was everlasting. It reminds us of Gen 49:24. It is the refuge, protection, security, for the forsaken. It presents the name Jehovah by a striking comparison (Isa 17:10; Isa 26:4; Psa 18:2; Psa 18:31). As alone in His being, so perfect in His work; without defect, without stain, nothing to be supplied, and nothing to be removed, both with respect to creation and providence (Herder: Israel often blamed the providence, in its way through the desert). For his ways are only right, as this is still more personally expressed in the fourth member parallel to the second. , firmness, the nature of the rock. (Deu 35:16) crooked, perverted nature, imperfection, vileness. (The prayer of the Jews in their burial-service begins as Deu 32:4, which is also found engraved upon their cemeteries and tables.) [How deeply the idea of God as the Rock (Tsur) penetrated the Jewish mind and life, is apparent from its frequent recurrence in names as Pedah-zur, Eli-zur, Zur-iel, Zur-ishaddai, etc.A. G.]The theme of the song finds its necessary completion, Deu 32:5, in the opposite description of Israel. Hence cannot possibly refer to Jehovah; He deals not corruptly with him (Schultz), as already J. H. Michaelis: Num deus corrupit sibi (ipsi Israel) sc. vias suas? num ille est Israelitis causa exitii?Cocceius: Num corruptio ipsi? Nequaquam minime. The subject is clearly the generation, sq. Whether refers to Israel (Num 32:15), or to Jehovah in the Dat. Comm. may be doubtful; the latter appears to suit the connection better. Not Jehovah in His nature, work, ways, attributes (Deu 32:4), but Israel in its work, ways, nature, attributes, Deu 32:5, is an antithetic parallel to Deu 32:4. Comp. Deu 9:12. We are to recall the apostacy immediately at Sinai, and still further in the wilderness (Numbers 13 sq.). The clause in apposition with generation occurs parenthetically before it. Your ways should have appeared as that of His children (Deu 14:1). Sack they are not His children is almost too strong. before , as frequently in this song before the substantive, is an observable idiomatic peculiarity. Their spot (the apposition and the opposition once more), rather: the children of Jehovah, as they should be, and His children as they are actually.[Keil: They are not the children of Jehovah, but their stain, i.e. the stain or disgrace of Gods children.A. G.](Others: to their own blemish, shame.) Schultz: His children are their own disgrace. [Regarding Jehovah as the subject, has He dealt corruptly with them? No, His children, etc.A. G.]The historical explanation of Knobel, referring it to Judah and the faithful in Israel, is needless, since even earlier the children of God (comp. Gen 5:22), e.g. Noah, the patriarchs, Caleb, Joshua, are thus distinguished, and the idea was always made prominent as simply set over against the actual evil character (Php 2:15; Mat 17:17).
2. Deu 32:6-14. Upon the ground of such a theme, of this opposite actual character, there is raised for the future, as the present, the question in Deu 32:6. , to show, to cause, do, with reference to the recompense, retribution. , as the following context shows (Deu 32:29), is foolish. Gesenius, Hupfeld, of the insipid, stale conduct, wanting the salt of divine wisdom, here used of the forgetfulness of God, godlessness. The derivation from, to swell, distend, and hence to be haughty, arrogant, agrees well also with the context. Comp. Deu 1:13; Deu 4:6. The fatherhood of Jehovah is set over against the not His children, Deu 32:5 (comp. Deu 32:20; Deu 14:1; Exo 4:22 sq.). The thought that Abraham was only their father in the beneficent strength of the divine promise, seems apparent from the emphasis placed upon (see Genesis 17). combines the ideas, to prepare, to form (not precisely, create, Gen 14:19; Gen 14:22), to acquire, possess. If marks the descent from Abraham, then denotes fitly the constituting of the people in Egypt, and , the forming or preparation in the wilderness. Comp. upon the verse Isa 63:16; Isa 64:8; Isa 1:2; Mal 2:10. In the , Deu 32:7 (this form occurs only here as the similar poetical term, , Psa 90:15, agreeing with it), the designates the covered time either before or behind the speaker (Deu 4:32). From the hoary antiquity the tradition here comes down through generation and generation (the repetition used poetically for the plural), forming the revolution or succession of old men (, the circle or revolving period), Psa 90:1. Thus it comes to the fathers and elders (from the bowed, decrepid age, ). in Deu 32:6 is collective, and hence the alternating singular and plural verbs. (to separate, distinguish and understand). , in Hiph.: to bring near, to bring over, to point out, declare. Deu 32:8 contains the result of the tradition; a retrospect to Genesis. The separation of the people as described Genesis 11 occurs constantly without the article, and here used instead of Jehovah, and equivalent to the Exalted One, the Highest. When He divided to the nations all their inheritance determined in Genesis 10; when He, the sons of Adam, (comp. Gen 10:1; Gen 10:32) dispersed, separated, Genesis 11 (Act 17:26), He did so according to the number, sq., i.e., so that Israel should possess a land corresponding to its population. Comp. also Gen 9:25 sq.; Deuteronomy 2. Baumgarten combines the number seventy of the genealogical table, with the seventy ancestors of Israel, (Deu 10:22). [So Wordsworth also.A. G.]. Deu 32:9 gives the reason for this earliest provision and care. Comp. Deu 7:6; Deu 10:15; (Act 14:16). a cord, measure, then that which is measured by it. Comp. Deu 3:13. This two-membered strophe forms a beautiful pause or interruption. Thus it is from the beginning placed for the world, Exo 19:5 sq. It follows now, Deu 32:10, how it was introduced into the world, to the ideal follows the real provision on the part of God. The connection is directly with Deu 32:6. The words form a description of that frequently enforced (Deu 1:27; Num 14:11; Num 14:4; Exo 16:2) helpless condition of Israel. Thus even after the redemption from Egypt, thus always indeed with respect to Israel. Instead of Canaan, to which Deu 32:8 points, the land of the desert was the land where He found Israel. The reference to Egypt, with Keil, is artificial. As is clearly defined from the preceding, so it is placed also in reference to what follows, e.g., Deu 32:13. Tha prominence given to the leading through the wilderness is genuinely Deuteronomic. Comp. Deu 8:2 sq., 15 sq.; Deu 11:5; Deu 29:4 sq.; Deu 1:1. As the deliverance from Egypt was evidently presupposed, it is the more readily passed over here in silence because Israel is here spoken of as a nation, and Israels national existence dates from Sinai, from the wilderness. Found either after he had sought him in Egypt, the one that was lost (Luk 15:4) without him, or had found out, selected (Psa 89:20) since he had closed the covenant with him at Sinai, or simply met with him; thus Israel found itself, began its conscious existence, when Jehovah took it into His school, to train and educate it to a people, (Hos 9:10, a description as to the other side). Schultz emphasizes the fact that the Lord first appeared to Israel in the pillar of fire and cloud in the desert, Exo 13:20 sq. The emphasis, he remarks correctly, does not lie upon the finding, but upon the desert land, which is made still more explicit by the (). The waste (Gen 1:2), from literally; the dense, close wilderness, where no way is, Psa 107:40. Comp. upon Deu 1:1; Deu 1:31. Howling: emphasizes the horrible howling of the beasts of the desert, especially in the early part of the night. Led him (compassed him) aboutnear Him in his love, to care for, (Psa 26:6) but also to protect as a shield; (the pillar of fire and cloud, Zec 2:8). ; to keep, watch, preserve. Gesen.: the pupil (of the well-known little man, pet, the daughter, for the miniature image of him who looks in the eyes of another), literally the man () of the eye. Or should one go back to the signification of from which is derived to bend, thus the arched eye-ball. Others: the eye-lid. Generally the comparison intimates that Jehovah had not left Israel out of His sight; the most careful, thoughtful protection, Psa 17:8; Zec 2:12. On account of the desert, of the hostile nations, but especially after the rejection of the old, for preservation of the new generation. The first and second, and third and fourth clauses are parallel to each other, as also in Deu 32:7. [The whole description of what the Lord did for Israel, Deu 32:10-14, is figurative. Israel is represented as a man ready to perish in the wilderness, and so found and rescued by God. But there is no design or attempt to bring out in their succession, the events in Israels history, or what God had done for them. Only those are selected which bear upon the general theme and purpose of the song.A. G.]. Deu 32:11 gives the desert figure of the eagle. Israel is the eagles brood in the nest ( a separated mountainous place) in the rocks at Sinai. Jehovah stirs it up, as He came down over it in the giving of the law (her young, from , the stripped, naked, featherless young). Farther: the pillar of fire and cloud was like the outspread wings! Indeed He took it and bare it in His power and love, and with what patience? As the eagle is the subject, the suffixes refer to the nest, or to each individual one of the young. Deu 32:12 is a continuous exposition of the figure used. (Others refer alone and with him to Israel). For the rest comp. Exo 19:4. (As out of Egypt so in the way to Canaan), Gen 1:2; Deu 1:31. It is only a two-membered strophe, as Deu 32:9. [Keil: If no other god stood by the Lord to help Him, He thereby laid Israel under the obligation to serve Him alone as its God.A. G.]. Deu 32:13 treats of the partly begun and partly approaching occupation of the mountainous Canaan. With the high places was the earth, (land) promised to Israel, assured. The occupation of Gilead was the beginning of the victorious dominion (chap. 3). So the enjoyment of Canaan is described with prophetic foresight, as in Deu 8:7-10. Comp. upon Deu 6:3. Palms, date trees growing upon the mountains, as well as bees building their hives in the rocks introduce honey into Palestine; olive trees are found in apparently the most unproductive places. A pleasant, childlike enjoyment, because throughout a blessing. Deu 32:14 is a continuation. The specification testifies to the general faithfulness of the song, (Herder) the East Jordan land was an earnest of the farther side. : that which is drawn out through strokes or rubbing, the milk from the milking. the selected, picked out; hence the fat, generally the best, (Num 18:12) here strengthened still further by the kidneys, the very finest wheat (in reference to the flour) or in the size of the grains. Lastly the bubbling, foaming red wine (Gen 49:11). The last clause here, as in Deu 32:7, takes the form of an address. The five-membered strophe also shows the poetic fervor. For the rest comp. Num 32:1; Eze 39:18. (It may be regarded as a four-membered strophe thus: butter of kine and milk of sheep with the fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat. And thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape). [Fat of kidneys was, as the best fat, specified as a part of the sacrificial animals which were to be presented to the Lord, and hence the figure herefor the finest, most nutritious wheat.A. G.].
3. Deu 32:15-18. The apostacy of Israel comes to pass as was already foreseen, Deu 6:11; Deu 8:12 sq.; Deu 31:20. Deu 32:15. Jeshurun, found twice elsewhere in Deut. (Deu 33:5; Deu 33:26) and in Isa 44:2. Beyond question from ; comp. Jesharim, Num 23:10 (Jos 10:13; 2Sa 1:18). It is not a diminutive (Gesenius: the pious, precise, blameless little people), which is destitute of philological (comp. Hengst.: Balaam, p. 98), proof (the , Deu 32:10, referred to, is correctly with (Delitzsch) rather: the man, if not man-like), and an appellatio blanda et charititiva does not accord well with the serious character of the passage in which a loving being, but no mere lover speaks, but is perhaps a nomen proprium; the just, honorable man, the just, the righteous; but by no means the happy or the like, not even the justified (Calvin) although that is nearer the truth. The legal character, the national essence or nature of Israel was expressed in this term. (Comp. Deu 32:4). Over against the idea of the nation, as it rests in Jehovah, enters so much more offensively the character in which Israel actually appears in the world. A prophetic preterite. Johlson sees in Jeshurun a pun, which the figure of the fat and kicking ox () completes. Comp. Act 9:5 (Hos 4:16; Hos 13:6). The direct address in the second person vividly interrupts, and gives greater energy to the statement begun in the third person. It is not jocosely spoken, as Ewald, but the keenest sacred irony. [By reminding them of what they were in idea, of what they were called to in character and dignity, he censures more severely their guilt and perfidy.A. G.]. is the pathetic form for both in the old and in the later Aramaic Hebrew. Comp. Deu 32:6; Deu 32:4. [Lightly esteemed, from to treat as a fool.A. G.]. Deu 32:16. The plural form, which gives the poetical coloring, occurs instead of the previously used singular, as in Deu 32:7. Upon the provocation of the divine zeal (jealousy), comp. Deu 4:24-25; Deu 5:9; Deu 6:15. The covenant is a marriage covenant, (Deu 31:16). , those standing beyond marriage, and the relationship effected by it, Deu 25:5, Schultz. For the rest comp. Deu 7:25; Deu 27:15. A two-membered strophe, as Deu 32:9; Deu 32:12. Deu 32:17. . Baalim, lords (1Co 8:5), Demons? Further comp. Deu 11:28; Deu 13:7; Deu 29:25. [Wordsworth: Wasters, destroyers Bib.Com: As indicating the malignant character of the deities in heathen worshipA. G.]. New.Lately risen in a temporal, as the following clause in a local sense. In both references not God, Jer 23:23 sq. (Schultz figuratively; not worth much). Baumgarten: Israel had no historical relations with them. To understand the second clause, came newly up, temporally also, is tautological, and is not demanded by the parallelism. The third member is parallel to the first, the fourth to the second. In Deu 32:18 he renews at the close what was said in Deu 32:15; there using the masculine, and here the feminine termination. , as: to make thick is also to form ( in the plural: birth-throes) thus in a verbal way reconciling the figure of bearing ( to break through, of the birth) with the rock; with respect to its source, e.g., the noble metal, may be actually said to be born of the iron stone of the rock. from , to forsake, forget, Knobel, Schultz, Keil; from , to neglect. The direct address appears again as at the close of Deu 32:14. God as the woman in birth throes (Psa 2:7; Psa 90:2; Isa 49:15; Gal 4:19). [To bring out more prominently the base ingratitude of the people, he represents the creation of Israel by Jehovah, the Rock of its salvation, under the figure of generation and birth, in which the paternal and maternal love of the Lord to His people had manifested itself. Keil.A. G.]
4. Deu 32:19-25. The judgment of Jehovah upon His apostate people, proceeds upon a personal observation. He needs no testimony, Deu 32:19. A comprehensive two-membered strophe, as Deu 32:16; Deu 32:9; Deu 32:12. (Comp. Deu 1:34). Schultz: From indignation at, sq. Herxheimer: On account of the provocation of, sq. [Our version brings out the force of the preposition as well, and is equally as intelligible as those suggested.A. G.]. Deu 32:20. The declaration of the judgment. Comp. Deu 31:17-18. He speaks after the manner of men (Gen 37:20). They are no more regarded with favor; He will only see what their end, their last sins and last punishments will be. The reason is their wicked and faithless (Deu 32:4) way, which with them comes to the uttermost (1Th 2:16). Deu 32:21. The retribution will at last correspond to the offence. Not God, is not a monster (1Co 8:4 sq.; Deu 10:19 sq.), to which in a corresponding way not people, would signify an inhuman people, repulsive and frightful, (Ewald, in order to bring into the text in a historical way the Assyrians), but: as idols to which the heathen correspond. Moreover the no-gods are explained through the term vanities (nothingness); they are as the breath of men, fugitive human forms (Mat 15:9); and no-people through , and the alliteration between and The designation occurs with more express reference to Israel, and is thus, as even Knobel concedes, not to be pressed, not even to the Syrians under Baasha and Ahab, generally not to any particular nation. No-people in the view of Israel, a foolish nation according to Israels own conscience, is a godless nation, one which has gone hitherto its own way, etc. (Eph 2:12). The Acts of the Apostles is a biblical commentary upon this passage. Comp. also Deu 32:6; thus it is such a nation or people, who (notwithstanding all the grace they had received) are, as they are by nature (comp. Deu 4:6 sq.). The emphasizing of the Gentile world for the end of Israel, Rom 10:19 (1Th 2:15-16). The reception of the Gentiles in the place of Israel is certainly and literally contained in this verse. [No-people is not a people which does not deserve to be called a people, because it is behind the Israelites in its outward organization, or in its culture and general civilization, but because it does not rest as to its existence and growth upon the choice of God, because it does not recognize Him as its Head and King, because it does not submit itself to His statutes and judgments, (Deu 4:6) which alone make a wise or understanding people. The designation does not imply any inferiority in worldly or secular respects on the part of those to whom it is applied.
The Apostle Paul, quoting (Rom 10:19), the precise words of the Sept. here, gives the true interpretation, and puts their significance, as teaching the adoption of the Gentiles in the place of the Jews beyond question, by any one who accepts the teaching of the Apostle as inspired. His use of this passage, too, ought to settle the question as to the inspiration of this song, and as to its Mosaic authorship.A. G.]. It is nowhere said in Deu 32:22 sq., that the Lord would use the Gentiles only as a rod against Israel comp. Deu 32:31, as Kamphausen asserts;and what else is the provoking and angering, (Deu 32:16) in this connection, than what J. H. Michaelis illustrates metaphorically by the spirit of a loving husband, who sees himself scorned by his wife, and takes some poor maiden in her place, as Ahasuerus Esther in the place of Vashti. The description which underlies and grounds the judicial sentence, Deu 32:22, corresponds to these awful extremities (Deu 4:24; Deu 6:15). Comp. upon Deu 29:19. The dimension even to the lowest (sheol) hell (the chasm, abyss; see Hupfeld upon Psalms 66) according to which this stands as the underworld in opposition to heaven,here the lowest depth (Deu 30:13) may be intended,presents the judgment first of all as a destruction reaching beyond the earthly life, and continuing in Sheol, (Num 16:30 sq.). The intensive extent or compass in the next place, when the fire which is kindled (Deu 11:17) consumes indeed the foundations of the earth, expresses the judgment, as in the analogy of Sodom (Deu 29:22 sq.), extending from Palestine, and spreading out to one which concerns the whole world. [The judgment thus described was not to fall upon Israel alone. It was first to suffer. But the words were not intended to foretell one particular judgment, but refer to judgment in its totality and universality, as realized in the course of centuries in different judgments upon the nations, and only to be completely fulfilled at the end of the world. Keil.A. G.]. (2Pe 3:7). Thus only does it correspond with the universal idea of Israel. Since the land of promise loses its peculiar significance through the curse of God, the heaven of Israel passed away with the temple, there exists in Christ with the new Israel, which is entirely, completely spiritual, already a new heaven and a new earth, according to the Spirit. Israel is the nearest object of the Divine love-judgment, Deu 32:23 sq. The transition to another figure, comp. Deu 31:11; Deu 31:21. In masses one upon another; as a warrior against his enemies, exhausting his arrows to the very last one in his quiver, heaps them together around the enemy. Deu 32:24. , to draw, exhaust, or simply to extend, make thin. the licking, lapping flame, used of fever, burning pestilence. , cut, thrust, blow. Comp. Lev 26:22. [Keil paraphrases when hunger, pestilence, plague, have brought them to the verge of destruction I will send, sq.A. G.]. Deu 32:25. in Piel: lonely, bereaved, made childless, (Gen 43:14). the closed, within the tent, house, where especially are the wives and children. , the chosen, manly youth, especially soldiers. to have gray hairs, (Lev 19:32).
5. Deu 32:26-43. In such a position to the world would God bring them, but they should not disappear entirely from the race. In Deu 32:26, in which he passes from the sentence to its execution. I said occurs as he said(Deu 32:20) and with a similar purport. , used only here, may mean: to drive into every corner, or: to cast out from every corner (Schultz); the last signification may agree with the connection, but not the first.To blow away agrees still better, so that they are dispersed. Vulg., Luther, according to the Rabbinical solution : where are they? i.e., destroyed beyond any trace, so that one seeks after them in vain. Others: to make an end. Others still: they are exposed, abandoned as the corners of the fields to the poor. Or deriving it from anger, to let this have success or control). in Hiphil: remove the Sabbath from their memory (Lev 26:43). Comp. Deu 25:19. Once more a two-membered strophe. Deu 32:27. What restrains Jehovah from this utter destruction is not anything in Israel, not even anything in Him in reference to Israel,this is the icy character of the passage,but Jehovah fears His wrath of (upon) the enemy, i.e., because the oppressors of Israel, if they should ignore (misunderstand) the fact, that Jehovah and not their power (Isa 26:11) had destroyed Israel, would excite His wrath. Comp. Cicero; pro Flacco, c. 28, cited by Baumgarten. The impeachment of His honor or glory through the enemy is to be explained perhaps as Deu 9:28. There may, however, be an intimation also of the gracious purpose of God toward the Gentiles. The blessedness of all is indeed the glory of God. The world should not occupy such a position to Israel on its own account; it should execute and recognize the judgment of God upon Israel; therefore it is arrested, however little the nation deserves it. As Israel, e.g., Deu 9:4 sq., could not assert its own goodness as a motive, so with the gentile world its power; there the heart, here the hand. In what follows, the correct reasons are presented against these possible false reasons: not the gentile power, but Israels corruption, which presents it as ripe for overthrow, is the reason, for its destruction by Jehovah. Thus Deu 32:28 gives the reasons for Deu 32:26, so that Deu 32:27 forms the conclusion to Deu 32:26. We have still the words of God, as also in the reasons given for the declaration of the judgment (Deu 32:20); Knobel: the author here proceeds with his own words. That the discourse treats of Israel is not doubtful, as Sack thinks, because the , which is more commonly used for the gentiles, occurs here. It stands for Israel also, e.g., Deu 4:6 sq., agrees well with the more general style here, and moreover when emphasized could well serve to present the equality of Israel and the Gentiles. Void of counsel, generally; not knowing what to advise, they have lost the power of wise consideration, counsels, or: lost, ruined, truly with respect to that with which they might consult; they do not take advice from the law of God (Deu 4:6 sq.). , comp. with Deu 32:7. The moral corruption has wrought intellectual. With reference to this sign of deserved destruction, Moses breaks out, Deu 32:29, in a sad lamentation: ! (it will not be so, surely not in the whole people). [The particle expresses here the simple condition without any wish, implying that the condition does not exist, or is uncertain.A. G.]. Luk 19:42. Comp. Deu 32:6-7, and upon Deu 32:20. especially what follows, that Israel could not have the victory, but that its end was near. Deu 32:30 is usually understood of the unsuccessful wars of Israel, from which either the Gentiles could perceive (this is expressed Deu 32:27 sq.), how Jehovah gave over His people, or that Israel should perceive and consider. More correctly: the review of the earlier history, which they were not considering (Deu 32:29 comp. with Deu 32:7) would prove to them how mighty Israel could be, (Lev 26:8; comp. Jos 23:10). But, since the actual case is altogether the reverse, the self-judgment of their end must follow upon this review, (, how would it still thus be, namely: it would, sq. except (according to the usual interpretation) their Rock, sq., or: the actual case was that, sq.). Their Rock, as is clear from the parallel clause, is Jehovah (Deu 32:4). Deu 32:31 gives the proof through a comparison of Jehovah with that which the Gentiles call their rock. Their gods could only be called rock, never be so, (Deu 32:21). Moses includes himself with his people (according to the idea, [i.e., the true Israel]). Schultz: Against the faithless ones who had proved the vanity of idols. Most: Since they even had experienced the omnipotence of Jehovah, and the weakness of all gods besides Him, as e.g., of Egypt, Moab, Midian. (Num 23:24). Perhaps still more simply:And our enemies are judges. Israels judges (Exo 21:22) instead of Jehovah, carry out His judicial sentence, and do nothing more. Thus Deu 32:31 connects itself with the close of Deu 32:30 : because the rock of the heathen, the gods whom they worship, are not as Jehovah, so the Rock of Israel must have given it into their power. Otherwise Israel would, as of old, have been victorious in the field, instead of as now recognizing its enemies as its judges. Deu 32:32 holds a similar relation to Deu 32:31, and Deu 32:30, as Deu 32:28, to Deu 32:26-27. Israel had placed itself on an equality, in pleasure and pride (Deu 32:15), with the Gentiles, and indeed with those of Canaan, against whom a previous judgment of God had long ago warned, and is soon therefore to be upon an equality with them, in punishment likewise, (Deu 29:22). Against Sack and those who with him apply Deu 32:32-33 to the Gentiles, Keil asserts that throughout the Old Testament the corruption of the lsraelites, and never that of the Gentiles, is compared with that of Sodom, sq.; Isa 1:10; Isa 3:9; Jer 23:14; Eze 16:46 sq. Their vine, so far as it is to be compared with any such, is of the vine of Sodom, is a scion from that, ( as Deu 29:17). Deu 32:33. The sweetness of the luxuries was a bitter, fatal poison to the dwellers in the garden of God. Baumgarten. As Deu 32:29 Moses, so now Deu 32:34 Jehovah breaks up the thought into the form of a dramatic dialogue. The position of the world to Israel should thus not be for the glory of its power, but for the glory of the Lord; Israel should be judged through the world, but from the Lord. refers to the immediately foregoing, only so far as the corruption of Israel involves guilt which demands punishment, for as corruption is it plainly discovered, manifested, Deu 32:32 sq., thus in any case not concealed, as Schultz renders , which is found only here. But the rendering also by preserved, or: coiled up, shrivelled, bound, (Isa 8:16) does not accord well with the sins of .the people as such; but does agree well with the guilt, the recorded guilt registers which were rolled together, so that nothing might fall out and be lost, Job 14:17; Hos 13:12, and Dan 7:10; but Psa 139:6; Mal 3:16, do not belong here. The sense is perfectly clear from the parallel sealed up, i.e., still secret, but to be opened in due time. (Dan 12:9). The treasures (treasure chamber) according to Deu 28:12 is heaven. Comp. upon the whole Deu 29:28. Deu 32:35. What it is which this refers to is designated here more precisely under the known prominence of the literal Supreme Judge, (Gen 18:25). not: vengeance, as well as punishment, is prepared with me (Herxheimer), which would be the same as Deu 32:34; but it belongs to me, is my part. The judge, the avenger am I peculiarly (Rom 12:19; Heb 10:30). is destination, judicial sentence, decision, and hence first vengeance. Piel: consummation, restitution, reaches to the end of Israel. When your support gives way, your pride, your secure confidence wavers, then is the time of God; for now, only kept sealed, but then also manifested where it was perhaps little expected, the day of their calamity is at hand. literally: crushing, oppressive burden. The singular includes all that shall come upon them, as that which is prepared (Deu 7:10). Deu 32:36. In which Moses again is the speaker, gives a new reason for the judgment in due time, and introduces also a new element. The mere fact that Jehovah appears as the one judging, allows us to infer a separation (Gen 18:23 sq.), or distinction. The solemn and formal , while hitherto (Deu 32:28) or at most Deu 32:6 had been used of Israel, renders that inference more probable. The parallel strengthens it, since the word refers to the true servants, those who are faithful in Israel. The judgment as a sifting. The people of the Lord indeed in name, but in nature apostate (so also Heb 10:30) causes and experiences the judgment, which not only procures their right, does not prevent their punishment, but as generally, it procures right to the true Israel, who correspond to its idea, so especially by such a distinction it helps that part of Israel which constitutes this people of the Lord, to its vindication (Romans 11). Thus also the name of Israel in the best sense, is not extirpated, comp. Deu 32:26; as a sign of judgment so also of mercy. . The sorrow of His own gives Him sorrow (Psa 90:13; Mat 24:22). His seeing corresponds with Deu 32:19 : there the apostacy, here the result of the execution of the judgment, which is such that it excites to compassion: power, with national strength, namely, run out, dried up, exhausted. a noun which takes the place of a verb and signifies to cease, i.e., is no more. The fourth-time occurring paranomasia .There is none shut up or left. Keil, Knobel: the married and single, i.e., all men. Baumgarten: the captive and freed-man. Ewald: close and liberal, i.e., all, as our thick and thin, is in any case a proverbial designation of persons; but scarcely of boys who were still at home, and those of age; scarcely also of the impure, who must remain at home, and in this reference the free, but either servants and freed-men, ( the ruled), or the men of rank (who remain in the house) and the common people. Schultz, Meier: the vassal and the lord, the borrower and the lender, or one bound to service, and the free. Understanding the expression of things, some render it: the shut up (treasures) and the left free (the herd in the field), the precious and the trifling, and the like. Israels nationality is at an end. Deu 32:37 corresponding to Deu 32:20. It is naturally not the servants of the Lord, Deu 32:36, who are addressed, since they have held fast to Him as their Lord, but the question concerns the larger part of Israel. Their gods, and with this the rock used ironically here is not easily misunderstood. Literally, Jehovah alone could be the Rock (Deu 32:30), but they have despised Him (Deu 32:15), and strange gods, Deu 32:16 sq., have become their rock, even a rock as that of the Gentiles, Deu 32:31. The theme of the song in all its variations is repeated. Deu 32:38. Sept., Vulg., Luth., Schultz, Whose sacrificial fat they ate, the wine of whose drink-offerings they drank, as if it was said of the Israelites, while yet both the fat is burned for the deity (Lev 3:3 sq.) and the libations are poured out before it (Num 15:5), and this is certainly to be specially retained here, with respect to the way of the Lord, in order to bring out more prominently the qui [quid] pro quo right. The gods ate and drank in this way (Deu 4:28); had in Israel so good an entertainment. Upon comp. Num 10:35. A covering and defence they could still claim from them, in any case it is the cloud pillar of Jehovah over His people which is referred to.
