Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Deuteronomy 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;
13. ride on the heights ] Cp. Amo 4:12.
and to eat of the fruit of the hills ] So Sam. and LXX for the Heb. he doth eat; hills not fields as in Deu 28:3, Heb. sadai, early form sadeh, in the earlier sense of that word (see on Deu 5:21) as in Jdg 5:4, parallel to heights or high places. Israel’s territory was a highland one.
suckles ] With Sam. and Syr. omit and.
honey ] The honey of the O.T. is wild, as here, Jdg 14:8 ff., 1Sa 14:25 ff., Psa 81:16; apiculture, a very ancient craft, is not implied till the N.T. speaks of wild honey (Mat 3:4, Mar 1:6). See further Jerus. i. 306 f., E.B. art. ‘Honey,’ and ZDPV. xxxii. 151.
oil of the flinty rock ] Lit. the flint of the rock. The olive never yields oil so richly as on limestone terraces and their dbris; see Jerus. i. 300.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Deu 32:13-14
He made him ride on the high places of the earth.
Gods dealings with His people
Everything about the Jewish people was significant and emphatically prophetic. Canaan itself was a type of the condition both here and hereafter of the disciples of Christ. Whatsoever, therefore, the terms in which the richness of the literal Canaan is described, we may justly suppose that these terms, metaphorically taken, are expressive of the provision made in Christ for His Church, and of the privileges appertaining to those living and trusting in Him, with all the heart, and all the soul, and all the strength. It would seem rather indicated by the text that a great struggle should precede the possession of the rich produce of Canaan. And this we wish you particularly to observe–that riding on the high places of the earth is in order to,–is preparatory to the eating of the increase of the fields; as though that eating were in recompense for the mastery won over the strongholds of the enemy.
I. Christianity, as it was not set up at once in the world, but was left to make its way by slow and painful struggle towards the dominion which it has not yet attained, so is it progressive, and not instantaneous in acquiring empire in individual cases. There maybe no inconsiderable analogy between the history of Christianity in the world and its history in the individual. Christianity when first published made rapid way, as though but few years could elapse ere every false system would vanish before it. But there came interruptions–backsliding, degeneracy, and afterwards repentance and partial reformation. But the consummation is still a thing only of hope, and Christ must re-appear in power and great majesty ere His religion shall prevail in every household and every heart. In like manner, the converted individual devotes himself at first with the greatest ardency to the duties of religion; but after a while, too commonly, the ardency declines, and duties are partially neglected, or languidly performed. Then the man is roused afresh, and labours in bitterness of spirit to recover the ground so unhappily lost. Though on the whole he advances, there remains much languor, and it will not be before the day of the Lord that he will be sanctified, holy in body, soul, and spirit. Nevertheless, the true characteristic of religion in both cases is that of progressiveness, or rather, perhaps we should say, of an inability to be stationary. There is such a thing, according to the apostle, as continuing in infancy, and being fed with milk. There is also such a thing as advancing to manhood, and being fed with meat. This is but another typical representation of what seems suggested in our text, that some merely eat of what the field yields of itself, whilst the richer increase is reserved for such as toil earnestly at cultivating the land. Not, indeed, that the richer truths are wholly different from the others; for Christ must be the staple in all truths to the soul; they are rather the same truths in a more refined and exquisite state prepared for those who have toiled here to secure a portion in the world to come.