Deu 32:39. The connection through their own sight, especially with respect to that upon which they were visibly trusting, is an altogether fitting connection. Now, after the strange gods have proved their powerlessness. ,, an emphatic repetition, and at the same time an exposition of the name Jehovah. There is no God besides (with) me (Deu 32:12; Deu 3:24), thus is equivalent to ; Jehovah alone the true God (Joh 8:24). Schultz: Jehovah could not be the true being, having the cause of His being in Himself, purely dependent upon Himself alone, if He had any one beside Himself, which He Himself could not be. Baumgarten: Jehovah the absolute subject. What this exclusiveness and unchangeableness of His being says in the sphere of His deity, that, the killing and the making alive ( alluding to Jehovah, in any case to the immediately following , Deu 32:40) the wounding and healing, say in the sphere of the becoming (Werdens) and the mutable, the creature. Kill, wound, at first because of the judgment; make alive, heal, in reference to the true people of God, the servants of the Lord, (Deu 32:36) by which contrast it was intimated that the suffering which they endure here,is salvation through the hand of God. Moreover here and in Deu 32:40 forms an antithesis to Deu 32:36. The declared execution of the judgment in vengeance and in mercy is confirmed Deu 32:40, for men, and hence, in the divine condescending love after the manner of men, by the oath. To heaven the throne of God, essentially as if it was: by myself, but formally as men are accustomed to swear, who by the lifting up of the hand confess and invoke Him (Gen 14:22). the oath formula: as truly as I live, by my life. What is sworn follows. The oath reaches over the whole world to heaven. Jehovah has to show the judgment, inwardly, with respect to Israel itself, in vengeance and mercy; and in the like manner also outwardly, so far as the future position of the world to Israel should be the right position, perfectly right; and hence it must be a final judgment over the collective enemies of the Lord. Otherwise it might occur, that as with Israel, their intractable pride grew out of their possessions and their apparent goodness, so with the others, the Gentile world, it might arise from their apparent powerful position. Comp. Deu 32:27; Deu 32:15). Deu 32:41. The warlike figure as in Deu 32:23 (sword, Deu 32:25). Entirely personal: my, sq., on account of the fundamental thought (Jehovah) of the prophetic stand-point of the song, and because the enemies of Israel as such could not come into view here, since it also is the very object of the divine judgment. Israel itself even is become an enemy of Jehovah (Deu 32:15 sq.).Glittering (the flash) of the piercing () point of that in the hand of the heavenly hero, as the quivering flash of his sword.Whet, denoting its preparation with all the earnestness of his zeal or anger. The judicial procedure () explains the sword which God grasps, and which He () holds fast, until the judgment is completed. is explained through (Deu 32:35), as a retributive destruction. Deu 32:42. There is no exemption even of the captives. The divine arrows would become drunk as they drink the blood of the slain, as the divine sword would eat the flesh. , to break forth, to be at the head, or in the front; hence Schultz: of the head, chief of the princes; Ewald: of the supreme ruler (King) of the princes; Keil, Knobel: of the hairy head (because designates the hair of the head); others: from the head of the uncovering (Lev 10:6) of the enemy, i.e. the uncovered enemy; thus the destruction of the people as of their rulers (comp. Psa 110:5-6), or as a supplementary portraiture of the destroyed power of the enemy; the hair, as already the head, naturally symbolizing youth, wanton strength, pride, haughtiness, and the like. Comp. Hupfeld upon Psa 68:21.[The rendering in our version has no foundation in the language itself, is not supported by other passages in which the word occurs, and breaks up the parallelism of the verse, the third clause being obviously related to the first, and the fourth in like manner to the second.A. G.].
Deu 32:43 forms the conclusion, but in which also the divine mercy is announced in connection with the divine vengeance in reference to the world, those without or beyond Israel. As at the beginning, as especially at Deu 32:36, so now also at the close Moses takes up the word. If it was vengeance only which was in view for the Gentiles, the solemn, sacred summons to rejoice, which is directed to the Gentiles (thus at the end, as at the beginning, to heaven and earth with regard to Israel), would be simply fiendish. Comp. Rom 15:10 (Rev 12:10; Rev 12:12; Rev 15:3); Gen 12:3. The object of this loud rejoicing is His people, but is immediately set in its true light by His servants, as in Deu 32:36. ( in Hiph. with the accus. of the object is unusual, but surely to take as in apposition with , nations which are His people (e.g.Header) is still more unusual, and the way is not sufficiently prepared for it through Deu 32:21, or other passages. Sept.: .)[Our version follows the Sept., as does St. Paul in Rom 15:10. Nor does this rendering differ essentially from that which makes His people the direct object of the joy. For the heathen here called upon to laud Gods people can only be required to do so when they have themselves received a share in Gods mercies to His land and His people, and had cause therefore themselves to rejoice with His people. It is apparent also that since the praise is to be addressed in the first instance to His people, and not directly to God Himself, the mercies must be regarded as overflowing to the rejoicing Gentiles through and from the Jews. Nor can we imagine such praise to be bestowed by the Gentiles upon the Jews for such mercies whilst the Jews were themselves excluded from the same. It seems then that in this profound passage there is shadowed forth the purpose of God to overrule (1) the unbelief of the Jews to the bringing in of the Gentiles, and (2) the mercy shown to the Gentiles to the eventual restoration of the Jews (comp. Rom 11:25-36). Bib. Com.A. G.]The blood of His servants appears as the blood of martyrs who have sealed their faithfulness to Jehovah with their blood (Mat 23:31; Mat 23:34-35; Luk 18:7; Rev 6:10; Rev 18:20; Rev 18:24; Rev 19:2). For the rest comp. Deu 32:41. Genuinely Mosaic is it to the last: to His land and people, the two fundamental references of the Pentateuch from Genesis onward. To which the remark of J. H. Michaelis well agrees, that in this song the enemies of God are peculiarly Israel after the flesh. How else indeed could the song be a testimony against Israel? At all events it relates to the guilt of blood, pressing as a burden upon the land, and at the same time the stain which through it comes upon the people, first of all upon Israel. Comp. Deu 21:8; Lev 16:33; Num 35:33; Zec 3:9. With this wonderful, mysterious tone the song ceases. (The close of the Old Covenant reflects itself in the way in which this song closes, Psa 22:27 sq. Schultz.)
6. Deu 32:44-52. This passage commends itself to us as from a different hand than that of Moses (Introd. 2). It is not against this view, but rather in its favor, that it is from the same hand which has added also chaps. 33 and. 34, Deu 32:44, instead of the earlier constantly used , is remarkable. The former, his domestic name, denotes simply help, salvation; the latter, his more public official name, denotes that Jehovah is this or his help. The first natural name of Joshua would be most appropriate if he was the person who has added this section and the following chapters, especially that at the first opportunity at which it could occur, he should thus at the beginning designate the tone corresponding to his modesty. He was Hoshea, as he was the servant of Moses, and so he names himself again when he, in this writing, actually serves him. Comp. further Deu 31:30; Deu 31:19.And Hoshea, thus according to the divine direction; Joshua only assisted. Comp. Deu 32:45. In this way Israel could reach the conviction of the entire accord between the predecessor and his successor. Deu 32:45. Comp. Deu 31:24. Deu 32:46. Testify, more exactly, which I take to witness, or better still, through which I lay down my testimony; a reference to Deu 31:26, but especially to Deu 31:19; Deu 31:21. It is the song pre-eminently which is intended, which should help to faithfulness to the law. Comp. Deu 6:7; Deu 11:19. Deu 32:47. The proof as Deu 30:11. , from (), contracted from , to remove, put far away. Hence is neither: so that it had no importance for them (Schultz), nor as equivalent with not more vain and empty than you yourselves (Knobel). For the rest comp. Deu 30:20. Deu 32:48. The day of the song; thus this was his dying (swan) song. Deu 32:49. (Num 27:12 sq.) The particularity in the description of the locality should not escape notice; more appropriate for Joshua: than for God. Keil calls attention also to the imperatives. Comp. upon Deu 3:27. The plural, , designates the mountain range on that side, east of the Jordan. The particular () mountain of this mountainous border of Moab is the . Hengstenberg, Hist. of Balaam. In this region (Buckingham, Travels) there are outlooks stretching from thirty to sixty miles in breadth, e.g. at Heshbon, from whence one can see Jerusalem directly to the west, and still more clearly Bethlehem. Deu 32:50. Comp. Gen 25:8; Gen 25:17; Num 20:25 sq. (Deu 10:6)[Unto thy people seems to indicate something more than that the body of Moses was gathered with the buried dust of his fathers, and if not a proof of the immortality and consciousness of the soul after death (Wordsworth), it is one of those passages which imply that truth.A. G.]
Deu 32:51. , to separate, to be rebellious, to act faithlessly. Num 20:12; Num 27:14; Num 20:13; Num 20:24.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. What is said, Num 12:8, as to the distinct position of Moses, from the literal prophetic order, receives its full confirmation in this chapter. As God speaks to Moses without any reserve what related to the destiny of Israel and the world, literally mouth to mouth, it is a conversation or dialogue. The servant faithful in all the house, introduces the song in inspired faith and with burning zeal, accompanies and closes it with painful lamentation (Deu 32:29 sq.), yet not without blessed hope (Deu 32:43).
2. If Moses nevertheless is a prophet in the more general sense of the word, the which is denied to him in distinction from the literal prophets, Num 12:6-7, and the granted to him, Deu 32:8 (although the latter is qualified and explained by (riddles) and ), is intelligible through the figurative and generally poetical style of this chapter. We may say: the figurative term for Jehovah, is perhaps from the , which, according to Num 12:8, Moses saw.
3. Poetry and prophecy in their relationship and their difference. The relation is not a barely formal one. Goethe: Poetry is inspiration, which he explains more fully by genius; with which, for the Christian view of the world and life, there arises at once a distinctiona distinction like that between nature and grace. Comp. the excellent work of Sack (Songs in the Historical Books of the Old Testament, p. 3 sq.). Steinbeck, the Poet a Seer, Leipsic, 1836. Comp. Lange, Phil. Dogm., p. 367, 374.
4. But it is not poetry alone, music also, which here appears in the service of religion; the song, chap. 32, is not only a poem, it is at the same time a song. In the song we have the unity of poetry and music. Comp. the thoughtful treatment of the point in view here, in Lange as cited above, p. 375 (2Ki 3:15).
5. The parallel between the ancient classical poetry and the Old Testament poetry and prophecy. The form, the beautiful, festive appearance, rules in the former; the living realities, the vehement, struggling conflict which marks the progress of history (des werdens), for the latter. There the beautiful is prominent; here the sublime, exalted. Lange (Herzogs Realencycl. 11 773).
6. It is as a festive celebration of the beautiful with the good (the kalokagathie), that not only the deuteronomic discourses, but the entire historical activity of Moses closes in poetry and song. In correspondence with this is the look at Canaan from Nebo, closing his lifethe most beautiful image.
7. The contents and connection, Sack correctly calls so great and comprehensive, that he speaks here of the prototype of all prophecy in a certain measure of the connection of the Old and New Testaments. That which forms the contents of the word of God, the contents of prophecy in the narrower sense, that also forms the contents of this song: the law and the gospel. The thread of its idea runs from Israel, the people of God in truth (Deu 32:36), in order to reach the nations generally in the future (Deu 32:43). Tholuck designates it as a prophetical theodicee of God in history.
8. Whoever is accustomed to place the divine anger in opposition to the divine love will never win an understanding of the deepest and truest nature of this song. The perception of the burning zeal of God proceeds from the zeal of His love (Sack).
9. The righteousness of God is not especially a judicial, punitive righteousness, but a forthgoing in the direct way of that justice, grounded in His eternal holiness and love, according to which His creatures must regulate their lives, etc. (Sack).
10. The fact that the adoption belonged to the Israelites, Rom 9:4 puts beyond question. The parallelism there is in any case between and , and so much the more truly, as throughout the (morally) filial relation, outward or inward, formal or essential, must be formed according to the conduct in reference to the will of the Father, i.e. the law. If we hold to the objective side, then the law demands love. Thus it includes the gospel, love; and there remains thus between the Old and the New Testaments a difference only of method; there the demand, here the fulfillment, of which the antelegal time forms the promise. Thus the law is an institution, and the Israelitish adoption is also an institution, not, however, a ceremonial, but political, i.e. Israel as a nation is the adoption of God, placed as His right, His house, His glory among the nations. Limited to Israel as the chosen people, the idea is therein proclaimed, that God is the creative founder and builder of its theocratic life, cherishing and training Israel as a child. It is (Gal 4:1 sq.) the relation of a minor child, when in respect to the father, as is fitting the time of life, he is conscious only of that life-support in the form of care and guardianship, not the free spiritual communion which inwardly develops itself in riper years (Beck, Christ. Lehr-wissensch. I., p. 344 sq.). It is not barely in a figurative (comparative) method (Hengstenberg); neither only typical (Lange). The typical in the Old Testament idea of adoption refers to the true Israel, and to Israel according to the truth. As to the subjective realization of the adoption of God, it does not require to be spoken to here upon this chapter: but its treatment properly belongs to the Psalms. It is not to be forgotten that the kernel of Israel, which comes into account here as to the adoption, appears rather as the servant of Jehovah (Deu 32:36; Deu 32:43). The stage of the Holy Spirits manifestation alluded to (Joh 7:39) is that of consummation (comp. Del., Bibl. Proph. Theol., p. 233 sq., 243 sq.), or better still, that of the seal, of confirmation, but not first of efficient working.
11. The existence of Israel as a nation is indeed like that of other nations brought about in a natural way, not through a spiritual new birth, but still Israel has its remotest ground in the supernatural mighty word of promise given to Abraham (Gen 17:15 sq.); and a circle of wonderful, mighty proofs and gracious leadings have brought Israel from this starting point of its existence, to the goal to which it attained with the exodus from Egypt (Del. upon Isa 1:2).
12. It is very strange when Sack in opposition to Schultz, calls the distinction of a better kernel in Israel, conceded to the later prophets, here a forced distinction, and one which in this Mosaic work has no place, is not even intimated in the song. So essential a view could not fail entirely in the very magna charta of prophecy (Hengstenberg); it must at least be intimated, although its actual carrying out may be handed over to that which follows. The distinction between the nation, and the people of God, the separation of the servant of Jehovah is truly Mosaic; not merely according to the narrative of the primitive and preliminary history of Israel (comp. upon Deu 32:5), which Moses gives, but directly through the events with reference to Caleb, Joshua (Deu 1:36; Deu 1:38), Phinehas (Num 25:7), the Levites (Deu 10:8; comp. Exo 32:26), and indeed through his own existence as the servant of the Lord above others (Num 12:7). On the other hand Schultz remarks upon Deuteronomy 30 : In the most eventful moments of his life he had experienced that the Lord even then, when His anger burned most fiercely, and when He was ready to condemn Israel without any restraint, would spare at least him, the one, etc. He must have had the consoling conviction, without which he would not have had strength, even from the beginning, over against the general obstinacy of the people, that there was a sacred seed still existing, in order to produce from itself a new and better sowing for victory and glory. In the very being of God Himself, it lay concealed, etc., etc. The exposition has pointed out the intimations in the song.
13. Sack, Deu 32:10 sq., opposes very finely the view which has never yet entirely vanished, according to which the God of the Old Testament is pre-eminently a frightful and terrible God. It is the fundamental thought of the divine education of Israel to religious, godly sorrow, or a sorrow which works a change of mind, agreeing on one side with the drawing of the first man to love and obedience through the fullness of the surrounding glorious creation, and on the other side with the evangelical motive: Let us love Him, for He has first loved us.
14. A superficial view only of the history of Israel reveals merely the opposition to Jeshurun; a closer examination will justly bring out the variance between the idea in Jeshurun and the reality in the manifestation of Israel. The history of the people is the history of this variance, reaches its greatest crisis when the Gentile judge repeatedly proclaims Him the Jeshurun, and Israel, on the contrary, cries: Crucify Him! crucify Him! A purpose fixed by God, which He realizes in the fullness of time through the Messiah, must verify itself also by the way, as drawing nearer this goal, however separated into its parts or elements in its realization. This is the truth of the divine word. A deeper view of the history of Israel, says Hengstenberg, reveals to us, even in the most corrupt times, the existence of an , to whom the predicate perfect belongs (?); the best evidence of whose existence is found in the judgment upon the dishonesty and unrighteousness of the people, which at all times comes forth from its own bosom. Where do we find such a morally reacting force among the Gentiles? So also the history shows that the times of corruption, in which honesty and righteousness are confined to the little flock, are ever followed by times of reformation, in which honesty and righteousness more or less penetrate the whole life of the nation. (The period of the judges already.) Israel is, especially in relation to the Gentiles, Jeshurun.
15. The results of the sanctifying ordinances and institutions of Jehovah among His people entitle it to this name Jeshurun; of the law as giving the knowledge of His will; of the sacrifice especially as procuring the pardon of sin, of the Spirit working in the people, giving the experience of communion with God, the covenant-communion. It is equally erroneous to ground salvation upon a state or disposition attained subjectively by ones own strength, and to regard this inward state as unnecessary (Hengstenberg).
16. The thought, Deu 32:26-27, is the more striking, inasmuch as after Israel, as this people, has come to an entire end, it presents its evil condition historically, and legitimates itself as a thought of God through the continuous existence of the Jews. Over against the hatred of the nations, foaming out in persecutions of the Jews (since the time of the Romans, especially in the Christian middle ages), its existence willed by God was strongly assured both through the remarkable outward means of existence (Deu 15:6; Deu 28:12), and through the peculiar inward and intellectual endowments which characterize it even to this day. (Keith, Witnesses, supposes their prosperity, indeed their wealth, to serve as the object of the threatened spoiling (28, 29?), and also for the approaching enrichment of the Israel of the future, formed again to a people; accompanied with the very singular remark, that their ill successes were limited to Canaan during the lime of the divine judgment upon them, as if under the Turkish power they could not prosecute their pursuits there as they could elsewhere!)
17. Israels end as to the flesh, Deu 32:29 (20), must be at the same time Israels completion as to the Spirit, and this is the Messianic horizon which environs this song.
18. The rejoicing of the nations, with which the song closes, sets in a clear light the conversion of the Gentiles as the consequence of the judicial sifting and destructive mighty deeds of the Lord upon Israel and upon the world at large (e.g. Heathen Rome). The first song of Moses already (Exo 15:14 sq.) dwelt upon the issues of the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. The resulting impression upon the contiguous heathen nations at first indeed an impression of alarm. The other side of the results of the falling away of Israel, both for the world and the Gentiles, is set forth by St. Paul, Rom 11:11 sq. Whether the , Rom 11:12, brings into view another complement of Israel than that through the Gentiles, a rescuing, namely, even of the unbelieving part of Israel, and thus the entire conversion of the people is intended, or whether the gain by means of the whole Israel, which is the new true Israel composed of Jews and Gentiles, for the yet wider world and all the Gentiles, and thus the conquest of the race through the Church of Christ is intended, may be left undecided. Comp. Doct. and Eth. upon chap. 30.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Deu 32:1. Luther: It happens also that when God visits unbelievers, and lays hold upon them, they imagine that all the creatures have become their enemies. The whole creation agrees as a witness of the law with the law. Moses shows in this whole song the method of the law (Rom 4:15; Rom 7:7), and acts as a true preacher of the law. But he summons heaven and earth to witness, because he treats of so great a matter, which does not concern a kingdom, or gold and silver, but that which is of the utmost moment to every one, namely, either to have God, the fountain of all good, and with Him all eternal and temporal salvation, or to be eternally without either. R. Bechai: He begins with the creation of the world, and from thence onwards until he closes his discourse with the days of the Messiah.Heaven and earth as spectators, hearers and witnesses.Jahn: There is nothing elsewhere comparable to these first two verses in the boldness of expression.
Deu 32:2. Luther: When Gods word is preached purely then it is not as with human statutes, clouds without rain, 2Pe 2:17. But he sets the herb and the grass over against the stony ground and the sand; for it belongs to the word, that the doctrine should be healthful, and the hearers thirsty and docile. V. Gerlach: The richness and fullness can only be a fullness of blessing. For the severest punitive testimony of the law has a life-giving and invigorating efficacy for the true servant of his covenant God.
Deu 32:3. Luther: But the little flock, the believers and saints upon the earth, give the glory to God the Lord alone. But hypocrites and other godless persons, whatever they may confess in words, in heart rely upon their own goodness, wisdom, power, or look to men for help and consolation.
Deu 32:4. Teller (Engl. Bib.): It declares the eternity of God, the unchangeableness of His purposes, and the insuperable power of His majesty. Baumgarten: He had proved Himself as the Rock, both in Egypt and the wilderness, as He had manifested Himself as the only support in heaven or upon earth, for Israel.The Rock of Israel: Jehovah according to His work, ways, nature and attributes.Starke: The name of the Lord is a strong tower, Pro 18:10; Nah 1:7. Zinzendorf: Jesus is the true one, faithful unto death, in respect to His merits for us over death and the grave. A husband, who is perfection in His nature, has such an evil bride. Schultz: It is a great consolation that God is immutable in His power and will (faithfulness); that His way is right, He Himself without injustice, therefore, it is inculcated, because with this knowledge the punishment would not be received with incredulity.
Deu 32:5. Richter: The reformation corresponds with the redemption from Egypt; to the rejection of Jehovah corresponds, alas! the modern unbelief and apostacy.
Deu 32:6. Herder: God remains the father; but they cease to be His children, first by their wickedness, then in their destiny.[Wordsworth: This is more fully verified in Christ, who hath purchased His Church with His own blood (Act 20:28; 1Co 6:20). Dost thou, O Christian, who sinnest against Christ, thus requite the Lord who bought thee (Judges 4)?A.G.]
Deu 32:7. Richter: How many Christian fathers, alas! would now grow dumb at such questions! Cramer: The Church the witness of the truth.
Deu 32:8. Schultz: His own people must at last possess the whole earth, or bear away the spoil thereof; for the meek shall inherit the earth.God is the Highest; why should men flatter others and call them by this title?
Deu 32:10. Starke: God finds us; His grace is all, and in all. He here appears as the bridegroom who goes out to seek His bride. Israel unmarried was without law, etc. He named him after His own name, etc. V. Gerlach: The wilderness is the point of departure, because of the vivid contrasts to the fullness of blessing of the land of promise. He finds Israel as a lost sheep.
Deu 32:11. Bochart: In the Old Testament the figure of the eagle; in the new that of the hen.Here Israel, the eagles brood, over the carcass of Canaan; later the Romish eagle over the carcass of Israel.
Deu 32:12. Jehovah alone; thus the song sings, thus the whole history of Israel proclaims, and thus the experience of all the children of God attests.
Deu 32:13 sq. When the Lord is the leader then is the victory and the blessing. The lofty flight of His people to victory, to proud security, to a full enjoyment of all.
Deu 32:15. Cramer: Good times and plenty often lead to a contempt of the word of God and to many sins.[The temptations and dangers of prosperity.A. G.]
Deu 32:20. Richter: Hidden as the sun behind the clouds.
Deu 32:21. Baumgarten: In so far as all the Gentile nations rest upon the ground of nature, their national character is transient and no people; thus in the light of the full eternal truth all and every one of the Gentiles are foolish nations, because they are without the source of all wisdom, the knowledge of God, because they do not possess the law of Israel. Deu 32:22 sq. Herder: With such a prophetic outlook must the law-giver of the people close his wearied life. Deu 32:29. Cramer: Blindness and security precede the divine punishments. Berl. Bib.: Who is there who has shown sufficient earnestness, diligence and care in a preparation for his latter end? Where is the dying before one dies, the judging before one is judged?
Deu 32:37 sq. Cramer: There is no protection or help in false doctrine.
Deu 32:40. What consolation still is heaven for the earth!
Deu 32:43. The penitential Psalm becomes a song of rejoicing, as true repentance ends ever in shouts of triumph. True repentance is true joy. The history of the world is not first a world-judgment, but truly a judgment of Israel. The thoughts of peace of the Eternal One as to the times, in the calling of Israel, in the fullness of the Gentiles.
Deu 32:46. Berl. Bib.: The command is without force if the example is worthless. We understand correctly; for hypocrisy makes hypocrites. The divine life and work conceals and carries with it also a divine authority more than in all blows, cries and words.
Deu 32:47. Sin is suicide.
Deu 32:48 sq. Berl. Bib.: Thus the Lord prepared Moses for his death.
Deu 32:52. Berl. Bib.: He shall not go in thither; as David also should not build the temple whose model he was permitted to see.
Footnotes:
[1][Deu 32:5. Margin: He hath corrupted himself.A. G.].
[2][Deu 32:5. Margin: That they are not his children; that is, their blot. Schroeder, more literally: not his childrentheir spottaking in the moral sense, as equivalent with stain or blemish.A. G.].
[3][Deu 32:6. The word used here denotes rather the founding, or perhaps redeeming, and thus acquiring for himself.A. G.].
[4][Deu 32:10. , without form, Gen 1:2A. G.].
[5][Deu 32:10. Literally: took thought for him. Schroeder supplies nothing after the , and makes open the sentence, and the apodosis begin at once: as the eagle, He, etc.A. G.].
[6][Deu 32:17. Shedim. Schroeder transfers the Hebrew. The root seems to mean to waste, destroy. Gesen. derives it from the root meaning to rule, and hence renders idols, lords. It is used here most probably with reference to the malignant, destructive character of idol worship.A. G.].
[7] [Deu 32:19. Our version, while substantially correct, is needlessly verbose, and weakens the force of the original. Better:
And the Lord saw, and rejected,
Out of indignation, his sons and his daughters.A. G.].
[8][Deu 32:21. The italics are not only needless, but impair the force of the original.A. G.].
[9][Deu 32:22. Margin: hath burned.A. G.].
[10][Deu 32:22. Margin: hath consumed.A. G.].
[11][Deu 32:26. The verb occurs only here, and is derived from a root to which Ges. and Fuerst assign the meaningto breathe, blow,thus utterly to scatter them.A. G.].
[12][Deu 32:27. Margin: Our high hand, and not the Lord, hath done all this.A. G.].
[13][Deu 32:28. Schrder views this as the close of what Jehovah began to say in the twentieth verse, regarding the intervening verses as in a special sense belonging to the Lord.A. G.].
[14][Deu 32:32. Margin: is worse than the vine of Sodom, taking the in its local, comparative sense, rather than as a partitive.A. G.].
[15][Deu 32:35. Literally: To me is vengeance, and retribution for the time their foot shall shake. Deu 32:34-35 are marked by Schroeder as in a peculiar sense the words of Jehovah.A. G.].
[16][Deu 32:40. Keil and Bib. Com. remove the stop at the end of this verse, and make 4042 one sentence. There is no necessity for this, as the sense is equally clear with the present pointing.A. G.].
[17][Deu 32:42. Others, following Gesenius, take here for princes, and render, from the head of the princes of the enemy. But see Psa 68:22, which seems to confirm the rendering of Schroeder: the hairy head of the enemy.A. G.].
[18][Deu 32:43. Or, Praise, O ye nations, his people. Keil: Rejoice, nations, over his people. The rendering of Schroeder is preferable. It preserves the distinction between nations and people which is insisted upon in the song, and supplies nothing to the text. The transitive sense of the verb, if not usual, is permissible.A. G.].
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
DISCOURSE: 231
THE CHARACTER OF JEHOVAH
Deu 32:1-4. Give ear, O ye heavens, and I trill speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop at the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
IN this chapter is contained the song which Moses wrote for the conviction of the Jews in all future ages, especially in that period when they should have provoked God to scatter them over the face of the whole earth. Its general contents have been before considered [Note: See Discourse on Deu 31:19.]. At present we shall confine ourselves only to its exordium, in which Moses addresses the whole creation, and then describes the character of the Creator. An invocation of the heavens and the earth is not uncommon in the Scriptures: it is used in order to impress men with a deeper sense of the importance of the subject, and to convey an idea, that even the inanimate creation will rise up in judgment against the children of men, if they should disregard the voice of their Creator. After requesting their attention, he declares, that the whole tendency of his discourse, and especially of that part which exhibits the character of the Deity, is to comfort and enrich the souls of men. As the dew and rain descend gently and silently upon the earth, softening the parched ground, refreshing and invigorating the drooping plants, and administering nourishment to the whole vegetable creation, so was his word intended to administer blessings to mankind, quickening the most dead, softening the most obdurate, comforting the most disconsolate, and fertilizing the most barren, among them all.
We are aware that a directly opposite effect is in general ascribed to a faithful ministration of the word: it is in general supposed, that a scriptural representation of the divine character must of necessity alarm and terrify mankind: but, whatever effect it may produce on them that are determined to hold fast their sins, it cannot fail to comfort all whose minds are duly prepared to receive it, and to operate on their souls as rain upon the new-mown grass. This will appear, whilst we,
I.
Illustrate the representation here given of the Deity
The description which Moses gives of Jehovah is short, but comprehensive: it sets forth,
1.
His personal majesty
[The term Rock is often used in reference to the Deity; and intimates to us both what he is in himself, and what he is to us. In himself he is the great unchangeable Jehovah; and to his people a safe and everlasting Refuge. Whether it be from the storms of temptation or the heat of persecution, he affords protection to all who flee unto him [Note: Isa 32:2.] and, to those who build upon him, he is an immovable foundation: nothing shall ever shake them; nothing shall ever disappoint them of their hopes [Note: Isa 45:17.] ]
2.
His providential government
[Deep and mysterious are his ways, yet are they all ordered in perfect wisdom and goodness. In the world, in the Church, and in our own individual cases, there are many things which we cannot account for; yet if we imagine that any one of them could have been more wisely appointed, we only betray our own ignorance and presumption. We cannot tell why God confined the revelation of his will to one single family for so many ages, or why it is still known to so small a part of the world: but in due time God will make it evident that such a mode of dispensing mercy was most conducive to his own glory. When a persecution arose in the Church about Stephen, and the saints, driven from Jerusalem, were scattered over the face of the earth, it probably appeared to them an inexplicable dispensation: but the benefit of it soon appeared, because the banished Christians propagated the Gospel wherever they came [Note: Act 8:1; Act 8:4.]. And when Paul was confined in prison two years, it might be thought a most calamitous event: yet does he himself tell us, that it tended rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel [Note: Php 1:12-14.]. Thus, in innumerable instances, we are ready to say, like Jacob, All these things are against us, when in fact they are all working together for our good; and we are constrained after a season to acknowledge, that our greatest crosses were only blessings in disguise [Note: Psa 97:2.].]
3.
His moral perfections
[Justice, holiness, and truth, are inseparable from the Deity; He is a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. The present state of things indeed does not afford us a just criterion whereby to judge of these perfections; because eternity is not open to our view: but the brightest display of them that can be exhibited to mortal eyes, is seen in the great work of redemption: for God has determined not to pardon any of the human race (at least, not any to whom the light of revelation comes,) except in a way that shall magnify these perfections; nor will he condemn any, without making them witnesses for him, that he is holy, and just, and true. It is for this very end that he sent his only-begotten Son into the world: for, by bearing our sins in his own body on the tree, Jesus has made a complete satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, and opened a way for the exercise of mercy in perfect consistency with all the other attributes of the Deity. The true believer makes an open confession of this, and acknowledges, that all his hopes are founded on the sacrifice of Christ: the unbeliever experiences in his own person the weight of that justice, which he would not honour in the person of his surety: so that all in heaven, and all in hell too, are constrained to say, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints [Note: Rev 15:3.].]
That we may make a practical use of the Divine character we shall,
II.
Shew how to make it a source of comfort to the soul
If the Deity is an object of terror to any, it must arise either from an erroneous idea of his character, or from an opposition of mind to it. In order then to derive comfort from it, we must,
1.
Get a just and comprehensive view of the Divine perfections
[If, as is too often the case, we paint to ourselves a God all mercy, who will never vindicate the honour of his law, nor ever fulfil his threatenings against sin or sinners, we may allay our fears for the present, but we can never bring peace or comfort into the soul: for, as we have no foundation for such an idea of the Deity, we never can divest ourselves of the apprehension that we may be mistaken, and that we may find him at last such a Being as the Scriptures represent him. On the other hand, if we view nothing but his justice, he must of necessity appear terrible in our eyes, because we cannot but know that we are transgressors of his law. But if we regard him as he is set forth in his word, and particularly as he appears in the person of Christ, then do we find in him all that is great and good, yea all that our souls can wish for, or our necessities require ]
2.
Get our own hearts suitably affected with them
[Whilst the majesty of God should fill us with holy awe, and his power make us fearful of incurring his displeasure, these exalted perfections should encourage an affiance in him, as an almighty Helper, and an all-sufficient Protector. His very sovereignty should lead us to apply to him for mercy, because he will be most glorified in shewing mercy to the chief of sinners. Of course, a view of his love, his mercy, and his truth, must inspire us with holy confidence, and dispel all the fears which conscious unworthiness must create: we should therefore contemplate them with unceasing care, as the grounds of our hope, and the sources of our eternal welfare. Nor is it of small moment to have our minds impressed with a sense of his wisdom and goodness in all his providential dealings. It is by that that we shall have our minds composed under all the most afflictive dispensations, and encouraged to expect a happy issue out of the most calamitous events In a word, the representations which God has given of himself will then be most delightful to us, when our hearts are most filled with humility and love.]
Application
[Hear now, O ye heavens! and give ear, O earth! say whether these views of the Deity do not tend to the happiness of man O that God would shine into all our hearts, to give us the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ! then should our meditation of him be sweet, and our fruits abound to the praise and glory of his grace.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
CONTENTS
This chapter is almost filled with that beautiful song of Moses, which, from its containing so much of gospel in it, hath warned and instructed the mind of GOD’S people in all ages. Having finished his sermon, the dying pastor gives out this hymn at the close of it, before he dismisses his congregation, and is dismissed himself with the blessing. Here are contained some of the many gracious dealings of the LORD with Israel. Here are contained also, some of their many grievous dealings with the LORD. Here are blended promises and threatenings. The chapter concludes with the LORD’S command to his servant Moses, to go up into the Mount preparatory to his death.
Deu 32:1
There is great elegance, as well as piety, in the whole of this song. The calling upon things inanimate to hear, when, perhaps, the intelligence of man disregards, is uncommonly striking. And will not both heaven and earth be witness against us, if we neglect so great salvation? The heaven shall declare GOD’S righteousness. Psa 50:6 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Last Song
Deuteronomy 31-32
The old man whom we have known so long dies singing. All men should die so; all men may so die: God is not sparing in his gift of song or privilege of music: music was in his purpose long before speech: all things are to end in a great song. What speeches may be delivered on high we cannot tell: few if any have been reported even by dreamers and seers; but they have all told us of the singing that characterises life in the upper spaces: they quote the very words of the noble song; they give some idea of the innumerableness of the numbers who sing the triumphant hymn. God means, therefore, that every life should end in a song not necessarily in the mechanical definition of that term, but as to its spiritual scope and meaning: there is triumph in serenity yea, serenity may be the last expression of triumph. There are songs without words: there is singing without articulate and audible voice: we may sing with the spirit and with the understanding. Blessed are they who, before going up to Nebo to die, sing in the valley, and, so to say, pass out of sight with their singing robes around them; to this end we are invited in Christ, and in Christ this is the only possible end namely, triumph, song; the rapture of expectancy, and the inspiration of hope.
The song was to be a “witness” for God “against” the children of Israel, say, rather, as between himself and the children of Israel. Witness does not always imply accusation: it quite as frequently implies confirmation, endorsement, approval; it embodies in itself a sure testimony, strong because of its indisputableness. God is said to be “Judge,” and we too frequently attach somewhat of harshness to that word; in many of its relations it is noble in its tenderness: it is a refuge to which the soul may continually flee. God is the “Judge” of the widow and the fatherless. Does the Scripture mean that God will hold them to standards that are severe and bind upon them penalties which are intolerable? On the contrary: instead of Judge, say “Vindicator.” God is the Judge of the widow and fatherless: he will hear their cause and determine it; he will attemper judgment with mercy: in wrath he will remember mercy; to the Judge of all the earth all good causes may appeal, and all weakness, and all inculpable infirmity, and all broken-heartedness. God is the Judge of the little, the mean, the helpless, the widow, the orphan. The word “witness” is to be interpreted after some such fashion. The song is not to be put up to accuse the children of Israel only: it is not an impeachment merely; it is a witness, a record, a testimony, a distinct writing that can be appealed to in all critical or ambiguous circumstances.
Moses wrote the song “the same day.” We speak of our efforts of genius, and the time required for the elaboration of this or that attempt to serve the sanctuary; but if you can write a song at all you can write it at once. Herein the great French poet’s dictum is true: said one to Victor Hugo, “Is it not difficult to write epic poetry?” “No,” said the great genius of his day, “No: easy or impossible.” “Difficult” implies that the poetry can be written with due time, and after due effort; but the French judge would have no such construction put upon the term. Poetry is breathing, looking, the last expression of inspired genius. Moses wrote the song “the same day:” he could not stop the rush of the musical storm: the moment he got the first note he had all the rest in him. How many men would be burning lives, in all the best sense of ardour, if they could but get the first spark! they have fuel enough in them: they have great latent power; but they have not the starting spark, the first ignition, which would set on a blaze whole volumes of noble matter.
Moses has been trained to this effort: he has sung before; but he always sings after great disclosures of the divine face after the most vivid consciousness of the divine presence and touch. His songs are all in the same key: they roll along the same lofty level; they never beat into weakness, they are never impaired by meanness; from end to end they are God’s own songs, and Moses seems to have been but a hand in the grasp of Omnipotence when he traces the immortal words. Such is to be our ministry; such is to be our life: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
What are the characteristics of a great song? The first most noticeable characteristic of this song is that it is intensely theological. The keyword is GOD in his majesty, in his com passion, in his righteousness, in his tears God in a species of incarnation thousands of years before the event of Bethlehem. Without God there is no song that fills the whole arch; there are snatches of song that want unity, cohesion, and massiveness, stray notes, wandering chords, confused vibrations; but in God you have the upgathering of every chord, bar, suggestion, and tone of music: he is the centralising, uniting, all-cohering force. Have nothing to do with songs that do not lead up to God. This will not exclude many songs that are supposed to be of a secular kind. Who made the earth? Who cut off the little slice from eternity which we call time? God is the God of the whole world, and his is the fulness of the sea. Many a song that dips down towards recreation, amusement, entertainment, may have in it the true music of heaven; let such be the beginning, and let the end be grand as thunder, solemn as lightning, appalling as the height of heaven.
Another characteristic of the song is its broad human history. Read the thirty-second chapter from end to end, and you will find it a record of historical events. Facts are the pedestals on which we set sculptured music. We must know our own history if we would know the highest religious arguments, and apply with unquestionable and beneficent skill great Christian appeals. The witness must be in ourselves: we must know, and taste, and feel, and handle of the word of life, and live upon it, returning to it as hunger returns to bread and thirst flies swiftly to sparkling fountains. We do not live upon the history of other people: we only read the history of Israel to show how true it is that God is one and that his government is an indissoluble whole. To the Christian student there is no ancient history in the sense of history that is antiquated, obsolete, and no longer applicable to human circumstances. What we call ancient history was done yesterday from a divine point of view; from that point of view, indeed, there is but one day, quick with the tumultuous pulses of a thousand years. As we have often seen, we impoverish ourselves and lower the temperature of all noblest history by causing great spaces to intervene between our personal consciousness and the actual transaction of the events. Everything has occurred today. Early on the summer morning God said, “Let there be light,” and the east whitened, and the dawn blushed, and over all the hills and vales and streams there came a tender glory. This very morning God shaped us in his own image and likeness. He was with us in the darkness, bearing our aching and weary heads, remaking us, reconstructing us, putting a distance between ourselves and our last sin and our most recent failure, and setting us up in the strength of recruited power to attempt the labour of another day. Speak not of ancient history in any sense that severs present consciousness from the eternal providence of God. When you are doubtful as to religious mysteries, read your own personal record; when metaphysics are too high or too deep, peruse facts, put the pieces of your lives together: see how they become a shape a house not made with hands, a temple fashioned in heaven. The days are not to be detached from one another: they are to be linked on and held in all the symbolism and reality of their unity. Hence, another characteristic of the song is its record of providence. God found Jacob
“In a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him” ( Deu 32:10-12 ),
“Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation” ( Deu 32:15 ).
Moses able to say all this after such experience as he knew! This is a noble testimony; this, indeed, is a complete and happy vindication of the ways of God to man. It is Moses who writes this; no poet was created for the purpose: no hidden genius or flower born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air was developed for the purpose of writing these noble stanzas, these rolling, thunderous bursts of song. The old legislator, the holy leader, the man who had to bear so much, who knew all the providence of God in human history even from the beginning to the end he was elected to be poet. That is God’s way. Serve on faithfully; bend the back, use your arms, toil in the dust; but whatever you do carry it out with both hands, with reality and simplicity of purpose; and, by-and-by, when the poet is wanted, you, toiler, may be told to stand up and sing. This is the loving way of God: those who pass his scrutiny go in through the gate of pearl to sing on the inner side: after hearing God’s “Well done, good and faithful servant,” everything but a song becomes impossible; from that poetry there can be no apostasy into prosaic moods and contracted spaces.
In this song we have the commandments all repeated, that is to say, you find nothing in the Ten Commandments, as to the formation of human character and the shaping of human destiny, that is not to be found in this great song. Commandments must be the severe side of true music; duty is only the outer aspect of song. Without the commandments of God there could be no songs of men with reality in them and with the fire pentecostal and the touch that gives immortality God will have his commandments honoured: first he will state them in plain, stern terms: “Thou shalt,” “Thou shalt not:” there shall be no mistake about the literal meaning of the commands of God; but after long years every commandment will come back again upon us in song, in appeal, in persuasion, in tears, in the Cross of Christ, and in all the love spoken by the Gospel. Thus the Bible is one: the spirit of the Bible is a spirit of righteousness, truth, compassion, redemption. Everything in human history is in the Pentateuch; every romance that can be read aloud and every true work of fiction repeats the commandments of Sinai. Men do more than perhaps they mean to do. We cannot escape the circle of God in any lawful industry, in any conscientious effort. A man shall set himself to depict in parable or fiction the life of his day; he may describe himself as an artist, he may even go so far as to describe himself as a mere artist a devotee of art, a student of proportion, perspective, and colour; he little knows that in proportion as he succeeds in rightly interpreting life he is a preacher. Great is the company of preachers! They would not be called by that name: they are suspicious of that limited term, because it has been limited by the very men who should have glorified it. You find all the fiction in the world that is true to human life in the parable of the Prodigal Son: the pen of fiction has never touched a point that is not involved within the sweep of that nobler delineation. The parables of Christ contain everything every spark of genius, every throb of poetry, every moral of sound teaching. So we return to find all the commandments of God in the last song of Moses; as God first gives the commandments, and then gives the history, and then gives the song, so all life is under his control, and he is revealing his purposes and providences in many a book never meant to call attention to his sovereignty. Many are called they know not why, or how, or to what end: the first may be last, the last may be first. As for those who are nominally Christians and preachers baptised men, anointed with a sacred unction what if they fall short of their calling and other men should come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and they the supposed lineage of God should be shut out! The Christian reader of all history should make it his business to include, wherever he can, every effort and attempt made to lighten human burdens, to soothe human misery, and disentangle human perplexity; we cannot have such service described as worldly, secular, atheistic. He who dries a child’s innocent tears is by so much serving God; he who but closes his eyes silently before partaking of his food recognises a Hand unseen a Giver quite near; he who writes a poem for the purpose of brightening family life and cheering solitary wanderers he who leaves behind him some sign which may be seen after many days, that a forlorn and shipwrecked brother seeing may take heart again, is a minister not ordained by human touch or recognition of an ecclesiastical kind, but a helper in the human strife, a friend of the friendless. Do not reject commandments because they come in the form of song, and do not regard song as being destitute of the inspiration and virility of righteousness. The Bible combines strength and beauty, law and gospel Moses and the Lamb. Our life is meant to fall into music. Music is an abused term. The musicians have been as unkind to music as the theologians have been unkind to theology. Definitions need enlargement; terms need ampler reference and application. Many a man is musical who cannot sing; the spirit of music is in the man: he knows the true tone when he hears it not from the critical point of view but it touches his soul, comes into his being like an inspiration, and soothes him like a benediction, or stirs him like a war-trumpet. Music is the inheritance of little children the angel that sits upstairs watching the weak and the dying when hired eyes tire and fall into needed slumber. So with the Gospel of Jesus Christ: it has its stern theology, its profound metaphysics, its awful morality the very snow of heaven, the spotless whiteness of the ineffable purity; but it has its song, its musical strain, and it calls us all to walk in step to go processionally: our feet are to fall harmoniously: the whole motion of the Church is to be a motion united, massive, coherent, resonant, providences turned into psalms, afflictions elevated into music, and righteousness itself the stern commandment is to be made to take up the harp and re-express itself in tender strains. Do be musical, do be harmonious in life; as for the mere vocal exercise, that may be poor or uncultivated, but there is another kind of music a spiritual, intellectual, moral music, and to that we are all called a blessed, a sacred destiny.
Prayer
We would see Jesus. He is the fairest among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. Our eyes ever desire to look upon him, and now we have come to the place of his appointment. Where two or three are gathered together, there Jesus is in the midst; he is always the centre. We know him to be the way, the truth, and the life, and none may dispute his place. We will have this Man to reign over us, for it is his right to reign. We call him King of kings; we hail him Lord of lords; we bow down before him, and worship the Son of God, God the Son, Immanuel God with us. We have praises to sing, and we would sing them with a loud, clear voice. We are not ashamed of the providence of God. Thou art our Father: thou dost guide us with thine eye; thine arms are round about us; thy smile is our soul’s day, thy frown the night in which our soul trembles. Thou hast spread our table bountifully, so that our hunger has been more than satisfied; thou hast kept our house, so that there is peace at home; thou hast given us music in every room and light on every point of the dwelling; verily, thou art the God of the families of the earth, and our households trust in thee. As for our afflictions, it was good for us that we were afflicted: we were chastened, sobered, refined; there came into our voice a tenderer tone, and there settled in our hearts a nobler trust: thou hast sanctified thy chastening, and turned our smarting to our spiritual account. We bless the rod, we kiss the hand that lifted it, and at the grave-side we desire to say, It is well. For all thy mercies we bless thee for every flower that blooms, for every bird that sings, for every stream that moistens the green grass, for all the promise of the year, for a good seed-time and bay harvest, and prospect of plentifulness of bread; the Lord has been in the field, and the orchard, and the garden, and has filled the river with riches. Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto the name of the God of Providence! We will not ask thee for the earth: it is too small a gift for a King; we want thyself, we desire thy Spirit, we yearn for clearer sight of thy love and for further hold of thy purpose, that when we are tossed upon the deep, the tumult may be but local, for in our souls immortal there is rest a deep and eternal tranquillity. We desire to read thy word with new vision, to enter into the spirit of its history and its prophecy, its minstrelsy and gospel, that the word of Christ may dwell in us richly, abounding in gracious fulness, so as to make the enemy afraid because of the holiness of our souls. We desire to see thee in all the way of life, to say every day, This is the Lord: lo, God was here, and I knew it not; and even among these rocks he has set up his ladder. We pray for one another: for the young, and the bright, and the tuneful, that they may rise up into nobleness and usefulness of life; for the sad and the weary; for the man who has just seen life’s emptiness, and turned away with discontent from the place where he meant to find his pleasure. Thou dost send that revelation upon us all; we say, Surely on the mountain-top we shall find our home, and, lo, we cannot stay there, because of the darkness, and the cold, and the dreariness of stony places. We said, Surely now we shall find what we needed of wealth, and beauty, and comfort, and enjoyment; now will begin the dance of pleasure, now will break out the music of lasting gladness; and, behold, we fell among serpents and into dangerous places, and every tree shook as with alarm, and the wind was full of fear. We now see that light is in heaven only, and rest in truth, and peace in faith, and joy in purity; thou hast scourged out of us our old vanities and misleading sophisms and false expectations, and now we see where the garden of the Lord is, and that it opens but at one place, and with one key Jesus, Son of Mary, Son of man, Son of God. We pray for the friends we love, and without whom we could not live the hearts we look for, the travellers we expect with joy, the souls that light every room of the house with tender glory; for our friends who are far away, across the great sea, in the colonies wanderers in places they have not yet known. We pray for those in trouble on the sea that great and terrible waste. We pray for all who are visiting us from distant places: may they feel at home; may there be some touch in thy house that they shall recognise with ardent love and thankfulness. We pray for our sick ones: some nigh unto death; some are sick of body weary, utterly exhausted: the grasshopper is a burden; others are ailing in mind: they are disappointed, they are mortified, they have not found what they expected: they dug in earth that they might find heaven, and, lo, heaven was not there. We pray for those whose graves are quite new, for the grass has not yet had time to grow upon them, there is not a flower upon the mould that hides the dead; be thou the resurrection and the life in the hearts of such, and make them glad even in the churchyard: turn that last resting-place into a garden of flowers, and make it a place where they will keep appointments with those who from death would learn how to live. The Lord be with us now; and we need no other presence. Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
The Song of Moses
Deu 32
What interest can we have in the study of events which occurred thousands of years ago? If that is the question which we put to ourselves, no wonder the answer is sometimes disappointing. We do not study the events which happened thousands of years ago. That would be too narrow a way of putting the case; we might then be mere antiquarians, deeply interested in something that transpired innumerable centuries since. We are not studying the events. We are studying the God that overruled them. Persons are apt to imagine that there is nothing in the Old Testament but old history; they forget that God is in the Old Testament, as in a bush that burns but is not consumed. How often we hear the question, Seeing that all these events occurred so long ago, what have we to do with them at this distance of time? The events certainly did occur long ago, but the God who originated them, or sanctified them, or overruled them, is the God who lighted the lamp of this morning. We study God in studying the Old Testament; and in looking into the events which constitute the narrative line and substance of the Old Testament, we look into them as men look into caskets where they expect to find choice treasure. The events are dead, but God lives. The profoundest and most exciting of all questions is, Does the God of the Old Testament reappear in the New? Is he the God of today? He has proclaimed himself the God of the living in what large sense are we to interpret that term “living”? does it include all beating pulses, all throbbing hearts, all eyes uplifted that they may find satisfaction in the heavens? We must get rid of all narrow definitions. We must purge the mind of the folly that in reading the Old Testament we are digging in a grave; we are keeping company with Jehovah, we are walking with God, we are being charged by the subtle yet broad consistency which unites all human history, and shows the eternal in the very midst of the mutable. Moreover, true songs are never old; music is the youngest of all angels, with a glorious and incalculable ancestry, yet here today to take up all oldest words, and make them thrill and quiver and vibrate with new energy and new passion.
The preface of the song is in the first four verses. The song opens with a noble appeal:
“Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth” ( Deu 32:1 ).
“My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass” ( Deu 32:2 ).
What an easy condescension from the sublime to the minute and the comparatively? insignificant! “My doctrine” that is, my learning, the truth which I hold, the spiritual philosophy which I grasp and value “shall drop as the rain” that is, shall be handed on and down, shall be regarded as the right and inheritance of the ages. No man is to be the perpetual custodian of God’s truth; doctrine is not to be locked up within any four corners, and to be closeted as a private possession. Whoever has a truth must speak it; he will get two truths back for the one which he delivers. Every man must sow his ideas, and reap great harvests of thought. We spoil doctrine by keeping it within confined air; doctrine must go forth, and challenge attention, and ask for audience, and persuade men to adopt it; why? Because doctrine is not a mere sentiment, or idea, or high and audacious thought: it is inspiration; it cannot co-exist with indolence, or selfishness, or disregard of human sin and need; wherever the doctrine is benevolence follows it: both hands are put out to help, and the eyes are made quite quick to detect the necessities and errors of all men. Doctrine, therefore, is not a set of words, an elaboration of phrases: it is an inspiration; a movement, an energy in the soul. All inspired thought says, Speak: correct the mistake, run after the wanderer, help the helpless, make the poor rich. A doctrine of that kind was never meant to be shut up within private quarters, or to be claimed as an individual possession; it is the wealth of the race, it is the treasure of God. He who takes natural objects as his symbols and guides will often act very beautifully as well as very exactly or correctly: “My doctrine shall drop as the rain.” The earth without rain cannot grow one tiny grass-blade; when the clouds keep away the flowers hang down their heads, and shrivel and burn, and represent the very spirit of necessity and pain. We must have the black clouds; how welcome they are after a time of drought and scorching, when the earth is opening its mouth and asking for a draught of water! So God’s doctrine is to be poured out upon thirsty souls, burnt and scorched lives, ruined and unproductive natures. The rain-plash is a sweet music, a minor music, a tender appeal, a liquid persuasion. The rain will accommodate itself to all forms and shapes, and it will impartially visit the poor man’s little handful of garden and the great man’s countless acres. Such is the Gospel of Christ: it is impartial, gentle, necessary; it finds the heart when the heart is scorched, and asks to heal its burning, and to make the barren land of the inner life beautiful with summer flowers. “My speech shall distil as the dew,” it shall come in the twilight, not in the great burning noontide. The sun no sooner goes than the dew says, I must make the best of my time, and give the scorched landscape its nightly bath, and in the morning all the face of the land sparkles and glitters as if a king had poured out upon it all jewellery and precious stones. When does the dew come? How does the dew come? “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so” and thus it is with the dew. When do the vapours become dew? Who can gather the dew without spoiling it? Who can take one dewdrop into his hands and place it back on the rose-leaf? Some beautiful analogies of nature must exert a fascination over us by suggestion rather than submit to be handled by rude and heavy touch. We cannot tell how the word gets into the heart how softly, how silently: it is there, and we knew it not; we expected it, and at the very time we were looking out for it, it was already there; it is the secret of the Lord, and it moves by a noble mystery of action, so that no line can be laid upon it, and no man may arbitrarily handle the wealth of gold. “As the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.” There shall be adaptation between the one and the other: if the herb is “tender” the rain must be “small.” Do not thunder upon us with thy great power; do not plead against us with all the winds of thine eloquence, for who could stand against the storm? On the other hand, the tenderer the grass the better it can bear even the scudding shower and the heavy downpour. Your big things are broken; your little ones bend themselves until the calamity is overpast, and then they lift up their heads and bless God. Great trees are torn, or are wrenched from their roots, or are thrust down in contempt, but all the grass of the meadow is but the greener for the winds which have galloped over it, or the great rivers that have poured themselves upon the emerald bed. Thus may it be with man: in his pride and vanity, and strength, and fatness the winds scorn him, and all nature says he must be pulled down, and thrown into the dust and trampled upon until he learn to pray. Jesus will bless the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace-loving; but as for those who in heathen vanity set themselves up against him, he will dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. The word does not always produce an instantaneous effect: the word has sometimes to filter well down into the thought and into the heart and the life; and the word does not report itself in the mere quantity of the doctrine, but in the greenness of the young grass, in the beauty and fruitfulness of the tender herb: no statistical return shall be made of the number of discourses heard, or the number of chapters read, but the life shall be the more verdant in spring-like beauty, and the more splendid in all the colouring of summer.
Why are the heavens called and the earth silenced? Why is the doctrine to drop as the rain, and the speech to distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass? What is the occasion? The answer is given in the third verse:
“Because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.”
“He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” ( Deu 32:4 ).
In the fifth verse the whole tone changes:
“They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of hit children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.” ( Deu 32:5 )
“Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?” ( Deu 32:6 ).
So human actions are not dissociated from divine economies and heavenly thoughts. Human actions are replies to divine providence; human conduct is a commentary upon the providential method of God. We cannot take our actions and set them up solitarily, and say, We began the action, continued it, and completed it without any reference to heavenly ministries and providential interpositions and judgments. We cannot cut off our actions from the great currents of the universe. The lifting of a hand may be a prayer, or it may be a token of rebellion; the uplifted eye may be a speechless supplication; a cup of water given to a disciple in the name of Christ is given to the Master himself. Every act of condescension and benevolence ought to be considered an echo of a divine appeal. Thus the reference is once more to conscience and to reason: “Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise?” people of a withered heart, people who have put out the lamp of understanding, people who have forgotten the first principles of human responsibility. What is it that has been omitted from the policy and worship of the unwise and foolish people? It is the fatherhood of God: “Is not he thy father that hath bought thee?” Having got rid of the Father, all the rest is an easy run into the devil’s arms; having accomplished the moral excision having cut off ourselves from consenting to God’s sovereignty we become the guest of the enemy, and are easily led into ever-deepening depths of humiliation and disgrace. Is this possible? We will not ask Is it true? But does not possibility itself shudder at the suggestion, and say, Do not prostitute fancy; break your little moral commandments, trample your ethics in the dust: they are but vain theories of vain minds; but let imagination alone, do not defile the sanctuary of high fancy, the thing which you suggest is impossible? The plea has reason in it, the protest is not without force from a philosophical point of view. It ought not to be possible to forget father, God, law, love, providence; it ought to be impossible for a man to be ungrateful. Are men ungrateful? Can any father testify even to the possibility of an ungrateful child? Unthankfulness ought to be impossible. We find it in this song; we are, therefore, driven back upon our own consciousness once more for confirmation or rebuttal. Have we been ungrateful? Have we forgotten the Father who made us and the God who established us? Have we taken our lives into our own hands, and treated ourselves as if we were almighty and all-wise objects of self-idolatry? Better leave these inquiries; do not ask for replies in terms: the inquiry must be left as its own pregnant and appalling answer.
Now the Psalmist will reason with the people. He will change for a moment the tone of the great Psalm; he will call a council and examine minutely the sacred past:
“Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee” ( Deu 32:7 ).
“When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel” ( Deu 32:8 ).
“For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance” ( Deu 32:9 ).
“He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye” ( Deu 32:10 ).
A beautiful figure represents a portion of the divine way with man:
“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings” ( Deu 32:11 ).
Prayer
Almighty God, it is a fearful thing to fall into thine hands. Thine arrows are of great number, and when they strike they pierce fatally. Who can set themselves against God and live? Whose arm is strong enough to repel thy stroke? We are consumed before thee; thou hidest thy face, and we are lost in darkness. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Our God is a consuming fire. Them that honour thee thou wilt honour, and they that despise thee shall be lightly esteemed. Now we turn and behold thy mercy, and are amazed at the tearful compassion of God. Our hearts exclaim thankfully, God is love; God is light; he has no pleasure in death: he would that the wicked might turn and live. Thou criest after the lost one that he would return; thou hast the best robe ready for him; yea, thou art waiting to be gracious, to receive us, one and all, wanderers, into thine house, and thou wilt call upon thine angels to be glad. We thank thee for all thy tender mercy, thy loving care, thy pity, thy tears. We live in God’s love; we are upheld by God’s omnipotence; the light of his countenance is our day, and his love in Christ is our hope for eternity. We come to the Cross the wondrous Cross the mystery of God, the mystery of eternity; into these things the angels desire to look. Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. We look, and live in the looking; it is thy way: thou hast called us to look unto Christ and be saved; Lord, help us to look, to fasten our eyes upon the dying Sacrifice. We commend one another to thy loving care: hold us, guide us, make us stronger day by day; and then, when the day’s work is well done, call us into rest, and joy, and glory. Amen
The Song of Moses
( Deu 32
Is this true? Do not trifle with the inquiry. First of all, is it possible? As we have already inquired, is it not too astounding to be credible? Does it not shock the imagination? Do strong men cease to pray? Do men who are covered with the fatness of prosperity cease to sing God’s praise? Is there some thing in the world, in time and in sense, that crowds out the divine, the supernatural, and the future? We are able to answer these questions: they are not metaphysical, subtle, out of reach; they come strictly and literally within the lines of our own consciousness and experience; so we can affirm or deny these great historical portraitures of mankind. The history of poverty is more likely to be a history of religion than is the history of wealth. We, perhaps, never see human meanness so conspicuously as when we see foiled, defeated, disappointed men crawling back to the altars which they had abandoned in the time of sunshine and abundance. We easily dismiss our ministers; they soon become a nuisance to our prosperous life; we will call for them in the day of sickness, and ask them to whine out their prayers in our hearing when we cannot pray for ourselves, or when we think Heaven is so offended with us that any prayer of ours would be answered only with contempt. The world does not sit comfortably with true spirituality of mind; they speak different languages, they belong to opposing spheres, they cannot occupy an equal position. To speak of making the best of both worlds is to speak about that which has no relation the one part to the other. One world is to be kept under our foot: it is never to sustain any relation to our head; it is never to come within the operation of our highest and strongest thought; the other world is lined outside with bright blue, flecked here and there with silver and woolly clouds, and at night punctured and enriched with the embroidery of stars, a high world, out of reach, yet still pouring upon us its light and warmth and eternal comfort We must keep the varying worlds in their places. We, too, have a kind of astronomic sovereignty to maintain. We cannot disturb the relations of the worlds: each star must throb in its own place, each planet burn within its own sphere, and everything must be kept in regular system and exact relation, or we shall be troubled in our thinking and foiled and mortified in our prayers. “Jeshurun” is a diminutive; it is a term of endearment; it is, so to say, that loving cunning twist in the proper name which indicates the playfulness of affection; it is a fancy name; it was meant to please the man-child to whom it was applied. Even the endeared one “waxed fat, and kicked” that is to say, grew too prosperous to be truly godly, grew too rich in matter for the hand, to have any real and lasting property in the heart. Who, then, is the rich man? The man who has laid up treasures where moth and rust cannot corrupt, and where thieves cannot break through and steal; the man of great thought, energetic mind, copious understanding, spiritual insight, love of the invisible and the divine; the soul mighty to triumph in the great art of prayer-war the violence that storms heaven’s gate and forces omnipotence to terms. God is willing to be thus conquered; he waits to be gracious; he wants to have us press down his almightiness, as the strong man loves the little child to draw him nearer to its own stature. We speak of forcing omnipotence to terms, meaning thereby to pay a tribute to the omnipotence that is willing to be forced. Even the endeared soul may become too prosperous to find in spiritual endearment its richest heritage and noblest blessing. How easily we are led away from the altar! “How hardly” that is, with what infinite difficulty “shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” Nor is the term “riches” to be taken in its merely monetary or arithmetical sense: whoever is contented with earth cannot pray in other words, whoever can find satisfaction within the bounds of time and space cannot need a revelation, and cannot understand one. The Bible is a blank book to blank eyes. Thus there is a place for poverty in the discipline of life; thus there is a sphere in which the black minister called affliction can preach his sombre discourse, and touch with feelings akin to religion hearts that are otherwise likely to be led astray.
“They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger” ( Deu 32:16 ).
Is this little on the part of God? If we say so, we do not understand what we say. This is true of all love, of all spirituality, of all honesty and decency. The purer the object, the more easily is it excited to jealousy not the jealousy which expresses itself in censoriousness, in petulance, in mean revenge; but the jealousy which expresses a wounded heart, a disappointed love, a mortified trust. That which is but partially honest is not moved to jealousy by felonious action: by its very nature it connives at it; it has a mind skilful in the formation of excuses for outrages so detestable: it attributes them to custom, to the manner of the times, to the atmosphere of the place; it does not judge them in the eternal light and at the infinite bar. The whiter the snow, the more easily it shows every black spot there is upon it; the more vital the love, the more easily does it respond either to the homage which is due or to the humiliation which is undeserved. God thus expresses precisely what we should wish him to express; even here he is not transcending our reason: he is magnifying himself so as to lay a broader claim upon our veneration and trust. It is right that it should be a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; and it is right because God is love. Outraged love is the severest, the most terrific, of enemies; offended honesty has no pity upon the thief. It is right that it should be so. We must in some quarter of the universe find a throne that cannot be bought, a sceptre that cannot be bribed, an authority that cannot be deterred. All these ideas are gathered up in a final expression and in a sublime representation in the Bible term GOD.
A very marvellous expression occurs in the seventeenth verse, full of the subtlest sarcasm. There is one set of words in this verse that has upon it the keenness of a sword. Speaking of what apostate Israel did, the song says:
“They sacrificed unto devils, not to God.”
“to gods whom they knew not.”
“to new gods that came newly up.” ( Deu 32:17 )
“Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee” ( Deu 32:18 ).
How is it that men soon forget the solid, the real, the substantial? What is it that delights men in spluttering rockets, in coloured fountains, in lamps swinging upon trees that are offended by their presence? See the great seething crowd waiting for the coloured fountains to spring up, and for all the little electric lamps confined in tinted globes to shine among the swaying branches! What exclamations of idiotic delight! How stunned is modern intelligence at the marvellous display of colour! Who heeds the quiet moon that looks on with unutterable amazement, and that in her motherly heart is saying, O that they were wise, that they were less given to toy-worship and to playfulness of that kind! Here I have been shining ages upon ages who heeds me? Which of all the sweltering, overfed throng turns a bleared eye to my course to watch me in my gently sovereignty? And the stars, too, look down upon the coloured fountains without being moved to envy by their momentary blush and by their unheard splash! We forget the Rock so soon; we prefer the toy; we want something light, something that can be spoken trippingly on the tongue an easy fluent nothing. We do not care to bow down the head to study, to criticism, to the examination and estimation of evidence, and commit ourselves to the acceptance of sound conclusions. Can we go anywhere to see a coloured fountain? Men who do not travel half-a-mile to the greatest pulpit in the world, or the greatest altar ever built to the God of heaven, would put themselves and their families to any amount of inconvenience and expense to gaze with the admiration of idiocy upon a coloured fountain! Blessed are they who love the permanent stars, the lamps of heaven, and who set their feet broadly and squarely on God’s everlasting Rock. Let us turn to the real, to the substantial, to the very revelation of God’s truth, and abide there; the coloured fountain can only come now and again, but the eternal heavens are always full of light or rich with beauty. How could the Lord meet this case? He says:
“I will hide my face from them” ( Deu 32:20 ).
But withdrawment is not understood by the fattened prosperity of Jeshurun; so God will proceed further. He lays down his policy in the twenty-first verse:
“They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I “
” and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.” ( Deu 32:21 )
Men must be met upon their own ground. We cannot address high arguments to men who have blinded their intelligence and dismissed their conscience: we reduce ourselves to a lower level than that upon which we began; and God must bring himself down to that level if he is to inflict upon sinners appropriate chastisement. Jeshurun shall feel the jealousy he himself has provoked. What will God do then? He will put honour upon nations that have hitherto been without name or status: their men shall become kings, their nameless ones shall become famous; they shall arse to dispute the primacy of Jeshurun. Then Israel will begin to think. He will say, Who are these that come up from the north? what men are these, of whom I have never heard before? and then he will return in memory to old covenants, and promises, and vows, and will ask Heaven’s explanation. There is always an explanation in heaven. Afflictions do not spring out of the dust. Your tower of strength was not thrown down because a feather blew against it. There are no accidents in the great issue and outcome of human life. When competitors arise, and you feel that the standing of your favouritism is imperilled, you will begin to wonder, and he who wisely wonders often timidly prays. The man will talk to himself in plain terms: he will say, How is this? I have been king; I have had none to dispute my sceptre or my authority; and now the dog barks at me on the streets, and men whom I would not have numbered with the dogs of my father’s flock mock me, and ask for my name, and look upon me as they would look upon some intrusive curiosity. How is this? The elders used to rise at my approach, and strong men owned me first amongst equals: now wherever I put my foot I have a sense of insecurity, and wherever I look I see no beaming face. How is this? The answer is religious: I have forgotten my appointments with God; I have hurried through a Book amid the fruitful pages of which I ought to have lingered with delight and desire and love; I have abandoned the God of my fathers: I have taken interest in new gods that came newly up; this is the reason: I am speaking truly to myself; all this I would not care at first to speak in the hearing of other people, but I will tell the truth to myself, and the truth is that my love of God has cooled, my loyalty to truth has become impaired, my communion with the heavens has become less intimate; I am not the man I was; and now God is permitting chatterers to arise around me who mock me and insult me; I have retained everything but the rod of my strength, the eloquence of my prayer, the almightiness of my faith. When men speak to themselves thus ruthlessly, sternly, with religious frankness they will end the monologue by saying, “I will arise, and go to my Father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned.” Never did erring child say that to the Father in heaven without the Father calling for festival and music and infinite joy.
God blamed Israel because they were
“children in whom is no faith” ( Deu 32:20 ).
Prayer
Almighty God, guide us with thine eye in all the way of life. We need some sense of thy nearness, for the wind is cold, and the way is hard, and the end is not clearly seen. We are hardly born until we die; there is no time for anything upon the earth. Surely this is not all! The days become shorter rather than longer; we thought they would lengthen out and give us light to do some work in, but, behold, they close quickly, and the years are all gone, and there is no time to repair the past or make much of the present. There is no present: it flies whilst we describe it. We are driven on as by a mighty wind; we are withdrawn as by a hand unseen; we are spoken to by voices that have no figure; and, behold, we cannot tell what it is we see, or hear, or do. But thou hast sent word to us of thy nearness and presence and purpose; we are told that thou art a God nigh at hand and not afar off nearer to us than we can ever be to ourselves, a mystery of nearness, as if we were part of thee, as if thou wert part of us, as if we were one. This is a great mystery, full of solemnity and full of pathos. That we have done wrong we very well know. It is easy to do wrong: it is easy to eat honey, because it is sweet Behold, we have indeed done wrong, and so far spoiled thy purpose and stained the handiwork of God. But we are sure that we are not so great as thou art. If we have done wrong, the remedy is in thee and not in ourselves. Thou canst not be at peace so long as wickedness remains. Thou hast endeavoured to reclaim us by punishment, and thy penalties have left us harder than ever; thou hast burned us with hunger, thou hast cut us with the sword, thou hast filled the soul with terrors; and we have shed tears of fearfulness and uttered cowardly prayers and promised to be better for fear that we should be crushed; but Pharaoh-like we have turned again in the morning and defied thee to thy face; then thou hast whispered to us and persuaded us with all gentleness, and led us out to a place called Calvary to see thine agony, to behold thy love, to look upon the sacrifice for sins. This is the Lord’s doing: herein is mercy combined with righteousness holding counsel with law, herein is grace abounding over sin. The devil is not Lord, the enemy is not on the throne; he sets up his purposes, and they are foiled and thrown down and buried in the grave of contempt. The Lord reigneth; the Cross is the symbol of triumph; thy Son shall have the heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. As I live, saith the Lord, the whole earth shall be full of the glory of the Lord. This thou wilt work out in thine own way and in thine own time, but it shall be done, because the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. Surely thou wilt remember us in our low estate; our weakness shall be our plea, our sin shall be the mighty reason of our prayer; because we cannot save ourselves thy power to save shall be magnified. As for our afflictions, difficulties, disappointments, all the black things that make up life, all the miseries that chasten the heart, they are under thy control every one of them: no spark has in it more heat than thou hast entrusted to it, and no chain is longer than the links thyself hast forged. We still believe in God and have no confidence in ourselves, and have perfect distrust of the enemy when we muse upon thine almightiness and see somewhat of thy love. Reconcile us to our lot wherein we cannot amend it. Life is an infinite difficulty to some: the morning brings no light of hope, the evening no shade of rest, and the noontide is a fierce enemy; they cannot fight the battle; the bread they earn is too little, and it is embittered by many a reflection which cannot be controlled or explained; the house is lonely and dark, the children are sickly and unequal to the task of life, the whole day is full of shadows, and the night is a darkness unrelieved; come to such; explain a little of the mystery to them; if they could but sing one note in the night-time, they would take heart again. Have pity upon those who are too successful; thou art causing them to see what prosperity means, and, behold, we regard them with compassion as they open the glittering parcel to find it full of nothingness. The world grows bitter herbs: all time and sense are like a garden-land bringing forth nothing but bitter aloes; behold, the garden is on high, where the sweet fruit grows, where the pure flowers bloom, where the birds sing God’s gospels. May we set our affections upon things above, and by a mightier gravitation than that of earth be drawn towards the throne that is established for ever. Break the bad man’s purpose; turn his counsel to confusion; set him upside down on the wayside that men may laugh at him who mocked their God. Prosper every good cause: give it energy and hope and secretly-multiplying resources, and may it win the whole battle, and set up God’s standard pledge of victory, pledge of peace. Amen.
The Song of Moses
( Deu 32
We find a record of what may be called the penal resources of God in the paragraph beginning with Deu 32:20 and ending with Deu 32:25 . That paragraph is a kind of armoury; it is a special chamber set apart in the great creation into which we may reverently look if we would know some resources which are available in reference to the punishment of sin. The paragraph should be read alone, that is to say, it should be taken out of its literary setting and perused as a solitary writing. In the New Testament we find an armoury available to Christian soldiers; in that armoury we find sword and shield and breastplate, and all the other parts of an invincible panoply. In these verses we find an armoury which is not to be used by men, but which is to be solely employed by Almighty God himself. Quite a new aspect of the divine character is here revealed. How after perusing such words can we read the sweet message given in sweet syllables “God is love”? He is a God full of terribleness according to the description given in Deu 32:20-25 of this chapter. What is God’s penal reply to sin according to this record? It is a reply in the first instance of withdrawment: “I will hide my face from them” ( Deu 32:20 ) let them see what they can do with life; grant unto them their own hearts’ desire, and “I will see what their end shall be” they claim to be wise, let them light the lamp of their wisdom and see how long it will burn without my presence and blessing. This withdrawment of the divine face is the most terrific punishment that can befall the life of the human soul. It is not a stroke, or a sharp pain, or an open wound out of which the blood flows in a hot flood: all such pains can be borne with some degree of fortitude; possibly some man may have found a balm for such wounds: send for him, pay him well, ask him to make haste, to leave all other patients and clients, to flee to your side because you can reward him handsomely; but here is a punishment man cannot touch: it may be described in a sense as abstract, as purely spiritual. What are we waiting for? We are waiting for light. Who can bring it? It is not carried in the waggons of men; it cannot be fetched by the horses of kings; it lies beyond the line of our arm. For what are we pining? for a smile. Who can buy it? None can buy it: it is not sold in the market-place for gold. We want a touch, a glance, a feeling of divine nearness; we cannot tell in words what it is we need, but such a necessity never before strained the soul and pained it with agony. So long as we can describe our suffering, our very description becomes a species of mitigation. When words fail, when our attempted utterance returns upon ourselves, the hearer being unable to make out one word we say, then the mind staggers and eloquent lips babble an idiot’s tale.
God will thus punish his people homoeopathically, an ancient plan, full of philosophy, but failing sometimes even in the hands of God. He will address like to like; he will encounter the sinner in his own mood. Says God, “They have moved me to jealousy… I will move them to jealousy” and jealousy falling into collision with jealousy, there shall be destruction of the unholy feeling and return to peace and concord. It is not so in reality. As a piece of abstract philosophy it sounds well; but jealousy does not cure jealousy in this sense. For a time a happy effect seems to accrue, but in the end the wickedness is deeper than before. Says God, They have set up in my place a not-god; that is the charge he brings against them, namely, that Israel worshipped a not-god. I will vex them with a people that are not a people: I will raise up compeers out of the dust, and rivals shall spring out of the dung-hill, and men who had no name shall stand up as children of renown. That homoeopathic principle also failed. For a time it operated well: Israel began to look around, and to wonder at the mockery and humiliation; but we may become accustomed to miracles, we may become so familiar with providences as to fail to observe them. Now God will be more energetic:
“For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell [sheol, pit], and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains” ( Deu 32:22 ).
“They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning beat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them with the poison of serpents of the dust” ( Deu 32:24 ).
God will now send another punishment namely, the “terror within” ( Deu 32:25 ). That is worst of all. We can deal with any force that is visible, measurable, and otherwise estimable as to quality and energy; but who can fight a shadow? Who can put down an army of fears? Who has weapons fine enough to fight impalpable ghosts and shed blood where there is none? We cannot account for the fear: the man lies there on his couch visibly and talks with some degree of coherence; his eye has in it no unsettledness, and his voice is as firm and resonant as ever; but he has a fear in his heart: presently he will speak of it; a great terror sits upon the throne of his reason; it is in vain to laugh at the man, or mock him, or challenge him to high and sober reasoning; on all subjects but one perhaps he is sane, clear of mind, but at a certain point he breaks down and is no more a man. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Halt of the journey we gallop on steeds that cannot tire; and in one moment we are thrown upon the ground and cannot move a limb. The division between life and death is very frail; the partition between genius and insanity can almost be seen through: it is so thin that at any moment the mightiest man in society may be unable to find his own door, to recognise his own children, to return the common salutations of life. So God’s armoury is very large, made up of jealousies and provocations, fires kindled in anger, fires that burn downwards as well as upwards, fires that leap upon the foundations of the mountains as hunger might leap upon food; and as for mischiefs, God piles them up in heaps; and as for his arrows, he spends them upon the wicked as a thunderstorm drenches the earth. Punishment has been exhausted. Where God has failed, let not man attempt to succeed.
Why did God withhold his hand and not carry punishment to extremity? The answer is here:
“Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the Lord hath not done all this” ( Deu 32:27 ).
What charge does God bring against the people?
“For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them” ( Deu 32:28 ).
Now comes a strain a minor tone; almightiness whispers, the God of thunders lowers his voice, and says:
“O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” ( Deu 32:29 ).
So the Bible is full of solemn calls, noble and pathetic reflections, calling men to understanding, to the acceptance of counsel, to obedience and wisdom, and the consideration of the end of all things. Pagans exclaimed, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die! If so, it were a pity to put off death until to-morrow, for a man might “his own quietus make with a bare bodkin” today. Better die before meals than after them, if that be all. The Bible is conceived in another spirit; the Bible utters another tone: the Bible asks us to eat and drink abundantly of spiritual provision; and in asking us to think about eternity it does not relax our industry in any affair of time. The Bible says, in effect, He who studies most the subject of eternity best discharges the duty of the passing day; he who prays best works best; he who loves God most loves his neighbour as himself. The Bible will have no hand-painting or decoration of exteriors; it will have the heart made right, the fountain of life cleansed, the tree itself made good at the very root and core; and then it says, the rest will follow in beauty of foliage, in ampleness and sweetness of fruit.
Prayer
Almighty God, thy way is not open to us that we may understand it. We know not what thou art doing day by day, but we know that when the days are all ended we shall say with thankfulness, He hath done all things well. Thou dost make disappointments help the soul’s life; thus thou dost turn disappointed eyes to heaven. There is no land upon the earth we want when we have been trained to see thy purpose and to behold the things unseen; thou dost fill us with contempt for all time so short, for all space so small, for all earthly joy that plays its frivolous tune for one brief moment. We seek a country out of sight; we are strangers and pilgrims; our eyes are already beginning to look for a city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. Thus thou dost train us. We have laid down all our childish entertainments and pleasures and mockeries, and we have laid down much beside, saying, Lo, heaven is not in these, nor is the sky of God in these small blessings. We know that what we want is beyond beyond the smiling and the weeping, beyond the sowing and the reaping; it is not here. There lies a river between us and what we really need; thou wilt divide the water for us, and we shall pass through the channel as upon dry ground, and not know until we are upon the other side mingling our voices with heavenly music. Now and again thou dost show us somewhat of that land in dream, in new and daring thought, in rapturous praise, in ecstatic prayer, in some unexpected power of contemplation, when all the heavens show themselves in symbol; then we begin to think somewhat of the upper place and the great reserve. We would use this to our encouragement and inspiration; we would not accept it as a reward for indolence, or a guarantee of self-indulgence, but as an impulse to make haste, and to be true and faithful and wise, waiting in all the dignity of patience for the Lord’s coming, that the waiting and the coming may be of one quality calm with the tranquillity of thine own throne. We are here for a day or two: we shall be dead and forgotten to-morrow; yet may we live in remembered deeds, in holy charities, in sacrifices acceptable unto God; for this immortality we would now live. God’s blessing be upon us, a plentiful light filling all the heavens and the earth, yet with no sense of burdensomeness. The Lord’s great love be our defence and our hope, our present inspiration and our lasting reward.
This we say in the sweet name of Jesus name to sinners dear Son of man, Son of God, who loved us, and died for us, and gave himself the just for the unjust. His name is our prayer; his sacrifice is thy Amen.
The Song of Moses
( Deu 32
This is an appeal to reason, based upon obvious and indisputable facts. There is a law in warfare; there is a probability in battle, as in every other occupation and event of life. It is unreasonable and incredible that one man should chase a thousand and two men put ten thousand to flight. This must be accounted for. All the probabilities of the case are against the statement; the presumption is a violent one, and we must begin our argument by throwing it out: we must not have the imagination shocked by such a startling contrast of numbers. It is simply impossible that any one man should chase a thousand men, though they be the veriest cowards; their very numbers should give them courage; in a throng there should be some measure of audacity. How, then, is this chasing to be accounted for? The answer is: “Except their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up” in other words, except their Rock had given them over to the enemy, had taken out of them whatever courage might naturally belong to them, and had thus shown that, when the religious passion goes down and the religious intelligence is insulted, even natural bravery turns to helpless cowardice. With the ancient history we have next to nothing to do, but with the moral which inspires it every man ought to feel himself concerned. Why are we driven before the wind? Why do apparently little oppositions cast us down, or fill us with great dismay, or drive us from our standing-ground? Physically we are numerous, and physically we are not without strength, and some little time ago we were not destitute of courage; how comes our present state, and what is the explanation of it? We have lost faith; we have gone down in spiritual quality; we have inverted our prayers, so that they no longer ascend to a welcoming heaven but descend to an unanswering or mocking earth. Failure is to be attributed often to loss of religious faith, loss of communion with God, loss of spiritual inspiration. How to account for the failures that are upon the right hand and upon the left not failures from the beginning, which may be attributed to some freak of nature in the constitution of the individuals who are defeated, but failures coming after victory, the course of a lifetime turned upside down, the once-victors now suppliants for their fate; these are the mysteries. Some men are from the beginning without hands or eyes or faculties: whatever they touch they touch at the wrong end, and whatever they look upon withers under their glance; we are not speaking of such now: they are mysteries in providence which we cannot explain, riddles to which we have no answer; but here are men who have fought and conquered, who have spoken with their enemies in the gate, and sent them reeling back in dismay and pitiful weakness, now, the same men are fleeing a thousand before one and ten thousand before two! Watching the incredible anomaly, we ask, How can these things be? The answer comes from heaven: They are faithless men, they have taken to the worship of themselves; they must be allowed to test their own vanity, and try the new gods with new conditions. God does give men up; God does sell men to the enemy, and shut them up in a corner and turn the key upon them as if they were left in prison. Strange things does God do among the children of men! He will not be mocked; we cannot do so well without him as we do with him. If we think we can demonstrate our independence of him, he may let go his hold and leave us to run swiftly into destruction. Do not mock God. Have your solemn questionings, and now and then it may be your dark doubts; but let there be no self-conceit, no offering to personal vanity, no self-confidence, no mockery of God; when the mind is dazzled, rest awhile: after three days some capable Ananias may call upon you with answers from heaven. The mystery is increased by another consideration:
“For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges” ( Deu 32:31 ).
This verse admits of a new setting as to its meaning. It is taken thus by one of the most eminent Jewish commentators, namely: “Their rock is not as our Rock, and yet they have become our judges” they are following the wrong course, and yet they are exalted above us, and they judge our life, and they condemn us, and they drive us away from their judgment-seat in contempt and scorn; this is a miracle in philosophy, this is an impossibility in morals; their rock is not as our Rock, and yet somehow they have ascended the judgment-seat, and we turn pale before their tribunal and humbly receive the sentence of their scorn. These inversions of natural courses have to be accounted for. We are not at liberty to allow history to perpetrate infinite jests, and to taunt us with incredible ironies. There must be harmony in history; there must be in it a tendency a central line, always moving onward with nobleness and majesty of revelation and purpose; much that is incidental and. temporary may associate itself with that line but must fall into the harmony of the central movement. But here is an instance which cannot be accounted for on any ordinary principles. Here are people with the wrong god and the wrong law and the wrong policy, and somehow they are on the judgment-seat, and men who have the right theology in sentiment and the right law in the letter stand before them like doomed culprits.
Or take it in the other or more common way: “For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.” We have the larger providence, we are under a more benevolent dispensation than themselves, our God is abler than their god; they acknowledge this, and though this acknowledgment is made to us in theory, yet in practice they seem to have the best of it: they are at home, they are in prosperity, they stand in the midst of their vineyards, they make their bread of the kidneys of wheat, whilst we are strangers and exiles and wanderers. We have the right God, but we are suffering under an afflictive providence. Let it be so anyhow, if only men will think. There is hope of any man who feels an arresting hand upon his shoulder and hears in his ear an accusatory voice, and who asks questions upon the arrest and the accusation: he is dead, but not “twice dead;” he is withered, but not “plucked up by the roots;” he is as a felled tree, but still here and there are signs of sprouting: he yet may fully live. Let every man ask himself how it is that he can have a right theology, and a right Church, and the very book of God, and yet be mocked of the enemy, chased by straws that are driven by the wind, and made afraid by withered leaves that crinkle on the ground. The reason is religious. There is something wrong at the centre; every accident seems to be right, but the central life is wrong.
“For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields cf Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps” ( Deu 32:32-33 ).
So the song rolls on, speaking of vengeance, speaking of the enemies of God, and promising them an awful reward. When the song was ended:
“Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun” ( Deu 32:44 ).
“Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel” ( Deu 32:51 ).
Prayer
Almighty God, thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us; thou didst not in saving man take on thee the nature of angels, thou didst take upon thee the seed of Abraham; thou didst come in the image and likeness of man, which is in very deed the image and likeness of God. When thou didst so come unto us we knew thee not, for thou wert as one of ourselves, kindred in quality, the same in speech, neighbourly, friendly, social, so that we spoke of thy brethren and thy sisters, thy father and thy mother. We did not know the meaning of our own speech; we could not tell what we said, but we felt that our speech and thy vision were in contradiction; we felt thy greatness. When we did but touch the hem of thy garment we knew that thou wert more than man than any man known to us and we ourselves called thee Immanuel: God with us; near us, part of us, one with us; a great mystery of life, an eternal problem, not the less an eternal blessing. We thank thee for all religious thought; we bless thee that the altar elevates whomsoever touches it; we thank thee that we cannot look downward whilst we are thinking of God and the future, truth and immortality, development, and heaven; then the mind kindles; then our nature puts forth its wings and flies up to the gate of the morning and the dwelling-place of the sun, and we love the light and sing in it as birds do. May we always be faithful to the altar, may our inquiry go deeper and deeper every day, and may our love burn until perfectly disinfected of all selfishness and earthliness and limitation, until it become a great flame, aspiring in continual hope and sacrifice to the very throne of God. We bless thee for all Christian fellowship, for communion in Christ Jesus, that we can speak through him and with him, that he is our Advocate and Intercessor: our Priest, eloquent through his own blood, mighty through the weakness of the Cross, the greater for us because so pained in Gethsemane and unable to save himself on Calvary. The Lord send the mysteries of the Cross into our hearts as songs without words, great inspirations, deep and holy comfortings. Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
(See the Deuteronomy Book Comments for Introductory content and Homiletic suggestions).
XV
THE SONG, PRAYER, AND BENEDICTION OF MOSES
Deu 31:14-33:29
This section has its scope from Deu 31:14-33:29 , and in connection with it we study the ninetieth Psalm. The theme of this section is the Song of Moses, Prayer of Moses, and Benediction of Moses.
The introduction gives the origin, reason and purpose of the song. The origin is God; God commanded it and God inspired it. The reason is that he foresaw the apostasy of Israel. The purpose was that the song should be a witness.
The poetic and prophetic form of this inspired piece of writing was well adapted to secure the object that God had in view. The songs of the people were memorized by the people. I suppose that every Israelite child learned that song by heart, so that from the lips of any child in the nation there could be a recitation that would witness against the people if they did apostasize from Jehovah.
It is not my purpose to discuss here the prayer of Moses, but merely tell you that Psa 90 , ascribed to Moses and rightly so, was composed about this time. It contrasts the eternity of Jehovah with the transitory life of man, and it accounts for the transitory life of man by his sin. Sin made his life short. The Psalm concludes with a prayer that God would so teach us the number of the few days here so as to apply our hearts unto wisdom, and that he would establish the work of our hands upon us. It is a masterly production. The benediction is also poetic and prophetic. It softens the hard parts of the song. It is more hopeful but does not reach so far into the future.
Before concluding these introductory remarks, it is necessary to compare the song, the ninetieth Psalm and the benediction with a previous song of Moses which you will find in the book of Exodus, and which we considered when we went over that book, and with the book of Job, which this author ascribes to Moses. The Exodus song Moses wrote to commemorate the deliverance of the children of Israel from Pharaoh and Pharaoh’s destruction in the Red Sea. In Rev 15 we have this reference to this first song of Moses: “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire; and them that come off victorious from the beast, and from his image, and from the number of his name, standing by the sea of glass, having harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty; righteous and true are thy ways, thou King of the ages.”
The sea of glass mingled with fire was the Red Sea in a type. The Red Sea divided, standing up in frozen walls, Israel passed through that grave like canyon, and the pillar of fire being the lid of it, the light of the pillar of fire shone on the icy walls and was reflected back and forth, so that it looked like a sea of glass mingled with fire. They were baptized in that sea and that cloud, and escaping in that way Moses writes the song of deliverance. Now, in the book of Revelation John uses that passage through those icy walls mingled with fire and the song that commemorated it to typify the deliverance of the saints in resisting the oppressions by an apostate church. So we have this clear assurance that Moses is the author of a song that will be sung in heaven. It is a great thing to be the author of the ballads of a nation here on earth; it is a greater thing to be the author of songs that we shall sing in the land of everlasting deliverance. Now, these matchless hymns all show clearly a common author; the Exodus song of deliverance, the song that we are now about to study, the ninetieth Psalm composed about the same time, and the benediction. These poetic and prophetic hymns of Moses are not to be surpassed in the poetry of the world. He was great in prose, he was great in history, he was as great as any man upon whom the afflatus rested as a writer of poetry.
The next thing in our introduction is that Moses is described as having finished the Pentateuch, including the song, and filing the book with the priests, and having it placed inside the ark of the covenant, so that throughout their future it should be a witness. When we come to study 2 Kings we learn that the finding of the lost Pentateuch in the days of Josiah and the reading of it brought about a great reformation among the people of Judah. After that monarchy fell, after Judah went into captivity, and on their return from captivity, through the decrees of the Persian king in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, the same Pentateuch, a copy of which Ezra brought back with him, is read in the hearing of all the people, causing them to reestablish the commonwealth of Israel. A song is not so susceptible of analysis as a logical argument, hence all attempts at an analytical summary of this song fail to satisfy, but I am sure that we can agree on these things:
The song commences with invoking heaven and earth as auditors. All heaven might well listen, all earth might well listen, should listen to this song, so sweet that it might be compared to the falling rain in the time of a drought, or the distilling dew upon the parched ground. The theme of the song is evident: Jehovah’s fidelity and Israel’s infidelity. It not only commences with a statement of that fact, but it goes on to develop in the thought just what Jehovah did to prove that he was faithful and just what Israel did to prove that he was unfaithful.
There are two illustrations in that song that need to be studied by a public speaker. Nine times in the song Jehovah is compared to a rock, indicating stability, his being the place of refuge. Then the eagle upon the mountaintop, wishing to brain her young, will scatter the sticks of her nest and push the young birds over the precipice, and they shrieking seem about to fall to destruction, but she swoops down under them and carries them on her wings and soars away; then she gets far under them and lets them fall again. After a while they learn to fly and are very proud of themselves. This illustration is to show how Jehovah has borne this ever falling people on his wings. Both of these illustrations are very beautiful. This song sets forth the character of Jehovah in his sovereignty, in his holiness, in his justice, in his fidelity, and in his mercy. The song also sets forth the character of the people as foolish, perverse, ungrateful, wicked, and rebellious. The song then submits evidence to prove these affirmations of distinction between the character of Jehovah and the character of his people. It tells us what Jehovah did and what they did. Jehovah, when he divided the nations, away back yonder soon after the days of Noah, as we learned when we passed over Genesis, at the time when he divided the nations of the earth, he allotted Palestine, which we call the Holy Land, to his foreseen people. He intended at that time that they should have this territory. They were not yet in existence except in their ancestors, and their direct ancestor, Abraham, had not yet been born, but even then God, who owned all the land, selected that strategic, eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea connecting Mesopotamia and its great cities, Babylon and Nineveh, with Egypt. It was a passageway between nations north and south as well as of commerce and caravans east and west. It was the best place in the world to plant a people that should become the religious teacher of all nations.
The song tells how he found them, referring to their history in Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy; they were a desolate people in the howling wilderness, utterly helpless, and as an eagle bears up her young, he bore them up and brought them safely to the point where this song is now being sung. Then he made that nation his inheritance, Jacob being God’s portion. He selected a particular line from Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve sons all the way down, and he said, “These people shall be my lot, my inheritance, and I will use them in carrying out my purposes for the salvation of the world.” He regarded this nation as the very apple of his eye. He was just as sensitive with reference to them as the eye is sensitive to an unfriendly touch. Finally, this song, which is prophetic and regards the future as if it were present, states that he put them in possession of the land and blessed them beyond the power of words to express. Now, the song tells us what they did:
“When Jeshurun waxed fat he kicked.” A very expressive proverb. You may see a poor, gaunt hack horse that you may safely approach and lead by the mane, without a bridle. But when you feed him and care for him, and curry him, and he becomes sleek, the first thing that you know he kicks. The bounding life within him abhors restraint. This illustration shows what the people did. Their prosperity under good treatment becomes the occasion of their revolt. They sacrificed to idols, things that were nothing, and they sacrificed to demons who were the authors of this idolatry. Now, having contrasted what he did with what they did, the song, still looking far ahead into the future, tells what he will do; inasmuch as they have provoked him to jealousy by selecting a people that have hitherto been no people. In other words, here is a plain intimation of the things fulfilled in the New Testament days, viz.: The kingdom of heaven is taken away from the Jews and given to a people that will bring forth fruits of righteousness.
The song tells us that he will make expiation for the land, foretelling the time when the Antitype of their sacrifices in the person of the true Lamb of God shall make the great expiation for sin. The song tells further that they, on account of their sin, referring, of course, to their sin against this expiation, will be dispersed among all nations and there have an awful time for an awful length of time.
Having thus shown what he would do, he now discloses through the song what his mercy will be in the last day; that there is coming a time when he will look with pity upon this poor downtrodden, oppressed people, and have compassion and pour out upon them the grace of supplication, and when in their penitence they look to him whom they have pierced, he will forgive them.
The last great thought of the song is similar to the thought of Paul in Rom 11 , viz.: that if the casting off of the children of Israel be life to the Gentile world, what shall their restoration be but life from the dead? If their downfall brought Joy to other nations, how much more shall their restoration bring joy to other nations? And so this song calls upon all people to rejoice when his people are forgiven and restored. Benediction, Deu 33 . Here you must compare our text with Gen 49 and also Rev 7 . In Gen 49 , Jacob, the old dying patriarch, summoned his children before him and pronounced a benediction upon each of them. And in Rev 7 there is an account of the 144,000 redeemed by the power of the gospel out of the twelve tribes of Israel. Now, when we look at these lists as given in Gen 49 , Deu 33 and Rev 7 , we find that the order in which the names come is not the same in any two accounts. In Genesis, Jacob blesses them in this order: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Joseph and Benjamin. Moses blesses them in this order: Reuben, Judah, Levi, Benjamin, Joseph, Zebulun, Issachar, Gad, Dan, Naphtali and Asher. He leaves out Simeon. In Revelation the order is this: Judah, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph (which is Ephraim) and Benjamin, leaving out Dan.
Why does Moses leave out Simeon? You will remember that in submitting to the seductive counsels of Balaam, Zimri of the tribe of Simeon committed the presumptuous sin punished by Phinehas. It may be that all of the 24,000 people that perished in that plague were of the tribe of Simeon, which in turn may account for the fact that this tribe, according to the first census numbering 59,300, is found by the second census, immediately following, to be only 22,000. Now, I say that the sin of Zimri may have prompted Moses to leave out Simeon.
But I will give you a reason much more probable. In the allotment of the tribes Simeon got no special territory, and as Moses is thinking of the tribes as they occupy the land, we can see how he might leave out Simeon, since Simeon’s territory is included in Judah’s. When we come to Revelation, it is hard to tell why Dan is left out. It may be because that after going over to the Promised Land Dan left his territory by a migration which you will discover in Judges, went outside of the Promised Land and captured a home and there set up an alien worship. It may be that on this account he is left out. I do not dogmatize on that. Jewish Christians say that Dan was left out because of the character of the tribe as described by Jacob: “A serpent in the way, an adder in the path.” When we were going over Genesis, I called your attention to that awful secret band among the Mormons called the “Danites,” based upon the prophetic character of Dan in Genesis, and the song of Joaquin Miller, which utterly wiped them off the face of the earth.
The next thought arising from a comparison of these lists is that some who in Jacob’s blessing had a dark prospect ahead of them found a brighter prospect in the case of their descendants in Moses’ time. For instance, read what is said about Reuben in Gen 49 and immediately following with what Moses predicts concerning him. Reuben’s prospects brighten in the Mosaic account, and so with some other. Levi, in the prophecy of his father Jacob, in Gen 49 , has a dark prospect before him, but in the Mosaic blessing his prospects are intensely brightened. In this case the children are doing better than the fathers.
Without going over it all, it is my suggestion that the reader take Gen 49 and Deu 33 and compare tribe by tribe, and see what the variations are in this lapse of time. The lesson to be learned from this is that a family through its head may start out bad and give taint to all the descendants of that man, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations, but after a while some of the children will establish themselves in righteousness and bring honor to that name. And likewise a family may start out with a distinguished head and for quite a long time the descendants of this man will share in his fame and glory, but if they do nothing themselves to keep up his reputation, then they become more exposed in their worthlessness by the very fact that they had an illustrious sire.
I can illustrate: There was once a canvass going on in McLennan County for County Attorney, one of the candidates was accustomed in opening his speeches to refer to his progenitors; that as far back as records went they were illustrious people. The opposing candidate got up and said: “Fellow citizens, I know but little about my progenitors. If they were good men they ought to have held office in their time, but on account of their goodness I should not hold office now; so, replying to all that my very well-descended opponent has said in favor of his candidacy, I will just make this remark: I would rather be a horse without a pedigree than a pedigree without a horse.” He was elected.
QUESTIONS
1. What the literary form of the sixth and seventh addresses of does the introduction to the sixth address contain?
2. What does the introduction to the sixth address contain?
3. What the origin, reason and purpose of this song?
4. Why was the poetic and prophetic form of this address well adapted to secure its object?
5. What the subject of Psa 90 , how does it account for the transitory life of man and whose exposition of it was commended?
6. What the form of the benediction, and how does it compare with certain parts of the song?
7. With what preceding song of Moses should the sixth address be compared?
8. What other book besides the Pentateuch does the author ascribe to Moses and what the similarity of the problem in this book with the problem of his own people when he wrote it?
9. Expound the allusion to this preceding song in Rev 15:2-4 .
10. What can you say of Moses as a poet?
11. How was the Pentateuch, when finished, preserved and when do we hear of it again?
12. Give an analysis of this song as follows: (1) The invocation. (2) The theme. (3) The illustrations. (4) The characters set forth. (5) The strategic position of God’8 people. (6) God’s care for his people. (7) The prophecies.
13. With what other scripture must the benediction be compared? the prophecies concerning the names?
14. In comparing the tribe lists in these three scriptures, what variations do you find as to the order of names, omission of names and the prophecies concerning the names?
15. What lessons on heredity and individuality may be learned from the fact that in the Mosaic benediction when compared with the benediction of Jacob, the prospect brightens for some tribes and darkens for others? What illustration given by the author?
16. Why did Moses leave out Simeon, and Revelation omit Dan?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Deu 32:1 Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
Ver. 1. Give ear, O ye heavens, ] q.d. , Such is this people’s stupidity and obstinacy, that I may as soon gain audience of these inanimate creatures as of them. See Isa 1:2 Jos 24:27 Jer 22:29 . We may cry till we are hoarse; speak till we spit forth our lungs, and to no more purpose than Bede did, when he preached to a heap of stones. Holy Melancthon, being himself newly converted, thought it impossible for his hearers to withstand the evidence of the gospel. But after he had been a preacher a while, it is said he complained, that “old Adam was too hard for young Melancthon.”
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Deu 32:1-14
1Give ear, O heavens, and let me speak;
And let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
2Let my teaching drop as the rain,
My speech distill as the dew,
As the droplets on the fresh grass
And as the showers on the herb.
3For I proclaim the name of the Lord;
Ascribe greatness to our God!
4The Rock! His work is perfect,
For all His ways are just;
A God of faithfulness and without injustice,
Righteous and upright is He.
5They have acted corruptly toward Him,
They are not His children, because of their defect;
But are a perverse and crooked generation.
6Do you thus repay the Lord,
O foolish and unwise people?
Is not He your Father who has bought you?
He has made you and established you.
7Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of all generations.
Ask your father, and he will inform you,
Your elders, and they will tell you.
8When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
When He separated the sons of man,
He set the boundaries of the peoples
According to the number of the sons of Israel.
9For the Lord’s portion is His people;
Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance.
10He found him in a desert land,
And in the howling waste of a wilderness;
He encircled him, He cared for him,
He guarded him as the pupil of His eye.
11Like an eagle that stirs up its nest,
That hovers over its young,
He spread His wings and caught them,
He carried them on His pinions.
12The Lord alone guided him,
And there was no foreign god with him.
13He made him ride on the high places of the earth,
And he ate the produce of the field;
And He made him suck honey from the rock,
And oil from the flinty rock,
14Curds of cows, and milk of the flock,
With fat of lambs, And rams, the breed of Bashan, and goats,
With the finest of the wheat–
And of the blood of grapes you drank wine.
Deu 32:1-3 There is a series of imperatival language:
1. In Deu 32:1 three related to hearing:
a. give ear – BDB 24, KB 27, Hiphil IMPERATIVE
b. speak – BDB 180, KB 210, Piel COHORTATIVE
c. hear – BDB 1033, KB 1570, Qal IMPERFECT used in a JUSSIVE sense
2. In Deu 32:2 two related to moisture:
a. drop – BDB 791, KB 887, Qal IMPERFECT used in a JUSSIVE sense
b. distill – BDB 633, KB 683, Qal IMPERFECT used in a JUSSIVE sense
3. In Deu 32:3 ascribe – BDB 396, KB 393, Qal IMPERATIVE (possibly proclaim as Qal IMPERFECT is also used in a COHORTATIVE sense, which gives a balanced structure as in Deu 32:1-2)
Deu 32:1 O heavens. . .the earth These are two permanent things (cf. Mic 6:1-2). There was a need for two witnesses to confirm truth (cf. Deu 4:26; chapters 4 and 31-32 [cf. Deu 30:19; Deu 31:28; Deu 32:1] form a literary bracket). The heavens represents the sky (cf. Gen 1:1). This phrase is similar to how Isaiah introduces YHWH’s court case (cf. Isa 1:2).
Deu 32:2 Moisture was used as an analogy of the life-giving qualities of God’s word. Four different words for rain are used (BDB 564, 378, 973, 914). This is also a possible allusion to YHWH as the giver of fertility, not Ba’al (cf. Deu 11:14; Deu 11:17; Deu 28:12; Deu 28:24; Deu 33:28).
Deu 32:3 the name of the LORD Hebrew names were very important as representing character. The rabbis said that Lord reflected God in His love, kindness, and mercy. See Special Topic: The Name of YHWH .
Notice in Deu 32:3-4 several attributes are used to describe Israel’s God:
1. greatness – BDB 152, cf. Deu 3:24; Deu 5:24; Deu 9:26; Deu 11:2; Deu 32:3; Num 14:19
2. His work is perfect – BDB 1071, meaning wholesome, having integrity
a. used of God’s work, Deu 32:4
b. used of God’s way, Psa 18:30
c. used of God’s law, Psa 19:7-8
3. all His ways are just – BDB 1048, cf. Gen 18:25; Psa 33:5; Psa 37:28; Psa 99:4; Psa 111:7; Isa 5:16; Isa 28:17; Isa 30:18; Isa 61:8
4. a God of faithfulness – BDB 53, cf. Psa 36:5; Psa 88:11; Psa 89:1-2; Psa 89:5; Psa 89:8; Psa 89:24; Psa 89:33; Psa 89:49; Psa 92:2; Psa 119:90; Isa 25:1; Hos 2:22
5. a God … without injustice – BDB 732, cf. Job 34:10, this is condemned in His people, Lev 19:15; Lev 19:35; Deu 25:16
6. righteous is He – BDB 843, cf. Job 34:17; Psa 116:5; Psa 119:137; Psa 129:4; Psa 145:17
7. upright is He – BDB 449, cf. Psa 25:8; Psa 92:15
God This is from the Hebrew word Elohim. See Special Topic: Names for Deity .
Deu 32:4 The Rock This title (BDB 849) was used of God in Deu 32:15; Deu 32:18; Deu 32:30, and Psa 18:1-2; Psa 19:14; 2Sa 22:2 ff; Psa 78:35; Isa 44:8). It speaks of (1) the strength, stability, the unchanging nature of the one true God or (2) God as a mighty, impregnable fortress.
perfect The Hebrew word (BDB 1071) means self-sufficient, whole, complete (cf. 2Sa 22:31; Psa 18:30).
Notice the different ways YHWH is characterized (i.e., the greatness of God, Deu 32:3):
1. His work is perfect – BDB 1071
2. all His ways are just – BDB 1048
3. a God of faithfulness – BDB 53
4. a God without injustice – BDB 732
5. He is righteous – BDB 843
6. He is upright – BDB 449
What a powerful description of the God of creation and salvation. A God in whom all humans can trust and rely (e.g., for other characterizations see Exo 34:6; Num 14:18; Deu 4:31; Neh 9:17; Psa 103:8; Psa 145:8).
A God of faithfulness This is the same word (BDB 53) used in Deu 32:20 referring to man’s actions. It is translated faith in Hab 2:4, the righteous will live by his faith. This shows the priority that God puts on His faithfulness and Deu 32:20 shows the priority He puts on the faith of His children. Faith and grace are both biblical concepts rather than just NT concepts. The only way to respond to God’s grace is through faith. See Special Topic: Believe, Trust, Faith, and Faithfulness in the OT .
Deu 32:5 As YHWH is described in Deu 32:3-4, now His covenant children, who were supposed to reflect His character (cf. Deu 32:3-4), but did not, are described:
1. acted corruptly toward Him – BDB 1007, KB 1469, Piel PERFECT, cf. Deu 4:16; Deu 4:25; Deu 9:12; Deu 31:29; Gen 6:12; Exo 32:7; described in Psa 14:1-3, it usually denotes idolatry
2. not His children – BDB 119 negated
3. because of their defect – BDB 548
a. physical mutilation which excluded one from priestly service, cf. Lev 21:17-18; Lev 21:21; Lev 21:23, and animals from being offered as sacrifice, cf. Lev 22:20-21; Deu 15:21; Deu 17:1
b. moral blemish, cf. Lev 22:25; Job 11:15; Pro 9:7
4. perverse – BDB 786 I, cf. Deu 32:20, the basic meaning is twisted, which denotes a defection from the standard (rule) of YHWH’s character (righteous)
5. crooked – BDB 836, found only here, the meaning is parallel to #4
Deu 32:6 He your Father The NIDOTTE, vol. 1, p. 222, has an interesting comment on this metaphor for God. It is used reluctantly in the OT because of the possible association with fertility worship (e.g., Jer 2:27). This song of Moses is one of the earliest usages to describe God (cf. Exo 4:22; Deu 1:31; Deu 8:5 and later in the prophets, cf. Isa 1:2; Isa 63:16; Jer 3:19; Hos 11:1-3; Mal 1:6). God’s fatherhood is mentioned in Deu 32:6; Deu 32:18-20.
This fatherhood of corporate Israel is identified in God’s relationship to the Davidic king (cf. 2Sa 7:14; Psa 2:7; and Psa 89:26).
Family metaphors (father-son; husband-wife) are the most powerful ways to communicate the intimate relationship that God desires with His human creation (made in His image and likeness). Humans can understand the depth of God’s feelings and commitment by analogy to these foundational human experiences (i.e., family, marriage, children). See Special Topic: Fatherhood of God .
Deu 32:6-14 This continues a description of Israel and begins a legal case against them by enumerating all that YHWH had done for them:
1. their actions toward YHWH
a. foolish – BDB 614 I, cf. Deu 32:21
b. unwise – BDB 314, opposite in Deu 32:29; Deu 4:6; Psa 107:43
2. YHWH’s actions toward them:
a. He was their Father, Deu 32:6 – BDB 888 I, KB 1111, Qal PERFECT
b. He made them, Deu 32:6 – BDB 793 I, KB 889, Qal PERFECT, cf. Gen 14:19; Gen 14:22 (this could refer to initial creation, but more likely in context, His founding them as a nation in the Exodus)
c. He established them, Deu 32:6 – BDB 465, KB 464, Polel IMPERFECT, Job 31:15; Isa 62:7
d. He found them, Deu 32:10 – BDB 592, KB 679, Qal IMPERFECT
(1) in a desert land
(2) in a howling waste of wilderness
e. He encircled them, Deu 32:10 – BDB 685, KB 738, Polel IMPERFECT, i.e., for protection
f. He cared for them, Deu 32:10 – BDB 106, KB 122, i.e., for protection, i.e., attentively consider (only here)
g. He guarded them, Deu 32:10 – BDB 665, KB 718, Qal IMPERFECT, cf. Psa 25:21; Psa 31:23; Psa 41:11-12; Psa 61:7; Isa 26:3; Isa 42:6; Isa 49:8
h. cared for them as a mother eagle, Deu 32:11, cf. Exo 19:4
(1) stirs up its nest – BDB 734, KB 802, Hiphil IMPERFECT, i.e., to activity
(2) hover over – BDB 934, KB 1219, Piel IMPERFECT, cf. Gen 1:2
(3) teach babies to fly
(a) spread wings – BDB 831, KB 975, Qal IMPERFECT
(b) caught them – BDB 542, KB 534, Qal IMPERFECT
(c) carried them – BDB 669, KB 724, Qal IMPERFECT
i. He guided them, Deu 32:12 – BDB 634, KB 685, Hiphil IMPERFECT
j. He made them ride on the high places of the earth, Deu 32:13 – BDB 938, KB 1230, Hiphil IMPERFECT, cf. Isa 58:14
k. He fed them, Deu 32:13-14
(1) ate – BDB 37, KB 46, Qal IMPERFECT
(2) suck – BDB 413, KB 416, Hiphil IMPERFECT
(3) drank – BDB 1059, KB 1667, Qal IMPERFECT
Deu 32:7 There are several commands in this verse related to Israel remembering YHWH’s care and provision:
1. remember – BDB 269, KB 269, Qal IMPERATIVE
2. consider – BDB 106, KB 122, Qal IMPERATIVE
3. ask – BDB 981, KB 1371, Qal IMPERATIVE
4. elder will tell you – BDB 616, KB 665, Hiphil JUSSIVE
It was this historical information testified to in (1) the ancestral tradition passed down from generation to generation (cf. Deu 4:9-10; Deu 6:7; Deu 6:20-25; Deu 11:19; Deu 32:46) and (2) this Song of Moses that witnessed against Israel!
Deu 32:8 This verse asserts that Israel’s God is also the only God (cf. Deu 4:35; Deu 4:39; Isa 54:5; Jer 32:27). He and He alone sets the boundaries of all nations (cf. Deu 2:5; Deu 2:9; Deu 2:19; Genesis 10). This is not henotheism, but monotheism!
The Most High This name for God (BDB 751) is first used in Num 24:16 (Elyon). This seems to be an abbreviation for El Elyon (cf. Gen 14:18-21; Psa 78:35). This name for deity is used in connection with the nations (cf. Psa 47:1-3). See Special Topic: Names For Deity .
NASBAccording to the number of the sons of Israel
NKJV, NJBaccording to the number of the children of Israel
NRSVaccording to the number of the gods
TEVHe assigned to each nation a heavenly being
REBaccording to the number of the sons of God
The Septuagint has the number of the angels of God (El). This translation seems to fit better (cf. The Jewish Study Bible, p. 441) because: (1) cf. Deu 29:26; (2) it follows the reading of the scroll from cave four of Qumran scrolls; (3) national angels are mentioned in Daniel 10, 12. Each nation had an assigned angel (cf. Dan 10:13), but Israel had YHWH (although Michael is also said to be Israel’s angel, cf. Dan 12:1).
Deu 32:9 the LORD’s portion is His people Conversely His people’s portion is God Himself (cf. Exo 19:5; Psa 16:5; Psa 73:26; Lam 3:24). The Israelites were in a unique sense YHWH’s special covenant people (cf. Deu 4:20; Deu 7:6; Deu 14:2; Deu 26:18). See Special Topic: YHWH’s ETERNAL REDEMPTIVE PLAN .
Deu 32:10 He found him in a desert land,
And in the howling waste of a wilderness This is an allusion to YHWH’s choice of Israel in romantic terms (cf. Jer 2:23 -; Hos 2:14-15). This imagery supplements the exodus motif (cf. Deu 1:19). It expresses in a powerful metaphor YHWH’s initiating love for Israel (cf. Deu 10:14-15; Amo 3:2).
There are two contrasting ways in the Mosaic literature of evaluating the wilderness wandering period:
1. a time of faith and faithfulness
a. Deu 32:10-14
b. Jer 2:1-3
c. Hos 2:14-23
2. a time of faithlessness
a. Num 14:1 to Num 17:11
b. Deu 1:26-33
c. Psa 95:8-11
d. Hos 9:10-14
e. Jer 2:4-13
f. Ezekiel 23
the pupil of His eye
In English this would be the apple of His eye. This is another metaphor which denotes Israel as a special child (cf. Psa 17:8). Literally the Hebrew is little man of His eye.
Deu 32:11
NASB, NKJVLike an eagle. . .that hovers over its young
NRSVlike an eagle that stirs up its nest
TEVlike an eagle watching its nest
NJBas an eagle watches over its young
This shows God as an extremely protective and powerful parent (cf. Deu 32:19). This concept of God as an eagle is that of God as a mother bird (cf. Deu 32:18; Gen 1:2; Exo 19:4; Mat 23:37; Luk 13:34). Deity is described as both male (cf. Deu 32:6) and female (cf. Deu 32:11). The NJB and REV translations follow the Septuagint.
SPECIAL TOPIC: SHADOW AS METAPHOR FOR PROTECTION AND CARE
Deu 32:12 The Lord alone guided him This term (BDB 94) is used to designate YHWH’s exclusive relationship to Israel. He and He alone guided them!
Deu 32:13 ride on the high places of the earth This is a metaphor for YHWH’s abundance (as is all of Deu 32:14) given to Israel (cf. Isa 58:14; Hab 3:19).
honey from the rock This refers to the honey of wild bees, which often lived in the cracks of the rocks (cf. Psa 81:16).
oil from the flinty rock This refers to the wild olive trees that grew where not even grass could grow. Deu 32:13-14 are talking about the abundant produce of the Promised Land.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Give ear. Figure of speech Apostrophe. App-6. Compare Isa 1:2.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 32
So this is the song that Moses taught the children of Israel. And incidentally it was the first hit rock song. It is a song about the Rock.
Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the rock, His work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment, a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He ( Deu 32:3-4 ).
So the song begins with a declaration of God as our Rock, of His works, His ways, His judgments, His truths, His righteousness. But the people
They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of His children: they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he your father that hath bought you? hath he not made thee, and established thee? Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask your father, and he will show you; the elders, and they will tell you. When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the LORD’S portion is his people ( Deu 32:5-9 );
Then in verse eleven, a beautiful figure.
As an eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads abroad her wings, takes them, bears them on her wings: so the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him ( Deu 32:11-12 ).
And so the beautiful figure of God as an eagle: “As an eagle stirreth up the nest”. Now actually the description here is of a mother eagle teaching the little eaglets how to fly. And how does the mother eagle teach the little eaglets how to fly? By kicking them out of the nest. Now the little eaglets are very comfortable in the nest. And the nests were usually high up on the sides of the cliffs. But the mother eagle will kick the little eaglets out of the nest when the time has come to learn how to fly. And the little eaglet will start flapping its wings uncoordinated and all, and start falling as it’s flapping and just start falling on down. And the mother eaglet is fluttering over it but then it swoops, just about the time it gets to the rocks, it swoops underneath the little eaglet and it catches it on its wings and it bears it back up to the nest until the next lesson. Now that may seem like a pretty harsh way to teach an eaglet how to fly, but there is no other way to teach it. And it has got to learn how to fly.
Now the picture really is of God in developing us in our walk and relationship with Him. It is very easy for us to get comfortable sometimes in a particular position, in a particular place, under particular circumstances. And suddenly God begins to stir up the nest. We thought we had great job security, but we find we have been terminated. “God, what are you doing?” He’s teaching you how to fly. And sometimes in your awkwardness you look down and you’re flapping around and you’re screaming. And the little eaglets, they really scream as they’re going down, and you see the rocks coming up so fast, and you think, “Sure. I’m going to be dashed. This is the end. It’s all over. God, you’ve forsaken me.” Then God just sorta swoops underneath, picks you up, and all of a sudden you begin to see the plan of God emerging.
I was talking to a man the other day. We went to lunch together. He’s the president of a large corporation here in Orange County. Three years ago he was fired from Thrifty’s Drug store after working for them for thirteen years. He was a manager of one of their stores. And he had received threats upon his life and upon his family and so he asked Thrifty’s to transfer him from that store and they refused to do it. And he said, “Well, either transfer me or fire me”. And so they fired him after thirteen years. And he said, “Lord, what’s going to happen to me now? Lord, what’s going on? And he was flapping and screaming. But he went to work as a salesman for this corporation and he was blessed. He soon became the sales manager in a few months time, and when the owners decided to sell the corporation, he was then in a position to buy it. And he now is the owner and president of this large corporation.
Now you see that’s what God had in mind for all the time. But as long as he had his job security and was working for Thrifty, he was not looking for a job. Now God had this position for him, but how is God ever going to get him to this position? The only way is to stir up the nest, to get him fired from his job at Thriftys. “Now I’m fired. What am I going to do? Well, I’m going to look for a job.” All right, now you’re in a position where God can lead you because you’re out looking. You see we get locked into situations. So often when we get locked in we get comfortable and we’re not really looking for what God might have for us, because we’re very comfortable in this position. So God stirs up the nest. And we think, “Oh, I’m surely going to perish, no hope”. Then God spreads forth His wings, bears you up, and thus we grow, thus we learn to trust in the Lord and to rely on the Lord as we are gaining strength and learning more and more how to fly.
And so that beautiful picture of the eagle, stirring up her nest, fluttering over her young, spreading abroad her wings, taking them and bearing them on her wings. So the Lord alone did lead him so that there was no strange god within him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and He made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; but they lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation.
But Jeshurun, (which is Israel,) waxed fat, they kicked: they waxen fat, they’ve grown thick, they’re covered with fatness; so they forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God ( Deu 32:15-17 );
Now Paul tells us that they who sacrifice to idols are actually sacrificing to devils. There was a common belief that a demon actually inhabited the idols of these gods. And that is very possibly true, I wouldn’t doubt it at all. And many of these idols of little pagan gods actually have demons that are associated with them. So they that were sacrificing to these idols were actually sacrificing unto devils which shows the idiocy of saying concerning a person involved in a false religious system. “Well, he is so sincere in the worship of his god surely God will, you know, accept him and save him. He is sincerely worshipping the devil, so God should reward him.”
Now of the Rock that had begotten them, they were not mindful, they had forsaken God that formed him ( Deu 32:18 ).
And so this song, is quite a song of Moses. I’m amazed that the people were able to learn it. And so God tells them that because they had provoked His anger by the worship of these other gods that He
will heap mischiefs upon them; Thy shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction ( Deu 32:23-24 ):
I personally feel that this is a prophecy of the holocaust in Germany. And the being burned in the ovens in Germany was predicted in this song. And when their trouble came they were to sing this song, and if they would, it was to remind them of why the calamities befell them.
Now so often today you talk to a Jew and you find he is an atheist because he will say, “Where was God when my parents or grandparents were burned in the ovens in Germany?” If they would have kept this song and sung this song, they would know why all the calamities befell them because they had forsaken God, and thus they had been forsaken by God.
And so God tells of the
scattering to the corners of the earth; make the remembrance to cease. O that they were wise, (says God) that they understood this, that they would consider what is the end result ( Deu 32:26 , Deu 32:29 ).
Oh, how God wants you to be wise and to look ahead and to see what the end result is of the lifestyle you’ve chosen. God’s crying. He’s crying over man’s ignorance, over man’s folly. Oh, that they did know; only if they would look ahead and see what the end result of what that lifestyle is.
How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them and the Lord had shut them in ( Deu 32:30 )?
How could these happen unless God was with you? You forget to see, you forget to look that it was God’s hand that did it for you, for the enemies rock is not as our Rock.
For their vine is the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: their wine is the poison of dragons and all ( Deu 32:32-33 ).
Now God said,
To me belongs vengeance, (verse thirty-five) and recompense; Their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste ( Deu 32:35 ).
That is the text that Jonathan Edwards used for his sermon, Sinners in the hands of an angry God. “Now unto me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.” Jonathan Edwards in the sermon Sinners in the hand of an angry God, said, “That a sinner is like a man walking over a fiery pit on a icy plank. Your footing is so unsure at any moment you can slip into the abyss.”
It was a very powerful sermon, one of the most classic sermons in the history of the church, I guess. Jonathan Edwards was nearsighted; he had written out the sermon and he read it holding it up close so that he could see it. And as he was reading this sermon to the congregation, the power of the Holy Spirit began to convict people so greatly that they began to crawl down the aisle, screaming out to God for mercy. You want to read something really chilling sometime read “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” by Jonathan Edwards. Oh, what a servant. It’s really heavy duty. This is the text for that sermon.
For the LORD shall judge His people, and repeat Himself for His servants, when He sees that their power is gone, and there is none left. And He shall say, Where are their gods, the rock in whom you were trusting. Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you, and be your protection. See now that I am He, and there is no god with me (or beside Me): I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that deliver out of my hand ( Deu 32:36-39 ).
Some people say, “Does God make people sick?” Well, He said here that He does for purposes, different purposes within our lives. God says that He wounds, that He even kills, that He heals; that He makes alive. There are certain teachers today who would deny this, but there it is.
For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever. If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with their blood ( Deu 32:40-42 ),
And so forth. And God goes on to tell of the calamities that will come, the song they are to sing, so that when the calamities did come they would remember this is the reason.
So, set your hearts to all the words which I testify among you today, (verse forty-six), which you shall command you to observe the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life ( Deu 32:46-47 )
Man, set your heart to it. Look, it is not an empty thing; it’s your life. This is a matter of life and death. It isn’t just something to just pass off lightly. God is saying, “it’s your life, not a vain thing”.
Now the Lord said to Moses, get up to mount Nebo which is in the land of Moab, which is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession: And die in the mount where you go up, and you will be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron your brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people. Because you trespassed against me at the waters of Meribah, because you did not sanctify me in the midst of the children of Israel ( Deu 32:48-51 ).
So, Moses’ time has come; “get up onto the mountain and die because you failed to properly represent me before the people at the waters of Meribah”. Oh, what a heavy responsibility Moses had of being God’s representative. His failure at the waters of Meribah cost him the privilege of leading them into the Promised Land. What a heavy responsibility each of us have, for we are God’s representative to that world out there. You’re His witnesses, you’re God’s representatives and God wants you to properly represent Him. An awesome responsibility. God help us.
“
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
A very marvelous chapter it is a song and a prophecy, in which the poet-seer seems to behold the whole future spread before him as in a map, and it is so vivid to him that he describes it rather as a matter present or past, than as a thing which is yet to be. It is the story of Gods dealing his chosen and peculiar people, Israel, from the beginning to the end. The commencement is exceedingly noble.
Deu 32:1-3. Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass Because I will publish the name of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
All through, the song is for the glorification of God; not a syllable, indeed, in which man is held up to honour, but the Lord alone is exalted in his dealings with his people. He is the rock. All other things are the mere cloud that hovers on the mountains brow; but
Deu 32:4. He is the rock,
Immutable, eternal.
Deu 32:4. His work is perfect:
Sometimes very terrible and very mysterious, but his work is perfect.
Deu 32:4. For all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
But as for his people, what a contrast between them and their God!
Deu 32:5. They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.
What a stoop from the God of truth, without iniquity, to a people full of iniquity a perverse and crooked generation. We never know so much of our own vileness as when we get a clear view of the excellency of God. What said Job? I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.
Deu 32:6. Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?
Who made the Jews to be a people? Who set Israel apart to be a nation? Who, but God, who bought them with a price when they came out of Egypt, and, in his fatherly care, led them through the wilderness?
Deu 32:7-8. Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.
Gods first point in the government of the world was his own people. Everything else was mapped out after he had set apart a place for them a place sufficient, large, fruitful, and in an admirable position, that there they might multiply and enjoy all the good things which he so freely gave them; and to this day dynasties rise and fall, kings reign or are scattered by defeat, only with this one point in Gods eye, and purpose in his mind the upholding of the Church in the world the spread of his glorious truth.
Deu 32:9-12. For the LORDS portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him.
This is the history of the tutoring of Israel in the wilderness. When they came out of Egypt they were a mere mob of slaves, degenerate by the debasing influence of long bondage. They had to be trained before they were lit to be a nation. Now in all this, let us try to see ourselves. What has God wrought for those of us who are his people in bringing us out from the bondage of sin? and how graciously does he this day preserve us as a man guards the apple of his eye! No sooner does anything come near the eye than up goes the hand instinctively to shield the eye. And let anything happen to the people of God, and the power of God is ready at once for their defense. An eagle has to teach her young eaglets to fly. She will take them on her wings, so they say; cast them off, and let them flutter, and then dash down and come reader them and bear them up again till she has taught them to use their wings. And the Lord has been doing this with many here apparently casting them off, only that, when they fall, underneath them may be the everlasting arms. We have to be trained to faith. It is a difficult exercise for such poor creatures as we are. We are being trained for it at this day. After they had been thus tutored, they were brought into the promised land, which Moses never entered, but yet in his vision of prophecy he sees it all.
Deu 32:13-14. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.
It was a very fruitful land, abounding not merely in necessaries, but in luxuries. Palestine bear to its inhabitants all that heart could wish, and for a long time, while they were faithful to God, they lived in the midst of plenty.
Deu 32:15. But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked:
The little holy nation for I suppose that is the meaning of Jeshurun. It is a diminutive word the little religious nation waxed fat. It abounded in prosperity. It grew stout and kicked.
Deu 32:15. Thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.
Alas! alas! alas! they set up calves in Bethel. They turned aside to Ashtaroth, and worshipped the queen of heaven.
Deu 32:16-17. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils,
Demons not to God.
Deu 32:17. Not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.
There is nothing new in religion that is true. The truth is always old. But only imagine a new God! And verily we have had lately some new fashions brought up some new styles of worship. I think they call them mediaeval. They certainly are no older then that new gods that newly came up, whom your fathers feared not.
Deu 32:18. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.
Israel was nothing apart from God a little tribe of people nothing to be compared with the great nations of the earth. Its only reason for existence was its God. He was its center, its light, its glory, its power. They had got away from him that formed them.
Deu 32:19-20. And when the LORD saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.
There is the mischief want of faith. Want of faith leads to all manner of sin. Oh! that we had a strong elastic faith to realize the unseen God, and keep to purely spiritual worship, not wanting symbols, signs, and outward tokens, all of which are abominable in his sight, but worshipping the unseen in spirit and in truth. But the Lord said:
Deu 32:21. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation.
And so the idolatrous nations came and conquered Judaea. One after another, they trampled down the holy city, and let them see that God could use the nations that they despised to be a scourge upon them.
Deu 32:22-25. For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.
Now read the story of the destruction of Israel and Judea the overthrow of these two kingdoms and you will see how, word for word, all this came tame.
Deu 32:26-27. I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men: Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.
God always looks out for some reason for mercy when he is dealing with his people, and he found it here that the heathen nations would not admit that God had thus been chastening his erring people, but would begin to ascribe their victories to their own demon gods; therefore, he said he would scatter them.
Deu 32:28-30. For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?
That little people would have been victorious over all their enemies if God had still been with them, but they were defeated and scattered because they had grieved the Lord. Oh! what strength believers might have if they would but believe! If we could but cast ourselves upon God in simple, childlike faith, we might play the Samson over again and smite our thousands. But we, too, have little faith in God, even those who have most of it; and when the time of trial comes, we also are a stiff-necked and unbelieving generation, as our fathers were.
Deu 32:31-34. For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?
What an awful text! God lays mans sins by seals them up amongst their treasures, that they should not be forgotten, and he will bring them to account.
Deu 32:35-36. To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For the LORD shall judge his people,
He will not always let his enemies triumph over them. He will come back to his people whom he seemed to cast away. The Lord shall judge his people.
Deu 32:36. And repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.
He seemed very angry, but how soon he comes back in love and tries his people over again.
Deu 32:37-39. And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me; I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Here we have the song itself. The first part (verses Deu 32:13) consists of a call to attention. Heaven and earth are called to listen while the servant of God proclaims the name of God. This he does immediately (verses Deu 32:3-4), celebrating His greatness, His perfection, His justice, His faithfulness. Briefly he refers to the people (verse Deu 32:5) and nothing good is said of them.
Proceeding with the song, the tender government of God is illustrated in the figure of the eagle and its method with its young. A consideration of this figure shows that in their methods which may at the moment appear unkind, Love is perpetually working toward the higher development of those on whom it is set.
At this point the song becomes a wail, opening with the startling words, “But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked.” Prosperity which was wholly due to the goodness of God was made the occasion of rebellion against Him. Consequently the tenderness of love becomes the burning of a fierce anger and benefits are replaced by chastisements. The song ends on the note, “Oh, that they were wise,” and shows that if they were, the strength of God would be greater than all the forces of their foes.
The song ended, Moses once more earnestly appealed to the people, declaring that their very life depended on their obedience.
Immediately following, there came to him the final call. It was characterized by both tenderness and severity. The reason for his exclusion from the land was once more declared; and yet he was to die, not amid the mists and mysteries of the valley, but on the mount of vision itself.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Moses Song: the Lords Favor upon Israel
Deu 31:30; Deu 32:1-14
The song of Moses, like the fabled song of the swan, was his last and sweetest. It is probably the noblest ode in the whole compass of the Bible, and is the source from which subsequent singers derived suggestions for their noblest outbursts. The marginal references prove how deeply it dyed the national sentiment.
It excels in the names and designations of the Almighty. He is the Rock: Deu 31:4; Deu 31:15; Deu 31:18; Deu 31:30; Jehovah: Deu 31:6; Father: Deu 31:6; the Most High: Deu 31:8; God: El, the strong, Deu 31:15, etc. What a study are the names of God, scattered through the Bible! Each was coined to meet some need of the human soul. What the rocks of the desert are to its shifting sands God is amid the changes of this mortal existence.
This earlier part of the song is very tender. We are Gods portion; the apple of His eye; as young eaglets, whom the mother-bird is carefully teaching to fly, the favored recipients of Gods richest gifts, Deu 31:13, etc.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Deu 32:11-12
Without attaching any mystic meaning to this figure of the eagle, we may readily discover the great principles of God’s action that it was intended to illustrate.
I. The Divine discipline of life is designed to awaken man to the development of his own powers. The instinct of the eagle in breaking up her nest is to arouse the native energies of her young. The power of flight is in them, but unknown, because it has never been called into play; it is a slumbering faculty, and must be awakened into action. Man’s soul is formed into God’s image by the right action of his spiritual powers, and these powers are only awakened by the activity of God. (1) The great purpose of all spiritual discipline is to render men Divine. By the very constitution of the soul, the Godlike image must be formed by awakening the energies that lie slumbering within. The soul contains in itself the germinal forces of the life it may possess in the future ages. (2) The image of the text suggests two methods of Divine action: the stimulating and the exemplary. The eagle breaks up her nest, and is not the voice of life’s experiences God’s summons to man to rise and live to Him? God sends a shock of change through our circumstances, and rouses us from repose.
II. Discipline attains its end only when regarded as under the control of a father. It is obvious that the instinct of the eagle is that of parental affection. (1) Believe in the Father, and you submissively accept the mysterious in life. (2) Believe in the Father, and you shall strive to realise the purpose of this discipline. We have no impulse to any spiritual aspiration, to any true self-sacrifice, to the exertion of any spiritual energy, which is not awakened by the touch of the Eternal Spirit. Let us then awake out of sleep. God is breaking up our material resting-places in order that we may aspire towards the imperishable and the immortal.
E. L. Hull, Sermons, 3rd series, p. 131.
I. This passage suggests the thought of Divine incitements. The world is all alive with nest-building. Men seek comfort, satisfaction, and rest in outward things. In a scene where all is flowing they try to make fixity. God shatters what man builds, drives away what man gathers, takes what man in vain tries to hold.
II. Divine example. “As an eagle fluttereth over her young,” as showing them the way to fly, so God sets before us the example of the good, the strivings of the great, the lives of the saints, and chiefly the perfect pattern, the perfect life of His incarnate Son. With the disturbances and dislodgments of life will be found very often invitations, and possibilities, and enlargements.
III. Divine protection. “The eagle spreadeth abroad her wings.” The spreading of the wings is the promise of protection to the young birds, both while in the nest and while attempting to fly. So here we have the Divine protection amply promised and assured to us by the word of God.
IV. Divine compulsion. “As an eagle… taketh them,” if they will, in helpfulness; if they will not, in compulsion; in one way or another they must be got out of the nest. God takes oftentimes one and another in quiet, common life, and by a kind of sacred violence forces them into new scenes and almost into better states.
A. Raleigh, Front Dawn to the Perfect Day, p. 219.
References: Deu 32:11, Deu 32:12.-W. Haslam, The Threefold Gift of God, Part I., p. 41; T. Cuyler, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 529; W. M. Taylor, The Limitations of Life, p.. 78. Deu 32:13.-H. Melvill, The Lothbury Lectures, p. 19. Deu 32:20.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1784.
Deu 32:29
I. That there is very generally a strange want of reflection and concern respecting our condition as mortal is most apparent in many plain, familiar proofs. Perhaps nothing in the world, that appears so out of consistency, is so obvious. Notice: (1) The very small effect of the memory of the departed in the way of admonition of our own mortality. (2) How little and seldom we are struck with the reflection how many things we are exposed to that might cause death. (3) How soon a recovery from danger sets aside the serious thought of death. (4) How many schemes are formed for a long future time with as much interest and as much anticipating confidence as if there were no such thing in the world as death.
II. When it is asked, How comes this to be? the general explanation is that which accounts for everything that is wrong, namely, the radical depravity of our nature. There are doubtless special causes, such as: (1) The perfect distinctness of life and death. (2) Even the certainty and universality of death may be numbered among the causes tending to withdraw men’s thoughts from it. (3) The general presumption of having long to live is a cause of a more obvious kind. (4) Another great cause is that men occupy their whole soul and life with things that preclude the thought of its end. (5) There is in a large proportion of men a formal, systematic endeavour to keep off the thought of death.
III. Let us remember that to end our life is the mightiest event that awaits us in this world. And it is that which we are living but to come to. To have been thoughtless of it, then, will ultimately be an immense calamity; it will be to be in a state unprepared for it. And consider that there is a sovereign antidote to the fear of death. There is One that has Himself yielded to death, in order to vanquish it for us and take its terrors away.
J. Foster, Lectures, 2nd series, p. 241.
References: Deu 32:29.-Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 120; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vi., No. 304; J. C. Hare, Sermons in Herstmonceux Church, p. 415. Deu 32:31.-D. Moore, Penny Pulpit, No. 3342; R. Glover, By the Waters of Babylon, p. 153. Deu 32:32.-H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf, p. 280. Deu 32:35.-A. Tholuck, Hours of Christian Devotion, p. 128; Expositor, 3rd series, vol. v., p. 455. Deu 32:36.-Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes, p. 45. Deu 32:37, Deu 32:38.-Expositor, 2nd series, vol. iii., p. 225.
Deu 32:39
The text declares with a magnificent fulness the personality and the power of God.
I. God as healing is made visible to us in Jesus. The miracles of Jesus were mainly connected with the bodies of men. There were two great reasons for this. (1) One reason is to show the close connection of sickness with sin. One indication of this we have in a great fact of our Saviour’s life. He was incarnate that He might have sympathy with us. Yet He was never sick. He had no particular sickness because He had no sin. (2) Christ’s miracles of healing were not the luxury of a Divine good-nature. They were not random alms that cost Him nothing. A perceptible exhaustion of vital energy accompanied the exertion of His power. Here then is a second cause for our Lord’s miracles of healing: to teach us self-denial and thought for the sick. He took to Himself God’s motto, “I heal,” for one of the highest of theological and for one of the tenderest of practical reasons.
II. We now consider God as wounding. As to the wounds of suffering humanity-sickness-two considerations practically diminish the perplexity which they bring to us when we consider them as existing under a rule of love, (1) One of these considerations is the intention of sickness as a part of the spiritual discipline of the Christian life. (2) Another moral object of sickness is to draw out the fulness of Christian sympathy, scientific and personal.
III. As we enlarge our view, the Divine pity predominates. There are, indeed, voices of anguish on every breeze; there are shadows in the foreground of the picture of the history of humanity. But these voices of anguish are only surface discords, underlying which is a wondrous harmony. All those shadows do but set off the picture that closes with the long golden distances of sunlit hills whose atmosphere is perfect wisdom, whose magic colouring drops from the tender pencil of perfect love.
Bishop Alexander, The Great Question, p. 30.
References: Deu 32:39.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1465. Deu 32:44-52.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 443. Deu 32:47.-J. C. Jones, Penny Pulpit, No. 664; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 457; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 124. Deu 32:48-52.-H. Wonnacott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 158; H. Batchelor, The Incarnation of God, p. 193. Deut 32-Parker, vol. iv., pp. 350, 365, 375. Deu 33:1-5.-F. Whitfield, The Blessings of the Tribes, p. 23. Deu 33:1-12.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 281. Deut 33-M. Dods, Israel’s Iron Age, p. 173.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
2. The Song of Moses
CHAPTER 32:1-43
1. The introduction and the theme (Deu 32:1-4)
2. The foolish people (Deu 32:5-6)
3. How Jehovah loved them (Deu 32:7-14)
4. Their apostasy (Deu 32:15-18)
5. The results of the apostasy (Deu 32:19-33)
6. Jehovahs final dealing with Israel (Deu 32:34-42)
7. The glorious consummation (Deu 32:43)
The song of Moses is a great prophecy. The first great prophetic utterance is found in the parables of Balaam. The second prophetic discourse is this song. The song of Moses embraces the entire history of Israel, past, present and future. It bears in a most remarkable way every mark of being a prophetic testimony from the inspired leader of Gods people. The men, who deny this and who boast of literary ability, must be wilfully blind. The critics have denied to a man, that Moses wrote a single word of this song. But they have not informed us who wrote this wonderful ode. The assertion that the entire ode moves within the epoch of the kings, who lived many centuries after the time of Moses, rests upon a total misapprehension of the nature of prophecy (Keil).
Moses began his song by calling heaven and earth to hear the words of his mouth. What he was about to say concerned indeed heaven and earth. Isaiah too began his book with the same call (Isa 1:2). The name of Jehovah is exalted. He is the Rock and His work is perfect. He is a God of truth, just and right. But His people, what are they? Their character is described in verses 5 and 6. How He uncovers the true nature of the people, who had acknowledged Him as Jehovah! Corrupt, perverse, crooked, foolish, unwise, are the terms used to describe their character. The failure they would be, their apostasy and the necessity of disciplinary dealings of Jehovah with them, are thus mentioned in the first stanza of this song.
The third section, verses 7-14, reveals the goodness and the love of the Lord for them. The eighth verse has a deep meaning. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. This verse carries us backward. The boundaries of the nations were made by God with a direct reference to the children of Israel. The name of God used here, the Most High, is the millennial title, which He will have when His blessed Son our Lord receives His Kingdom. (See Gen 14:19.) When that time of blessing comes and Israel converted is no longer the tail but the head of the nations, this divine division will then be fully made known. And how they are reminded again what Jehovah did for them! He found him, He led him, instructed and kept him. Verses 9-14 are wonderful words. And they apply to us spiritually as they described Jehovahs goodness to Israel.
But how great is the contrast when we reach the fourth section of this prophetic song? (See verses 15-18.) The first step in their apostasy is the forsaking of God and the worshipping of false gods. The next step is, they lightly esteemed the rock of His salvation. No doubt this latter statement refers to the rejection of the son of God, when He appeared in the midst of His people.
The awful consequences of this rejection are seen prophetically. Here again we have history prewritten. But these predictions were so minutely fulfilled, the unbelieving heart of man refuses to accept these words as being the words of Moses. Here again we have a striking evidence of inspiration. God foretells through Moses the future of an apostate people. Compare verse 21 with Rom 10:19; Rom 11:10-11. The call of the Gentiles is anticipated in Moses song; salvation came to us Gentiles by their fall. It seems almost as if they are going to perish completely as a nation. But the song changes suddenly. Jehovah will yet arise in their behalf. It will be in a time when their power is gone, when they are helpless and their enemies press down upon them as never before in their long, dark night of suffering and tears. That will happen in the end of this present age, during the predicted time of great trouble, which is to come upon them. Compare verse 39 with Hos 5:15; Hos 6:1-3. The judgment, which is announced by Moses in verses 40-42 is the judgment which will fall upon Gentile nations in the day when the Lord appears in His glory. To follow this throughout the entire prophetic Word is as helpful as it is interesting.
The last verse of this song (verse 43) shows the glorious consummation. After the storm of judgment and indignation, peace will come to this earth. The nations will learn war no more; they will learn righteousness. Then the world will be converted. The Lord will be merciful unto His land and to His people. The blessings and glories promised to Israel have come. Therefore the nations will rejoice with His people. The song of Moses is the key to all prophecy.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Deu 4:26, Deu 30:19, Deu 31:28, Psa 49:1, Isa 1:2, Jer 2:12, Jer 6:19, Jer 22:29
Reciprocal: Deu 31:19 – this song Jos 24:27 – it hath Jdg 5:3 – O ye kings 1Ki 13:2 – O altar Psa 50:4 – call Isa 28:23 – General Isa 34:1 – let the Mic 1:2 – hearken Mic 6:1 – contend Heb 7:7 – the less Rev 15:3 – sing the song
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Deu 32:1. This very sublime ode, says Dr. Kennicott, is distinguished even by the Jews, both in their manuscripts and printed copies, as being poetry. In our present translation it would appear to much greater advantage if it were printed hemistically: and the translation of some parts of it may be much improved. We subjoin his translation of the following verses as a specimen.
1. Let the heavens give ear, and I will speak; and let the earth hear the words of my mouth.
2. My doctrine shall drop, as the rain; my speech shall distil, as the dew, as the small rains upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass.
3. Verily, the name of JEHOVAH will I proclaim; ascribe ye greatness unto our God.
4. He is the rock, perfect is his work; for all his ways are judgment; a God of truth, and without iniquity: just and right is he.
5. They are corrupted, not his, children of pollution, a generation perverse and crooked!
6. Is this the return which ye make to JEHOVAH?
O people foolish and unwise!
Is not he thy Father, thy Redeemer?
He who made thee, and established thee?
Give ear, O ye heavens hear, O earth By appealing, in this solemn manner, to the heavens and the earth in the beginning of this song, Moses intended to signify, 1st, The truth and importance of its contents, which were such as deserved to be known by all the world: and, 2d, The stupidity of that perverse and unthinking people, who were less likely to hearken and obey than the heavens and the earth themselves. 3d, He hereby declares also the justice of the divine proceedings toward them, according to what he had said, Deu 31:28. See Job 20:27. Or, heaven and earth are here put for the inhabitants of both, angels and men: both will agree to justify God in his proceedings against Israel, and to declare his righteousness, Psa 50:6; Rev 19:1-2.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Deu 32:1. Give ear, oh ye heavens, and I will speak. This ode, which is full of rhythm, and of almost every poetic excellence and beauty, has been called the Swan song of Moses, who died singing sublime but mournful notes. The principal words have been much copied by future prophets. It is carmen seculare, a song to the age, of truth, not of flattery.
Deu 32:2. My doctrine shall drop as the rain. In hieroglyphic writing, rain often designates knowledge and science, which revive and refresh nations, as rain revives the earth. The Messiah is said to sprinkle many nations, and to come down as rain on the mown grass. Psa 72:6. Isa 52:14.
Deu 32:5. Their spot is not the spot of his children. The order of the words being here inverted, hardly two versions read alike. The margin, which is mostly the best reading, is, He hath corrupted to himself. So they are not his children; that is their blot. Maimonides, Did he do them any harm? No: his children are their own blot. But Le Clerc prefers the Samaritan version, which reads, The sons of pollution are not his children. The meaning of the text obviously is, that the Israelites by idolatry and vice, caused themselves to be disowned as the children of God, which agrees with the reproaches in the next verse. The people of God are called to be without spot and blameless; to be holy as he is holy; to be pure in heart, and merciful, even as he is merciful. The English reading is at issue with all the ancient versions.
Deu 32:8. When the most high divided to the nations. This was done at Babel, when the Lord divided the earth among seventy two nations. Gen 10:5. Act 17:26-27. Canaan being a descendant of Ham, Gen 10:6, must have taken forcible possession of the land afterwards promised to Abraham, for Western Asia was most evidently given to the posterity of Shem. Hence the Lord in the partition of the earth, did very astonishingly reserve a happy portion for Israel, The LXX read, He set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. ; that is, God appointed a prince or angel over every family. The gentiles, in their mythology, do the same. Pallas was the titular goddess of Athens, and Minerva had temples without number. We also, slow to renounce the superstitions of Rome, dedicate churches to the virgin, and to the apostles and martyrs.
Deu 32:11. As the eagle. Israel may be said to have built their nests in Egypt, but durst not fly abroad till the Lord found them, or came opportunely to them in the desert; so the Lord bore them on his wings, and rejoiced to do them good.
Deu 32:15. But Jeshurun waxed fat. The Samaritan reads, But Jacob waxed fat. Others contend that the meaning is, Israel ought to be Jeshurun, or upright, but he waxed fat as a bull in a rich pasture, till he became unruly.
Deu 32:16. They provoked him to jealousy with strange The word gods is omitted. He would not pollute his page by names so obscene. The like omission occurs in 2Ch 14:3. Psa 19:13.
Deu 32:21. I will provoke them, as they have provoked me to anger and to jealousy, by giving all their regal wealth and national glory to my new people, the christian Israel. Isa 65:15.
Deu 32:30. Their rock. As a rock is the firm support of a building, so the Lord supported his people; whereas their rock, the gods of the heathens, were no gods.
Deu 32:32. The vine of Sodom. Israel was a choice vine of the Lords own planting; but alas, it bore apples of Sodom. Psa 80:8-15. Isa 5:1-7. There was scarcely a righteous man in Jerusalem before the Chaldeans came; and in later times, the christians had fled before the Romans came to burn the city and temple.
Deu 32:33. The poison of dragons. We read of the wailing of dragons, in Mic 1:8; and of the dragons of the wilderness in Mal 1:3. The Hebrew tanim, rendered dragons by the LXX, was probably different from the nachish, a serpent; but critics have not known that distinction. This occasions many readings, as the alligator, leviathan, &c. Modern history commonly gives feet to the dragon. Jeromes opinion is, that the elephant would pursue and crush the dragon, at which time he made a sibilant and wailing cry, to which Job compares his complaints: Job 30:28-29.
Deu 32:43. Rejoice, oh ye nations, with his people. This is understood in unison with all the prophecies of the conversion of the gentiles. So St. Paul applies it in Rom 15:10; and when the Hebrews shall join the church, it will be life from the dead.
Deu 32:49. Get thee upto Nebo. Moses from this mountain could see a part of the ranges of mount Lebanon; the snow on the summit would assist the sight. From Cader Idris, in North Wales, we can sometimes see objects at the distance of eighty miles. The Peak of Teneriffe can sometimes be seen from the deck of a ship, at the distance of a hundred and fifty miles.
Deu 32:50. And be gathered to thy people; not in body, but in the happy society of the holy patriarchs, in whose line Moses was descended. There they talk of wisdom, and reign forever with the Lord.
REFLECTIONS.
This second ode, as before observed, celebrates the past history, and predicts the future degeneracy of Israel. The apostrophe, calling heaven and earth into audience, is bold, sublime and highly proper; for a nation selected from the gentiles and called to be a favourite people, is a subject which claims the attention of angels and men.
The prophet, acquainted with the past, and inspired with views of the future, felt more than a mortal could contain. His soul overflowed in all the ecstasy of vision, and uttered itself in the rapture of sacred song. His doctrine dropped as rain, his speech distilled as dew, as the small rain upon the herb, and as the showers upon the grass. In vision all is seen at once, but in discourse and song, words and ideas must follow in regular succession. The imagination of the poet, completely embracing his subject in the multiplicity of his ideas, resembles a crowd who would enter a narrow gate all at once; but they are obliged to do it in order. Moses, overpowered with ideas of providence and grace, resembles ministers overpowered with the fulness of the gospel, when they pray that utterance may be given them, to make known the mysteries of grace, and preach among the gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. The metaphors and similes here employed are rich, appropriate, and striking. The divine goodness towards a brutish and unwise people, is represented by a rock giving life to a whole nation expiring with thirst; and a rock impregnable as a defence. It is also expressed by all the endearing arts and joys of the eagle over her young; and more especially by the paternal goodness which found Jacob in the desert, in the waste howling wilderness of Zin; and led him to a land abounding with butter and milk, with wheat and the blood of grapes. So morally the Lord found us in a dry and desert land; he led us to all the blessings of the gospel, and the hopes of eternal joy. This song next paints the sin of Jeshurun: he waxed fat and kicked. He became unmindful of his rock; he forgot the Lord. Thus it was with the Christian Israel, when Constantine poured a flood of imperial prosperity on the church, So it is with this infidel age. The zeal of our reformers, the writings of their successors, and the revivals of religion which ensued, have very much contributed to make the morals and piety of this nation surpass those of France: but latterly, we seem as though we were resolved to surpass all nations in routes, in theatres, in splendour, dissipation and vice.
What will the consequences be? The same as in Israel. When the Lord saw it, he abhorred them: he was moved to jealousy, he heaped mischiefs upon them and scattered them; a fire kindled in his anger, which burnt to the lowest hell. Wounded with his arrows, their bodies perished, and their souls were hurled to the demons they adored.
But his judgments were mingled with mercy: Deu 32:35. To him belonged vengeance, but he repented himself for his people. He would not utterly consume them: and his government over the christian church has uniformly realized the same characters and grace.
Before he strikes the harder blows of vengeance, he expostulates. Do you thus requite the Lord, oh foolish and unwise people? He laments over their ignorance and vice. Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end. What their latter end was, you may read in 2 Chronicles 36, and in the Lamentations of Jeremiah. What their latter end was when the Messiah and his gospel were rejected, you may read in Josephus; or more briefly in one sentence of our blessed Lord. In those days shall be tribulation such as was not since men were upon the earth. Hence Jesus wept over Jerusalem exactly in the same spirit as Moses in this song. Let it also be said to the christian world, if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he spare not thee. Let us look at the latter end of wicked men and apostate nations. Let us look at that aged sinner, who has had the good fortune, as he says, to survive all his contemporaries. See at last the best of constitutions beginning to fail. Mark his gray hairs and feeble gait, attended with every indication of a worn-out frame. Now surely the age is come for repentance, and the long-promised reformation, when compounding with conscience in the delirium of dissipation. Ah, no: he is still the same man. The illusions of vice are all confirmed in their ascendency over his soul. Company and sensual indulgence he cannot enjoy; but he endeavours to console himself by tracing the ideas of past pleasures. Ah, these too escape him; and the recollection reproaches his folly, and presents new mortifications to his pride. If his family, on the ground of decency, urge upon him the duties of religion, these recal the insults he has offered to God, and open all the terrors of a future world with vengeance on his soul. The review of life presents nothing but a host of crimes marshalled against him; and on imploring mercy through constraint and meanness, rather than repentance, he sees all heaven shrouded with darkness, and the bodings of divine indignation. Thus heaven and earth conspire against him, and he drops into eternity a fearful monument of the final end of all ungodly men.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Deuteronomy 32
“And Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation of Israel the words; of this song, until they were ended.” It is not too much to say that one of the very grandest and most comprehensive sections in the divine Volume now lies open before us and claims our prayerful attention. It takes in the whole range of God’s dealings with Israel from first to last, and presents a most solemn record of their grievous sin and of divine wrath and judgement. But, blessed be God, it begins and ends with Him; and this is full of deepest and richest blessing for the soul. If it were not so, if we had only the melancholy story of man’s ways, we should be completely overwhelmed. But in this magnificent song, as indeed in the entire Volume, we begin with God and we end with God. This tranquillises the spirit most blessedly, and enables us, in calm and holy confidence, to pursue the history of man; to see everything going to pieces in his hands, and to mark the actings of the enemy in opposition to the counsels and purposes of God. We can afford to see the complete failure and ruin of the creature, in every shape and form, because we know and are assured that God will be God, in spite of everything. He will have the upper hand in the end, and then all will be, must be right. God shall be all in all, and there shall be neither enemy nor evil occurrent throughout that vast universe of bliss of which our adorable Lord Christ shall be the central sun for ever.
But we must turn to the song.
“Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.” Heaven and earth are summoned to hearken to this magnificent outpouring. Its range is commensurate with its vast moral importance. “My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass; because I will publish the name of the Lord; ascribe ye greatness unto our God.”
Here lies the solid, the imperishable foundation of everything. Come what may, the Name of our God shall stand for ever. No power of earth or hell can possibly countervail the divine purpose, or hinder the outshining of the divine glory. What sweet rest this gives the heart, in the midst of this dark, sorrowful sin-stricken world, and in the face of the apparently successful schemes of the enemy! Our refuge, our resource, our sweet relief and solace are found in the Name of the Lord our God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Truly the publication of that blessed Name must ever be as the refreshing dew and tender rain falling upon the heart. This is, of a truth, the divine and heavenly doctrine on which the soul can feed, and by which it is sustained, at all times, and under all circumstances.
“He is the Rock” – not merely a rock. There is, there can be no other Rock but Himself. Eternal and universal homage to His glorious Name! – “His work is perfect;” – not a single flaw in anything that comes from His blessed hand, all bears the stamp of absolute perfection. This will be made manifest to all created intelligences by-and-by. It is manifest to faith now, and is a spring of divine consolation to all true believers. The very thought of it distils as the dew upon the thirsty soul. “For all his ways are judgement; a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he.” Infidels may cavil and sneer; they may, in their fancied wisdom, try to pick holes in the divine actings; but their folly shall be manifest to all. “Let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.” God must have the upper hand, in the end. Let men beware how they presume to call in question the sayings and doings of the only true, the only wise and the almighty God.
There is something uncommonly fine in the opening notes of this song. It gives the sweetest rest to the heart to know that however man and even the People of God may fail and come to ruin, yet we have to do with One who abideth faithful and can not deny Himself, whose ways are absolutely perfect, and who, when the enemy has done his very utmost, and brought all his malignant designs to a head, shall glorify Himself and bring in universal and everlasting blessedness.
True, He has to execute judgement upon man’s ways. He is constrained to take down the rod of discipline and use it, at times, with terrible severity upon His own people. He is perfectly intolerant of evil in those who bear His holy Name. All this comes out, with special solemnity in the song before us. Israel’s ways are exposed and dealt with unsparingly; nothing is allowed to pass; all is set forth with holy precision and faithfulness. Thus we read, “They have corrupted themselves; their spot is not the spot of his children; they are a perverse and crooked generation. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?”
Here we have the first note of reproof, in this song; but no sooner has it fallen on the ear than it is followed by a most precious outpouring of testimony to the goodness, loving kindness, faithfulness, and tender mercy of Jehovah, the Elohim of Israel, and the Most High, or Elion of all the earth. “Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee; when the Most High [God’s millennial title] divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.”
What a glorious fact is here unfolded to our view! A fact but little understood or taken account of by the nations of the earth. How little do men consider that, in the original settlement of the great national boundaries, the Most High had direct reference to “the children of Israel”! That thus it was, and the reader should seek to grasp this grand and intensely interesting fact. When we look at Geography and History from a divine standpoint, we find that Canaan and the seed of Jacob are God’s centre. Yes; Canaan, a little strip of land, lying along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, with an area of eleven thousand square miles, about a third of the extent of Ireland is the centre of God’s geography; and the twelve tribes of Israel are the central object of God’s history. How little have geographers and historians thought of this! They have described countries, and written the history of nations which in geographical extent and political importance far outstrip Palestine and its people, according to human thinking, but which, in God’s account, are as nothing compared with that little strip of land which He deigns to call His own, and which it is His fixed purpose to inherit through the seed of Abraham His friend.*
{*How true it is that God’s thoughts are not man’s thoughts, or His ways as man’s ways? Man attaches importance to extensive territories, material strength, pecuniary resources, well-disciplined armies, powerful fleets. God, on the contrary, takes no account of such things, they are to Him as the small dust of the balance. “Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in; that bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Hence we may see the moral reason why, in selecting a country to be the centre of His earthly plans and counsels, Jehovah did not select one of vast extent, but a very small and insignificant strip of land of little account in the thoughts of men. But oh! what importance attaches to that little spot! What principles have been unfolded there! What events have taken place there! What deeds have been done there! What plans and purposes are yet to be wrought out there! There is not a spot on the face of the earth so interesting to the heart of God as the land of Canaan and the city of Jerusalem. Scripture teems with evidence as to this. We could fill a small volume with proofs. The time is rapidly approaching when living acts will do what the fullest and clearest testimony of scripture fails to do, namely, convince men that the land of Israel was, is, and ever shall be God’s earthly centre. All other nations owe their importance, their interest, their place in the pages of inspiration simply to the fact of their being, in some way or other, connected with the land and people of Israel. How little do historians know or think of this! But surely every one who loves God ought to know it and ponder it.}
We cannot attempt to dwell upon this most important and suggestive fact, but we would ask the reader to give it his serious consideration. He will find it fully developed and strikingly illustrated in the prophetic scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. “The Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye” – the most sensitive, delicate part of the human body – “As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them upon her wings;” – to teach them to fly and keep them from falling “so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.”
Need we say that the primary application of all this is to Israel? No doubt, the church may learn from it, and profit by it; but to apply it to the church would involve a double mistake, a mistake of the most serious nature; it would involve nothing less than the reducing of the church from a heavenly to an earthly level; and the most unwarrantable interference with Israel’s divinely appointed place and portion. What, we may lawfully inquire, has the church of God, the body of Christ to do with the settlement of the nations of the earth? Nothing whatever. The church, according to the mind of God, is a stranger on the earth. Her portion, her hope, her home, her inheritance, her all is heavenly. It would make no difference in the current of this world’s history if the church had never been heard of. Her calling, her walk, her destiny, her whole character and course, her principles and morals, are, or ought to be heavenly. The church has nothing to do with the politics of this world. Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence she looks for the Saviour: She proves false to her Lord, false to her calling, false to her principles in so far as she meddles with the affairs of nations. It is her high and holy privilege to be linked and morally identified with a rejected, crucified, risen and glorified Christ. She has no more to do with the present system of things, or with the current of this world’s history, than her glorified Head in the heavens. “They,” says our Lord Christ, speaking of His people, “are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”
This is conclusive. It fixes our position and our path in the most precise and definite way possible. “As he is so are we in this world.” This involves a double truth, namely, our perfect acceptance with God, and our complete separation from the world. We are in the world, but not of it. We have to pass through it as pilgrims and strangers looking out for the coming of our Lord, the appearing of the bright and morning star. It is no part of our business to interfere with municipal or political matters. We are called and exhorted to obey the powers that be, to pray for all in authority, to pay tribute, and owe no man anything; to be “blameless and harmless, the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation” among whom we are to “shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life.”
From all this we may gather something of the immense practical importance of “rightly dividing the word of truth.” We have but little idea of the injury done both to the truth of God and to the souls of His people by confounding Israel with the church, the earthly and the heavenly. It hinders all progress in the knowledge of scripture, and mars the integrity of Christian walk and testimony. This may seem a strong statement; but we have seen the truth of it painfully illustrated, times without number; and we feel that we cannot too urgently call the attention of the reader to the subject. We have, more than once, referred to it in the progress of our studies on the Pentateuch, and therefore we shall not further pursue it here, but proceed with our chapter.
At verse 15, we reach a very different note in the song of Moses. Up to this point, we have had before us God and His actings, His purposes, His counsels, His thoughts, His loving interest in His people Israel, His tender gracious dealings with them. All this is full of deepest, richest blessing. There is – there can be no drawback here. When we have God and His ways before us, there is no hindrance to the heart’s enjoyment. All is perfection – absolute, divine perfection, and as we dwell upon it, we are filled. with wonder, love and praise.
But there is the human side; and here alas! all is failure and disappointment. Thus at the fifteenth verse of our chapter we read, “But Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked” – what a very full and suggestive statement! How vividly it presents, in its brief compass, the moral history of Israel! – thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.”
There is a solemn voice in all this for the writer and the reader. We are, each of us, in danger of treading the moral path indicated by the words just quoted. Surrounded, on all hands, by the rich and varied mercies of God, we are apt to make use of them to nourish a spirit of self-complacency. We make use of the gifts to shut out the Giver. In a word, we, too, like Israel, wax fat and kick. We forget God. We lose the sweet and precious sense of His presence, and of His perfect sufficiency, and turn to other objects as Israel did to false gods. How often do we forget the Rock that begat us, the God that formed us, the Lord that redeemed us! And all this is so much the more inexcusable in us, inasmuch as our privileges are so much higher than theirs. We are brought into a relationship and a position of which Israel knew absolutely nothing; our privileges and blessings are of the very highest order; it is our privilege to have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; we are the objects of that perfect love which stopped not short of introducing us into a position in which it can be said of us, “As he [Christ] is, so are we in this world.” Nothing could exceed the blessedness of this; even divine love itself could go no further than this. It is not merely that the love of God has been manifested to us in the gift and the death of His only-begotten and well-beloved Son, and in giving us His Spirit; but it has been made perfect with us by placing us in the very same position as that blessed One on the throne of God.
All this is perfectly marvellous. It passeth knowledge. And yet how prone we are to forget the blessed One who has so loved us, and wrought for us, and blessed us! How often we slip away from Him in the spirit of our minds and the affections of our hearts! It is not merely a question of what the professing church, as a whole, has done, but the very much deeper, closer, more pointed question of what our own wretched hearts are constantly prone to do. We are apt to forget God, and to turn to other objects, to our serious loss and His dishonour.
Would we know how the heart of God feels as to all this? Would we form anything like a correct idea of how He resents it? Let us hearken to the burning words addressed to His erring people Israel, the overwhelming strains of the song of Moses. May we have grace to hear them aright, and deeply profit by them!
“And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of His sons and of His daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be;” – alas! alas! a truly deplorable end – “for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities; and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and shall set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction; I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.” (Vers. 19-26.)
Here we have a most solemn record of God’s governmental dealings with His people – a record eminently calculated to set forth the awful truth of Hebrews 10: 31, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” The history of Israel, in the past; their condition, at present; and what they are yet to pass through, in the future, all goes to prove in the most impressive manner that “our God is a consuming fire.” No nation on the face of the earth has ever been called to pass through such severe discipline as the nation of Israel. As the Lord reminds them in those deeply solemn words, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore will I punish you for your iniquities.” No other nation was ever called to occupy the highly privileged place of actual relationship with Jehovah. This dignity was reserved for one nation; but the very dignity was the basis of a most solemn responsibility. If they were called to be His people, they were responsible to conduct themselves in a way worthy of such a wondrous position, or else have to undergo the heaviest chastenings ever endured by any nation under the sun. Men may reason about all this; they may raise all manner of questions as to the moral consistency of a benevolent Being acting according to the terms set forth in verses 22-25 of our chapter. But all such questions and reasonings must, sooner or later, be discovered to be utter folly. It is perfectly useless for men to argue against the solemn actings of divine government, or the terrible severity of the discipline exercised towards the chosen People of God. How much wiser, and better, and safer to be warned by the facts of Israel’s history to flee from the wrath to come, and lay hold upon eternal life, and full salvation revealed in the precious gospel of God!
And then, with regard to the use which Christians should make of the record of His dealings with His earthly people, we are bound to turn it to most profitable account by learning from it the urgent need of walking humbly, watchfully and faithfully in our high and holy position. True, we are the possessors of eternal life, the privileged subjects of that magnificent grace which reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord; we are members of the body of Christ, temples of the Holy Ghost, and heirs of eternal glory. But; does all this afford any warrant for neglecting the warning voice which Israel’s history utters in our ears? Are we, because of our incomparably higher privileges, to walk carelessly and despise the wholesome admonitions which Israel’s history supplies? God forbid! Nay, we are bound to give earnest heed to the things which the Holy Ghost has written for our learning. The higher our privileges, the richer our blessings, the nearer our relationship, the more does it become us the more solemnly are we bound to be faithful, and to seek, in all things, to carry ourselves in such a way as to be well-pleasing to Him who has called as into the very highest and most blessed place that even His perfect love could bestow. The Lord, in His great goodness, grant that we may, in true purpose of heart, ponder these things in His holy presence, and earnestly seek to serve Him with reverence and godly fear!
But we must proceed with our chapter.
At verse 26, we have a point of deepest interest in connection with the history of the divine dealings with Israel. “I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men.” And why did He not? The answer to this question presents a truth of infinite value and importance to Israel – a truth which lies at the very foundation of all their future blessing. No doubt, so far as they are concerned, they deserved to have their remembrance blotted out from among men. But God has His own thoughts, and counsels, and purposes respecting them; and not only so, but He takes account of the thoughts and the actings of the nations in reference to His people. This comes out with singular force and beauty at verse 27. He condescends to give us His reasons for not obliterating every trace of the sinful and rebellious people – and oh! what a touching reason it is! “were it not what I feared the wrath of the enemy lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the Lord hath not done all this.”
Can anything be more affecting than the grace that breathes in these words? God will not permit the nations to behave themselves strangely toward His poor erring people. He will use them as His rod of discipline, but the moment they attempt, in the indulgence of their own bitter animosity, to exceed their appointed limit, He will break the rod in pieces, and make it manifest to all that He Himself is dealing with His beloved, though erring people, for their ultimate blessing and His glory.
This is a truth of unspeakable preciousness. It is the fixed purpose of Jehovah to teach all the nations of the earth that Israel has a special place in His heart, and a destined place of pre-eminence on the earth. This is beyond all question. The pages of the prophets furnish a body of evidence perfectly unanswerable on the point. If nations forget or oppose, so much the worse for them. It is utterly vain for them to attempt to countervail the divine purpose, for they may rest assured that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will confound every scheme formed against the people of His choice. Men may think, in their pride and folly, that their hand is high, but they will have to learn that God’s hand is higher still.
But our space does not admit of our dwelling upon this deeply interesting subject; we must allow the reader to pursue it for himself, in the light of holy scripture. He will find it a most profitable and refreshing study. Most gladly would we accompany him through the precious pages of the prophetic scriptures, but we must just now confine ourselves to the magnificent song which is in itself a remarkable epitome of the entire teaching on the point – a brief, but comprehensive and impressive history of God’s ways with Israel and Israel’s ways with God, from first to last – a history strikingly illustrative of the great principles of grace, law, government and glory.
At verse 29, we have a very touching appeal. “O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end? How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up? For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.” – There is, there can be but the one Rock, blessed, throughout all ages be His glorious Name! – “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter; their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.”
Terrible picture of a people’s moral condition drawn by a master hand! Such is the divine estimate of the real state of all those whose rock was not as the Rock of Israel. But a day of vengeance will come. It is delayed, in long-suffering mercy, but it will come as sure as there is a God on the throne of heaven. A day is coming when those nations which have dealt proudly with Israel shall have to answer at the bar of the Son of man for their conduct, hear His solemn sentence, and meet His unsparing wrath.
“Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures? To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For the Lord shall judge [vindicate, defend or avenge] his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up or left.” Precious grace for Israel, by-and-by – for each, for all, now, who feel and own their need!
“And he shall say, “Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted: which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you and be your protection. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound and I heal:” – wound in governmental wrath, and heal in pardoning grace; all homage to His great and holy Name, throughout the everlasting ages! – “neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.” – Glory be to God in the highest! Let all created intelligences adore His matchless Name! – “If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgement,” – as it most assuredly, will – “l will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me” – whoever and wherever they are. Tremendous sentence for all whom it may concern – for all haters of God – all lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God! – “I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.”
Here we reach the end of the heavy record of judgement, wrath and vengeance, so briefly presented in this song of Moses, but so largely unfolded throughout the prophetic scriptures. The reader can refer, with much interest and profit, to Ezekiel 38 and 39, where we have the judgement of Gog and Magog, the great northern foe who is to come up, at the end, against the land of Israel and there meet his ignominious fall and utter destruction.
He may also turn to Joel 3 which opens with words of balm and consolation for the Israel of the future. “For behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.” Thus he will see how perfectly the voices of the prophets harmonise with the song of Moses; and how fully, how clearly, and how unanswerably, in both the one and the other, does the Holy Ghost set forth and establish the grand truth of Israel’s future restoration, supremacy and glory.
And then how truly delightful is the closing note of our song! How magnificently it places the topstone upon the whole superstructure! All the hostile nations are judged, under whatever style or title they appear upon the scene, whether it be Gog and Magog, the Assyrian, or the king of the north – all the foes of Israel shall be confounded and consigned to everlasting perdition, and then this sweet note falls upon the ear, “REJOICE, O YE NATIONS, WITH HIS PEOPLE; FOR HE WILL AVENGE THE BLOOD OF HIS SERVANTS, AND WILL RENDER VENGEANCE TO HIS ADVERSARIES, AND WILL BE MERCIFUL UNTO HIS LAND AND TO HIS PEOPLE”
Here ends this marvellous song, one of the very finest, fullest and most forcible utterances in the whole Volume of God. It begins and ends with God, and takes in, in its comprehensive range, the history of His earthly people Israel, past, present and future. It shows us the ordering of the nations in direct reference to the divine purpose as to the seed of Abraham. It unfolds the final judgement of all those nations that have acted or shall yet act in opposition to the chosen seed; and then when Israel is fully restored and blessed, according to the covenant made with their fathers, the saved nations are summoned to rejoice with them.
How glorious is all this! What a splendid circle of truths is presented to the vision of our souls in the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy! Well may it be said, “God is the Rock, his work is perfect.” Here the heart can rest, in holy tranquillity, come what may. Everything may go to pieces in man’s hand; all that is merely human may and must issue in hopeless wreck and ruin; but “The Rock” shall stand for ever, and every “work” of the divine Hand shall shine in everlasting perfection to the glory of God and the perfect blessing of His people.
Such, then, is the song of Moses; such its scope, range and application. The intelligent reader does not need to be told that the church of God, the body of Christ, the mystery of which the blessed apostle Paul was made the minister, finds no place in this song. When Moses wrote this song, the mystery of the church lay hid in the bosom of God. If we do not see this, we are wholly incompetent to interpret or even to understand the holy scriptures. To a simple mind, taught exclusively by scripture, it is as clear as a sunbeam that the song of Moses has for its thesis the government of God, in connection with Israel and the nations; for its sphere, the earth; and for its centre, the land of Canaan.
“And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun. And Moses made an end of speaking all these words to all Israel; and he said unto them, Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life; and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it” (Vers. 44-47.)
Thus, from first to last, through every section of this precious book of Deuteronomy, we find Moses, that beloved and most honoured servant of God, urging upon the people the solemn duty of implicit, unqualified, hearty obedience to the word of God. In this lay the precious secret of life, peace, progress, prosperity, all. They had nothing else to do but obey. Blessed business! Happy holy duty! May it be ours, beloved reader, in this day of conflict and confusion in the which man’s will is so fearfully dominant. The world, and the so-called church are rushing on together, with appalling rapidity, along the dark pathway of self-will – a pathway which must end in the blackness of darkness for ever. Let us bear this in mind, and earnestly seek to tread the narrow path of simple obedience to all the precious commandments of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Thus shall our hearts be kept in sweet peace; and although we may seem to the men of this world, and even to professing Christians to be odd and narrow-minded, let us not be moved, the breadth of a hair, from the path indicated by the word of God. May the word of Christ dwell in us richly, and the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, until the end?
It is very remarkable, and indeed eminently impressive, to find our chapter closing with another reference to Jehovah’s governmental dealing with His beloved servant Moses. “And the Lord spake unto Moses that self-same day” – the very day in which he uttered his song in the ears of the people – “saying, Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho; and behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel for a possession; and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people; as Aaron thy brother died in mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people; because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel. Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel.” (Vers. 48-52)
How solemn and soul-subduing is the government of God! Surely it ought to make the heart tremble at the very thought of disobedience. If such an eminent servant as Moses was judged for speaking unadvisedly with his lips, what will be the end of those who live from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year, in deliberate and habitual neglect of the plainest commandments of God, and positive self-willed rejection of His authority?
Oh! for a lowly mind, a broken and contrite heart! This is what God looks for and delights in; it is with such He can make His blessed abode. “To this man will I look, even to him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” God in His infinite goodness, grant much of this sweet spirit to each of His beloved children, for Jesus Christ’s sake!
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Deu 32:1-43. Moses Song is a didactic poem, a theodicy in which Yahwehs ways are vindicated. In its sentiments and artistic form it is unsurpassed in the poetry of the OT. Its dominant theme is Yahwehs justice and lovingkindness to Israel notwithstanding the nations sinfulness. It is impossible to fix the date of this poem with any confidence. But points of contact with Jer., Isaiah 40-55, Ezek., and the Wisdom literature suggest the closing years of the Exile (say 550 B.C.). Moses is certainly not the author, for to the latter the Exodus belongs to his distant past (Deu 32:7-12), and the Israelites are already in Canaan (Deu 32:13 f.). The words translated doctrine (Deu 32:2), abominations (Deu 32:16), vanities (Deu 32:21), and many others, together with several expressions, the day of their calamity (Deu 32:35), as I live (Deu 32:40, etc.), are common in exilic and post-exilic, but hardly exist in pre-exilic writings (see Driver, p. 348).
Deu 32:1. heaven . . . earth: see Isa 1:2.
Deu 32:3. name: Deu 28:58*.
Deu 32:4. Rock: when a name of Yahweh, the LXX almost uniformly translates by God to obviate any suggestion of idolatry (see Cent. B on Psa 75:5).Render A God faithful and without iniquity.
Deu 32:5. Read (with Driver, etc.), those not His sons have corrupted their faithfulness to Him, a perverse, etc.
Deu 32:6. bought: render begotten.
Deu 32:8. children of men: a Hebraism, meaning men.
Deu 32:9. Read, But Yahwehs portion is His people Jacob; Israel is the lot which He inherited (i.e. possessed); so essentially LXX.
Deu 32:10. the apple: lit. the little man; so called because it reflects an onlookers face; so in Arabic and Assyrian.
Deu 32:11. For the imagery, see ET, xxvi. pp. 101ff.
Deu 32:12. strange: better foreign (see Deu 31:16).
Deu 32:14. Render, of rams . . . of goats.Kidney-fat is the richest (Lev 3:4, Isa 34:6).blood: Gen 49:11*.
Deu 32:15. Prefix the following (found in the LXX, Sam., etc.), Jacob ate and was satisfied, then continue, and Jeshurun waxed fat.Jeshurun: i.e. the upright one, an ideal designation of Israel (Deu 33:5; Deu 33:26, Isa 44:2, cf. Num 23:10*, Jos 10:13 mg.).
Deu 32:17. demons: so LXX daimonia; heathen deities are meant. The Heb. shd = the Assyrian shidu = any Assyrian deity (see Cent.B on Psa 106:37).
Deu 32:20. froward: Heb. perverse (plural of intensity).faith: render faithfulness.
Deu 32:21. not God: what is no live god.not a people, lit. a not people; i.e. a mere rabble or crowd.
Deu 32:22. the lowest Sheol (mg.): i.e. the lowest part of Sheol.
Deu 32:24. burning heat: Heb. the fire bolt, supposed to bring pestilence and death.
Deu 32:26. Render, I should have said (i.e. to myself) I will scatter (so LXX).
Deu 32:29. Read, They are not wise, nor do they understand this or consider their latter end (cf. Sam. LXX). This verse continues the description of Deu 32:28.latter end: the issue of their present conduct (cf. Deu 32:20).
Deu 32:31. their rock: i.e. the god of the heathen (Deu 32:4*).
Deu 32:32. vine: Israel is the genuine vine (see Hos 10:1, Jer 2:21). Sodom and Gomorrah are often types of wickedness (Isa 1:10; Isa 3:9, Jer 23:14, Eze 16:46-49). It is the sin of Israels foes, not that of Israel, that is referred to in Deu 32:32 f.
Deu 32:33. dragons in Old English = serpents.asps: better cobras.
Deu 32:34. treasures: mg. is better. The sin of Israels enemies will be stored up (see Job 14:17, Hos 13:12).
Deu 32:35. Read (with LXX, Sam.), for the day of vengeance and of recompense, for the time, etc., joining immediately to Deu 32:34 and continuing the question to slide. Another reading is implied in Rom 12:19 and Heb 10:30, where Deu 32:35 a is quoted.
Deu 32:36. shut up or left at large: a Hebraism meaning all; cf. 1Ki 14:10. In the original the words are alliterative: cf. fettered and free.
Deu 32:40. to lift the hand: in Arabic and Heb. means to make an oath appealing to deity (Gen 14:22).As I live: Yahweh swears by Himself (see Gen 22:16, and cf. Heb 6:13-18).
Deu 32:42. The blood is that which oozes from the head: render as RV.
Deu 32:43. Render, Sing joyously of this people, O ye nations (i.e. the heathen).
Deu 32:44. Hoshea read (with VSS) Joshua: cf. Deu 31:19.
Deu 32:45-47. Moses last words commending the song.
Deu 32:46. law: read (with Staerk, Steuernagel and Bertholet), song. If the MT is retained this section attaches immediately to Deu 31:29, the intervening verses being an interpolation.
Deu 32:48-52. See Num 27:12-14 (P), on which it seems based.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
GOD: MAJESTIC AND FAITHFUL
(vs.l-4)
In these four verses the introduction of this song of Moses is both magnificent and beautiful. The heavens and the earth are called to hear the faithful words from the mouth of the Lord. His teaching drops as the rain, not like a cloudburst, but as the refreshing, nourishing dew on the land or as showers on the grass. How well it would be with us if we received it as such, appreciating its living value and refreshment. For it begins, not with what we may selfishly desire for our advantage, but with proclaiming the name of the Lord. The honor of His name is far above every other consideration.
Greatness belongs to Him alone (v.3). “He is the Rock,” the perfect expression of strength and stability Since this is true of God, it is true of Christ (1Co 10:4), who is God. Being Himself all powerful, God’s work is powerful, and it is perfect (v.4). For not only is power seen in it, but pure justice, so great a contrast to the work of seemingly powerful men. He is a God of truth, with no shadow of injustice in His dealings. Consistently with this, the Lord Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (Joh 14:6). In Christ is the perfect expression of all truth: without Him, there is no truth whatever.
“Righteous and upright is He.” In every relationship He is found He is unwaveringly consistent. Though men were created upright (Ecc 7:29), indicating that they should be morally upright too, in contrast to the beasts, yet men have stooped to every kind of evil. But this does not change the perfectly upright character of the Lord.
THE CONTRADICTION OF HIS PEOPLE
(vs.5-6)
But this song must expose the sadly contrary condition of Israel. They had corrupted themselves, which involves using the great blessings God had given them in a false, evil way. In practice they were not His children, whatever claims they might make. We know today that a true believer is a child of God, but if one is acting rebelliously, would it be seemly for him to proclaim to others that he is child of God? In this case, he might well be answered as the Lord answered the Jews who claimed to be Abraham’s children, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham” (Joh 8:39). But Israel was a perverse and crooked generation (v.5), perverting the best things to a depraved use and crookedly manipulating what truth they knew to justify their evil actions.
Verse 6 is a pleading appeal from God. How could they deal so foolishly with Him who is both a great God and a gracious Father who had bought them at so great a price? — in fact being their Maker who had established them as a nation.
MEMORIES OF GOD’S GOODNESS
(vs.7-14)
The song continues by a call to remember the days of old, the years of many generations (v.7), urging the present generation to question their fathers and the elders of Israel as to the work of the Most High dividing to the nations the inheritance He Himself had decided upon (v.8). At the time God separated the sons of Adam, when He confounded them by changing their languages, He set the boundaries of the nations in direct relation to Israel, for Israel was His chosen people and other nations were looked at as subservient to them.
But Israel did not immediately possess their land. God “found him in a desert land,” the wasteland of a howling wilderness (v.10). Of course it was God who led them from Egypt into the wilderness, but He intends to emphasize the fact of Israel’s being in a desolate, homeless state, in which God encircled him, instructed him and kept him “as the apple of His eye.” This is not the same word as the fruit, but refers to the pupil of the eye, which is extremely sensitive and therefore guarded.
The wilderness experience too involved the caring, disciplining hand of God, for as the eagle stirs up its nest, hovering over its young, taking them on its wings, so the Lord dealt with Israel (vs.11-12). The eagle will not allow its young to remain idle for long in the nest, but will stir them up, pushing them out of the nest high on a mountainside, to teach them to fly. If they cannot fly at first, but begin dropping, the great eagle will fly quickly underneath them to catch them on its wings. Therefore the wilderness experience was necessary training for Israel, just as believers today need training too.
Yet with the training came gracious provision from the hand of God. “He made him ride in the heights of the earth” (v.13). God enabled Israel to rise above their circumstances even in the wilderness. He gave them necessary food, but also “honey from the rock,” the sweetness that comes from the knowledge of Christ, who is the Rock. Also, “oil from the flinty rock,” speaking of the Holy Spirit who has today come from the Lord Jesus in glory at Pentecost, to make our wilderness pathway one of real blessing and encouragement. Verses 13 and 14 merge into Israel’s blessing in the land of Canaan, for only there did they enjoy the choicest wheat and the grape vines.
ISRAEL’S UNGRATEFUL REBELLION
(vs.15-18)
But Jeshurun grew fat and kicked” (v.15). Jeshurun means “upright,” which was Israel’s proper character, but they forsook this when they became wealthy. This is prophetic of their tenure in the land, when God prospered them by His pure grace. Taking ungodly advantage of their prosperity, they forsook the God who made them, and scornfully esteemed the Rock of their salvation. Of course this Rock is Christ, who, when He came, was scorned and rejected by His own nation, for they had chosen other gods, provoking God to anger by their abominable idolatries (v.16). This was not merely worshiping material things, but was sacrificing to demons (v 17). Ignorant as they were of such “gods.” they were in a fit state to be deceived by them. They did not learn this from their fathers, so no doubt they felt they were advancing beyond the wisdom of their fathers. Such pride will make people easy victims of deception.
They had chosen to put Out of their minds the only stable, enduring Rock of salvation, and to forget the eternal God who had proven a Father to them (v.18). Of course this could only lead to total confusion.
RECOMPENSE FROM GOD
(vs.19-27)
When the Lord saw this rebellion, He spurned Israel. They had spurned Him without reason, now He spurns them with good reason (v.19). They receive themselves something of their own treatment. His face had before been shining with pleasure upon Israel, now He hides His face from them, to see what their end will be (v.20), for if God’s face does not shine with approval on His creatures, it is impossible for them to continue without serious repercussions. Their perverse lack of faith will reap a poisonous harvest.
Since they had provoked God to jealousy by confidence in false gods and idols, God would provoke them to jealously by means of a foreign nation (v.21). Thus God will use those whom Israel despised to chasten them and gain such ascendancy over them that Israel would become jealous of that nation. The fire of God’s anger would burn to the lowest sheol and consume the land and its increase (v.22). It would also set on fire the foundation of the mountains. Typically the mountains are high authorities, and the very foundations of this authority in Israel would suffer the destroying flame.
Disasters of many kinds would be heaped upon them. God’s arrows of penetrating judgment would torment them. They would be wasted with hunger and devoured by pestilence and bitter destruction. But also God would send wild beasts to attack them, and poisonous reptiles (v.24). Enemies from outside would attack with their swords and inside young and old together would be huddled in terror (v.25).
It would have been just for God to say He would dash them in pieces and destroy their very memory from among men (v.26). But He would not go that far lest the adversaries of Israel would boast of their own prowess having accomplished Israel’s destruction, and give the Lord no honor for His hand in this (v.27).
ISRAEL’S IGNORANCE LAMENTED
(vs.28-33)
Israel is now said to be a nation void of counsel and without understanding (v.28). Counsel was certainly available for them from the word of God, and there was no right reason for them to be without understanding. Their ignorance was inexcusable. Let us remember that the word “ignorance” comes from the word “ignore.” Because Israel had ignored what was plainly taught them, they were ignorant. It was as true for Israel as it is for us today: “If anyone will to do His (God’s will), he shall know concerning the doctrine” (Joh 7:17). An obedient heart will always have understanding.
Therefore how tenderly yearning are the words of verse 29, “Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” How deeply we should be impressed by the consideration of how an obedient path will end in contrast to the end of a disobedient life! It is only wisdom to consider the end rather than the present selfish indulgence of fleshly desires.
Also, let them reason soberly, how could one enemy chase a thousand Israelites or two put ten thousand to flight unless their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had surrendered them? (v.31). Think of six million Jews being murdered in a short time in Germany! If they had been obedient to the word of God, would God have allowed any such thing? Certainly not! In fact, when obedient to the Lord, God promised Israel, “one man of you shall chase a thousand, for the Lord your God is He who fights for you” (Jos 23:10). This is a simple matter for God, as is seen in David’s faithful dependence on Him when defeating the giant Goliath and all the armies of the Philistines (1Sa 17:45-52). But when God withdraws because of Israel’s disobedience, the opposite results will soon follow.
“For their rock is not like our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges” (v.31). What Israel’s enemies depended on was empty vanity, for all power and authority was in the Rock of Israel. But what was He like? On the one hand, He would deliver Israel from their enemies with no difficulty On the other hand He might deliver them up to suffer utter defeat at the hand of their enemies. Even their enemies bore witness to this striking fact. But all depended on whether Israel was obedient or disobedient. God is indeed the Rock, which involves His firm, decided stand for truth. If believers ignore this, they will find themselves defeated in their practical lives.
The vine of Israel’s enemies was the vine of Sodom (v.32). The vine, yielding grape juice, is typical of joy, and ungodly people count it joy to corrupt themselves as the Sodomites did, just as today those who debase themselves to homosexual practice call themselves “gay”! But in reality, “their grapes are grapes of gall,” bitter in their end result, just as homosexuality may end in aids or other evils. The wine from their grapes was the poison of serpents (v.33). The serpents tell us of Satan’s delusion, bringing the poison of death to its victims. This is the description of the spiritual delusion under which Israel’s enemies in the land were in bondage. Was Israel so ignorant that they thought they too might indulge in such things without suffering dire consequences?
GOD’S VICTORY IN JUDGMENT
(vs.34-47)
In contrast to Israel’s ignorance we read in verse 34 of God’s hidden wisdom which Israel could not discern, wisdom laid up in store, sealed up among God’s treasures. Could evil ever discourage Him? Was he intimidated by it? 1Co 2:7-8 speaks of this “hidden wisdom” which centers in the wondrous death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, but which none of the rulers of this age knew. By that great work of sacrifice God would overthrow all the power of the enemy and gain a victory to be celebrated for eternity. The wisdom of this work was still sealed up in Deu 32:34, but nevertheless this section of the song makes abundantly clear the fact that God would absolutely triumph over Israel’s sin, triumph over all Israel’s enemies, and deliver Israel in marvelous grace.
Vengeance belongs to God, and recompense (v.35). However, in the meantime Israel’s foot shall slip and the day of their calamity would come with its many distresses.
But the Lord’s judgment involves His judging on behalf of Israel His people, having compassion on them when He sees that their power is gone (v.36). It is when one faces the fact of his helpless condition that God will intervene in grace. So long as Israel continues in a state of self-assertion and self-confidence, she will not and cannot depend on the grace of God, but when she is reduced to nothing and honestly realizes it, she will find God ready to deliver her.
Then God may well ask them the question as to where their idols are now, the pseudo-rock which they expected to be a refuge (v.37). Did their gods eat the fat of their sacrifices and drink the wine of their drink offerings? (v.38). Then let them respond by helping Israel now and providing the refuge they promised! How necessary it is for God to speak this way to probe their consciences in realizing the folly and evil of their idol worship. Well may Israel then speak with such words as are prophesied in Hos 14:8, “What have I to do any more with idols? I have heard and observed Him.”
Thus Israel will observe the glory of the Lord Jesus, who speaks in verse 39, “I, even I, am He, and there is no God beside Me. I kill and make alive, I wound and I heal, nor is there any who can deliver from My hand.” Israel will indeed see that this is true. The Jesus whom they crucified is God, who has absolute power in His hand.
He, and He alone, can swear by Himself, raising His hand to heaven, saying, “As I live forever, if I whet My glittering sword, and My hand takes hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to My enemies, and repay those who hate Me” (vs.40-41). For the Son, not the Father, is the Executor of the judgment of God (Joh 5:22). He lives forever, just as the Father lives forever. For many centuries He has patiently borne with the rebellious wickedness of mankind, but His patience will give place to awesome, sudden judgment, with no sparing of those who have proven themselves enemies.
The language of the song is most graphic. God will make His arrows drunk with blood. His sword shall devour flesh with blood from many slain, from the captive to the heads of the leaders of the enemy (v.42).
But the noise of battle will be hushed to silence and Gentiles are bidden to rejoice along with Israel, for there will be Gentiles spared and delivered as well as Israel, by this great victory of the Lord Jesus over all enemies (v.43). He will provide atonement for His land and His people.
When Moses spoke the words of the song of this chapter, Joshua was identified with him (v.44), and Joshua was a witness as Moses gave one last exhortation to the people in verses 46 and 47 telling them to set their hearts on all the words given to them from God, and to command their children also to observe all the words of the law. It was not a futile matter, as Israel later came to think, but their very life by which their days in the land would be prolonged through obedience. Moses therefore can never be blamed for giving Israel unclear or insufficient instruction.
MOSES COMMANDED TO DIE
(vs.48-52)
The same day that Moses gave Israel the words of the song, God commanded him to go up to Mount Nebo and die on the mountain. He did not die from illness or old age, but God simply took his life from him because he had disobeyed God’s orders at the Waters of Meribah, striking the rock instead of speaking to it (Num 20:7-12).
Yet God told him he would see the land without entering it (v.52). There is a deeper reason than Moses’ disobedience that he would not enter the land, for he was the lawgiver, and law cannot bring the people of God into their inheritance. Joshua, whose name in Hebrew is the same as the Greek name Jesus — Jehovah Savior — was the leader into the land of promise, for he speaks of the grace that is in Christ Jesus in contrast to law. The death of Moses did not take place, however, before he blessed all the tribes of Israel (ch.33).
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
32:1 Give ear, O ye {a} heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
(a) As witness of this people’s ingratitude.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. The song itself 32:1-43
One Old Testament scholar called the Song of Moses "one of the most impressive religious poems in the entire Old Testament." [Note: W. F. Albright, "Some Remarks on the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy XXXII," Vetus Testamentum 9 (1959):339-46.] It contrasts the faithfulness and loyal love of God with the unfaithfulness and perversity of His people. As other important poems in the Pentateuch (e.g., Genesis 49; Exodus 15; Numbers 24), it also teaches major themes.
"The song embraces the whole of the future history of Israel, and bears all the marks of a prophetic testimony from the mouth of Moses, in the perfectly ideal picture which it draws, on the one hand, of the benefits and blessings conferred by the Lord upon His people; and on the other hand, of the ingratitude with which Israel repaid its God for them all." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, 3:464.]
Moses set this song in the form of a lawsuit in which Yahweh leveled a charge against Israel. This form is very common in many of the writing prophets’ oracles. [Note: See G. Ernest Wright, "The Lawsuit of God: A Form-Critical Study of Deuteronomy 32," in Israel’s Prophetic Heritage, pp. 26-67.] Its central theme is "Israel’s apostasy and God’s threatening judgment." [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., p. 475. For more information on the text of chapter 32, see Patrick W. Skehan, "The Structure of the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 32:1-43)," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 13:2 (April 1951):153-63. James R. Boston argued for the origination of this song in the time of Hezekiah or Josiah, as have many other critical scholars, in "The Wisdom Influence upon the Song of Moses," Journal of Biblical Literature 87 (1968):198-202.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Moses called on the whole earth to listen to what follows (Deu 32:1-2). The subject of this song would be God. The "name" of God is the expression of His character as He revealed this. The purpose of the song is that everyone would recognize God as the great God He is and that His people would respond to Him appropriately. By comparing his teaching to rain and dew, Moses was saying it would be a life-giving blessing to the Israelites. Rain and dew were major sources of blessing in the Promised Land, and their absence created serious problems for the inhabitants. The description of God as the Rock (Deu 32:4; Deu 32:15; Deu 32:18; Deu 32:30-31) occurs first here in Scripture, but it appears many times later. This metaphor pictures God as a reliable refuge for His people on whom they could build and who had been solidly faithful to them.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE SONG AND BLESSING OF MOSES
(A) THE SONG OF MOSES
Deu 32:1-52
CRITICS have debated the date, authorship, and history of this song. For the present purpose it is sufficient, perhaps, to refer to the statement on these points in the note below.
But in discussing the meaning and contents of the song the differences referred to cause no difficulties. On any supposition the time and circumstances, whether assumed as present, or actually and really present to the prophets mind, can clearly be identified as not earlier than those of the Syrian wars. Accepted as dealing with that time, this poem takes its place among the Psalms of that period. Its subject is a very common one in Scripture: the goodness of Yahweh to his people, and their unfaithfulness to Him; His grief at their rebellion; His punishment of them by heathen oppressors; and His turning in love to them, along with His destruction of the nations who had prematurely triumphed over the people of God. Practically this is the burden of all the prophecies, as indeed it may be said to be the burden of the whole Book of Deuteronomy itself. Here it is stated and elaborated with great poetic skill; but in the main, the essential thought, there is little that has not already been elucidated.
As regards form the poem is among the finest specimens of Hebrew literary art which the Old Testament contains. Every verse contains at least two parallel clauses of three words or word-complexes each, and the parallelism in the great majority of instances is of the “Synonymous” kind; that is to say, “the second line enforces the thought of the first by repeating, and as it were echoing it in a varied form.” But into this as a foundation there is wrought a great deal of pleasing variation. The two-clause verses are varied by single instances or couplets or triplets of four-clause verses; while in two cases, at the emphatic end of sections, in Deu 32:14 and Deu 32:39, the rare five-clause verse is found. Further, the synonymous parallelism is relieved by occasional appearances of the “synthetic” parallelism, in which “the second line contains neither a repetition nor a contrast to the thought of the first, but in different ways supplements and completes it,” e.g., Deu 32:8, Deu 32:19, and Deu 32:27.
The contents of the song are in every way worthy of the origin assigned to it, and higher praise than that it is impossible to conceive. Beginning with a fine exordium calling upon heaven and earth to give ear, the inspired poet expresses the hope that his teaching may fall with refreshing and fertilising power upon the hearts of men, for he is about to proclaim the name of Yahweh, to whom all greatness is to be ascribed. In Deu 32:4 ff. the character and dealings of Yahweh are set over against those of the people:-
“The Rock! His deeds are perfect, For all His ways are judgment; A God of faithfulness and without falsity, Just and upright is He.”
They, on the contrary, were perverse and crooked; and, acting corruptly, they requited all Yahwehs benefits with rebellion. To win them from that perverseness, he calls upon his people to look back upon the whole course of Gods dealings with them. Even before Israel had appeared among the nations, Yahweh had taken thought for His people. When He assigned their lands to the various nations of the world He had always before Him the provision that must be made for the children of Israel, and had left a space for them from which none but Yahweh could ever drive them out. For He had the same need of and delight in His people as the nations had in the lands assigned to them, the lot of their inheritance. And not only had He thus prepared a place for Israel from the beginning, but He had led him through the wilderness, through the waste, the howling desert.
“He compassed him about, He cared for him, He kept him as the apple of His eye.”
To depict the Divine care worthily, he ventures upon a simile of a specially tender kind, rare in the Old Testament, but to which our Lords comparison of His own brooding affection for Jerusalem to that of a “hen gathering her chickens under her wing” is parallel.
“As an eagle stirs up her nest, Flutters above her young; He, Yahweh, spread abroad His wings, He took him, He bore him upon His pinions.”
All the hardship and the toil were of Gods appointment to drive His beloved people upwards and onwards. Whatever they might think or believe now, it was Yahweh alone, without companion or ally, who had done this for them, borne them up through it, and had bestowed upon them all the luxury of the goodly land once promised to their fathers. Even from the rocks He had given them honey, and the rocky soil had produced the olive tree. They had, too, all the luxuries of a pastoral people in abundance, and the wheat and foaming wine which were the finest products of agriculture.
In every way their God had blessed them. They had all the prosperity which a complete fulfillment of the will of God could have brought, but the result of it all was unfaithfulness and rejection of Him. Jeshurun, the upright people, as the sacred singer in bitter irony calls Israel, waxed fat and wanton. Instead of being drawn to God by His benefits, they had been puffed up with conceit concerning their own power and discernment. Full of these, they had mingled idolatrous rites with their worship of Yahweh. He had suffered them to read the results of their own unfaithfulness in defeat at the hands of their foes.
Instead of seeking the cause of their ill-success in themselves, they had found it in the weakness of their God. All the victories Yahweh had given them over foes whose strength they had feared were forgotten, and they “despised the Rock of their salvation.” They had adopted new and upstart deities whom their fathers had never heard of, who as they had come up in a day might disappear in a day, and neglected the Rock who begat them.
Yahweh on His part saw all this, and scorned His people and their doings. In a vivid imaginative picture the poet represents Him as resolving to hide His face from them, to see what their end would be. Without the shining of Gods countenance there could be but one issue for a people who were so faithless and perverse. He will recompense them for their doings.
“They made Me jealous with a no-God, They vexed Me with their vain idols, And I will make them jealous with a no-people, With a foolish nation will I vex them.”
For the fire of Divine wrath is kindled against them. It burns in Yahweh with an all-consuming power, and fills the universe even to the lowest depths of Sheol. Upon this sinful people it is about to burst forth; Yahweh will exhaust all His arrows upon them. By famine and drought; by disease and the rage of wild beasts, and of “the crawlers of the dust”; by giving them up to their enemies, and by overwhelming them with terror. He will destroy this people, “the young man and the virgin, the suckling and the man of grey hairs” alike. Nothing could save them, save Yahwehs respect for His own name.
“I had said, I shall blow them away, I shall make their memory to cease from among men: Were it not that I feared vexation from the enemy, Lest their adversaries should misdeem, Lest they should say, Our hand is exalted, And Yahweh hath not done all this.”
Nothing but that stood between them and utter destruction, for as a nation they had no capacity for receiving and profiting by instruction. If they had been wise they would have known that there was but a step between them and death; they would have seen that their deeds had separated them from Yahweh, and could have but one issue. Their frequent and shameful defeats should have taught them that, for
“How could one chase a thousand, And two put to flight ten thousand, Were it not that their Rock had sold them, And that Yahweh had delivered them up?”
There was no possible explanation of Israels defeats but this; for neither in the gods of the heathen nor in the heathen nations themselves was there anything to account for them. Their gods were not comparable to the Rock of Israel; even Israels enemies knew as much as that. Israel might forget and doubt Yahwehs power, but those who had been smitten before Him in Israels happier days knew that He was above all their gods. Nor was the explanation to, be sought in the heathen nations themselves. For they were not vines of Yahwehs planting, but shoots from the vine of Sodom, tainted by the soil of Gomorrah. They were, perhaps, in race, of the old Canaanite stock; in any case they were morally and spiritually related to them, and their acts were such as brought death and destruction with them. In themselves, consequently, they could not have been strong enough to discomfit the people of God as they were doing, nor could they have been helped to that by any favor of His. Only the determination of Yahweh to chastise His people could explain Israels unhappy fate in war.
But Yahwehs purpose was only to chastise. He was in no way finally forgetful of His chosen, nor of the ineradicable evil of their enemies nature. The inner character of men and things is always present to Him, and their deeds are laid up with Him as that which must be dealt with, for it is one of the glories of Deity to sweep evil away and to restore anything that has good at its heart. Recompense is Gods great function in the world, and evil, however strong it may be, and however long it may triumph, must one day be dealt with by Him. It is laid up and sealed
“Against the day of vengeance and of recompense, Against the time when their foot shall slip; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And hastening are the things prepared for them.”
Without that, justice could never be done to the people of God; and justice should be done to them when they had been brought to the verge of extinction, when, according to the antique Hebrew phrase, there “was none fettered or set free,” none left under or over age. Then when all but the worst had come, Yahweh would demand, “Where are their gods, with whom they took refuge, and who have eaten the fat of their sacrifices, and drunk the wine of their drink offerings?” He will challenge them to arise and help in this last disastrous state of their votaries.
But there will be no response, and it will be made clear beyond all doubting that Yahweh alone is God. He will declare Himself, saying:-
“See now that I, I, am He, And there is no god with Me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: And there is none that delivereth out of My hand.”
In that great day of Yahwehs manifested glory He will stand forth in the fullness of avenging power. Before the universe He will pledge Himself by the most solemn oath to bring down the pride of His enemies. In a death-dealing judgment, such as is seen only when the evil elements in the world have brought about a mere carnival of wickedness, and only universal death can cleanse, He will recompense upon evil-doers the evil they have wrought, and to a renovated world bring peace. There are few finer or more impressive imaginative passages in Scripture than this:-
“For I lift up My hand to heaven, And say, (As) I live for ever, If I whet My gleaming sword, And My hand take hold on judgment, I will take vengeance upon Mine enemies, And I will recompense them that hate Me. I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, And My sword shall devour flesh, With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the chief of the loaders of the enemy.”
With this great vision of judgment the poet leaves his people. For them the first necessity evidently was that they should be assured that Yahweh reigned, that evil could not ultimately prosper. With their whole horizon dominated and illumined by this tremendous figure of the ever living and avenging God, their faith in the moral government of the world and in the ultimate deliverance of their nation would be restored.
The poem closes with a stanza in which the seer and singer calls upon the nations to rejoice because of Yahwehs people. The deliverance worked for them will be so great and so memorable that even the heathen who see it must rejoice. They will see His justice and His faithfulness, and will gain new confidence in the stability and the moral character of the forces which rule the world.