II. We now proceed to consider the second part of the prophecy, or promise of our text–for it is either; that which has to do with the obtaining honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty rock. This part, perhaps, goes even further than the first in connecting the blessing with the diligence of those on whom it is conferred. If honey be obtained from the rock, the rock must be climbed; and since it Will not lie on the surface, the clefts or fissures must be carefully explored; so that the promise appears to presuppose labour, and therefore bears out what we have all along argued, that the text belongs peculiarly to those who are working out their salvation with more than ordinary earnestness. But, however it may be supposed that bees might swarm in the clefts of the rock, and thus there might be literally the obtaining honey from the rock, there would seem to be a sort of opposition intended between the thing produced and the place, that produces it. The little apparent likelihood of the rock yielding honey is paralleled by the certainty of the fact that Christ conquered by yielding, and subdued death by dying. And if you take the rock as meaning that typical rock which was smitten by Moses at Horeb, then the promise of honey from the rock may be as much a promise of peculiar privileges to such as are diligent in righteousness, as that of the eating of the increase of the fields, Every believer draws water from the rock, but the honey may be reserved for those who by patient continuance in well doing show forth eminently the praise of Him who bore our sins in His own body on the tree. And there is, indeed, a hidden preciousness in the Saviour, in that Rock of Ages cleft for us, which is appreciated more and more as the believer goes on to acquaintance with Christ, striving to magnify Him in all the actions of his life. It is not merely a general sense of the sufficiency of the atonement which such men obtain–the persuasion that there is provision made by the Mediator for the wants of sinners, even the very chief: they go deeper than this; they find in Christ such stores of consolation, such treasures of wisdom and knowledge, that they are never weary of searching as they are never able to exhaust. Every necessity as it arises is supplied from these stores of Christ; every cloud scattered by His brightness; every desire either satisfied, or satisfaction guaranteed by the unsearchable riches of His work of mediation. And this honey is from the rock–from the clefts of the rock. I must go, as it were, to the wounds of the Saviour if I would obtain this precious and ever multiplying provision. I must be much with Him in the garden and at the cross. Surely we may confidently say, that if there be a fulness and preciousness in the Redeemer, that is ascertained though left unexhausted as His mighty sacrifice is contemplated, and the lessons which it furnishes wrought into practice; if there be this reward to meet constant persevering piety,–that it finds deeper and deeper abundance in the Saviour–a sweetness and a richness in His office which give indescribable emphasis to the Scriptural expression–Chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely; and if, moreover, it be Christ as bruised and broken, pierced and riven like a vast mass of stone on which the thunderbolt has fallen, who yields these rich treasures, then it must be true that the soul which hungers and thirsts after righteousness shall not only eat of the increase of the fields, but be permitted to draw honey from the rock, and oil from the flinty rock.
III. This idea is put yet more strongly, you see, in the concluding words of our text–and oil out of the flinty rock; the addition of the word flinty giving a stronger image of rockiness, and therefore making the place less promising for such rich and delicate productions. What is denoted by the metaphor thus interpreted, if not that affliction is made by God to comfort His people; so that when they are brought by His providence into wild and rough places, they are enabled to find there even richer provisions than in verdant and cultivated spots? We need not adduce any lengthened proof that the promise thus interpreted is verified to the very letter in the experience of the Church. The testimony of believers, in every age of the world, has been, that the season of affliction has proved a season of rich communications from above–a season when Gods faithfulness and love have been more realised than they ever were before–a season in which texts of Scripture have assumed new and deeper meaning, and truths hitherto dwelt on only in the head have made their way to the heart, and diffused there a peace passing all understanding.
IV. And perhaps, even yet, our text may not have been fully expounded, for if in its primary application to the Jews it denoted the sustenance to be afforded them in Canaan, as applied to ourselves it may relate to provision laid up for us in heaven, of which Canaan was the type, when God shall have made us ride on the high places of the earth, and exalted us to His kingdom, where the promise before us may be always receiving accomplishment. God shall be always communicating supplies from His own fulness, as age after age of expansion or enlargement passes over the redeemed; and these supplies may still be supplies of honey from the rock. There will be no exhausting of Christ and redemption. Never shall glorified spirits be weary of searching into the mysteries of grace, or consider those mysteries as thoroughly explored. Keep up, if you will, the metaphor of our text. Eternity shall be spent in contemplating and examining the Rock of Ages; every moment shall discover a fresh depth; the clefts in this rock, most strange, but most true, fitting it to bear up the universe, and every fresh cleft yielding fresh stores of honey, satisfying desires which shall but grow with their supply. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The joy of Israel in the wilderness
The ordinary view of the lot of Israel in the wilderness is that it was one of hardship and of unbroken tribulation. In contesting this view we do not maintain that their lot was one of unmixed happiness. Such is not the state of mankind under any conditions.
1. A large part of their happiness came from the sense of the grandeur of the movement of the Divine providence of which they were the immediate subjects.
2. Another source of their joy came from their liberated condition.
3. Another was the sensible evidence of Gods goodness.
4. Another was from the new phases of natural scenery by which they were constantly saluted.
5. Another was from the abundance and richness of their temporal supplies.
6. Another was their faith in the promises of the covenant.
7. Their social and domestic enjoyments. They had homes; and they knew their children had glorious prospects.
Conclusion–
1. God wants us all to be happy, and always happy. Take stock of your joys.
2. Some of the greatest promises of Gods Word are for the Jew. (B. F. Rawlins, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 13. He made him ride] yarkibehu, he will cause him to ride. All the verbs here are in the future tense, because this is a prophecy of the prosperity they should possess in the promised land. The Israelites were to ride – exult, on the high places, the mountains and hills of their land, in which they are promised the highest degrees of prosperity; as even the rocky part of the country should be rendered fertile by the peculiar benediction of God.
Suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock] This promise states that even the most barren places in the country should yield an abundance of aromatic flowers, from which the bees should collect honey in abundance; and even the tops of the rocks afford sufficient support for olive trees, from the fruit of which they should extract oil in abundance: and all this should be occasioned by the peculiar blessing of God upon the land.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
On the high places of the earth, i.e. to conquer their strongest holds, which ofttimes are in the mountains, and their cities fenced with walls of greatest height and strength, Deu 1:28; 2:36; 33:29; Isa 58:14. To ride upon in Scripture phrase is to subdue or conquer, as Psa 45:4; 66:12; Rev 6:2; 19:11,14.
To suck honey out of the rock; this being a land flowing with honey, Exo 3:8,17, where the bees made honey even in woods, as 1Sa 14, or in the holes of rocks, or in the trees that grew upon or among rocks.
Oil out of the flinty rock: the olive trees grow and fructify most in rocky or hilly places.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
13, 14. He made him ride on the highplaces, c.All these expressions seem to have peculiarreference to their home in the trans-jordanic territory, that beingthe extent of Palestine that they had seen at the time when Moses isrepresented as uttering these words. “The high places” and”the fields” are specially applicable to the tablelands ofGilead as are the allusions to the herds and flocks, the honey of thewild bees which hive in the crevices of the rocks, the oil from theolive as it grew singly or in small clumps on the tops of hills wherescarcely anything else would grow, the finest wheat (Psa 81:16Psa 147:14), and the prolificvintage.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
He made him to ride on the high places of the earth,…. Or land, the land of Canaan; by which are meant the towers, castles, and fortified places in it, some of which might be built on hills and mountains; and being made to ride on them may denote the delivery of them into their hands, their conquests and possession of them, and triumph in them; see Isa 58:14; so the Targum of Jonathan paraphrases, it,
“made him to dwell in the towers of the land of Israel,”
those high walled and strongly fenced cities which they dreaded; this may be an emblem of the conquest believers have of their spiritual enemies, sin. Satan, and the world, in and through Christ; of their safety and triumph in him; of their high and elevated frames of soul, when they have got above the world and the things of it; this will be the case of spiritual Israel in every sense in the latter day, when the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains:
that he might eat the increase of the fields: the produce of them, particularly corn for bread, and which the Israelites ate of as soon as they came into the land of Canaan, Jos 5:11; an emblem of the Gospel, and the truths of it, which are salutary, nourishing, strengthening, reviving, and cheering, and of Christ the bread of life, which believers by faith eat of, and feed upon and live:
and he made him to suck honey out of the rock; not water out of the rock, as sweet to them as honey, that they had in the wilderness; but either the honey of bees that made their nests in rocks, as a swarm of them did in the carcass of a lion; and so in like manner as honey came out of the lion, it may be said to be sucked out of the rock: so Homer a speaks of swarms of bees out of a hollow rock: or this was the honey of palm trees, as Aben Ezra observes, some say, which might grow on rocks, [See comments on De 8:8]; and this is favoured by the Targum of Jonathan, which paraphrases the words,
“honey from those fruits which grow on the rocks,”
unless it means honey gathered by bees from such fruits; the rock may typify Christ, and the honey out of it the Gospel, which is from him and concerning him; comparable to honey for the manner of its production and gathering, by the laborious ministers of the word; for its nourishment, and especially for its sweetness, its precious promises, and pleasant doctrines:
and oil out of the flinty rock; that is, oil out of the olives, which grow on rocks, and these delight to grow on hills and mountains; hence we read of the mount of Olives, see Job 29:6; and so the Targum of Jonathan,
“and oil out of the olives and suckers which grow on the strong rocks;”
this may signify the Spirit and his graces, the unction which comes from Christ the Holy One, and the blessings of grace had from him, and the Gospel and its truths; which are cheering and refreshing, mollifying and healing, feeding and fattening, pure and unmixed, and useful for light, as oil is.
a Iliad. 2. l. 87, 88.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
13. He made him ride on the high places. Theirs is but a frivolous imagination, who suppose that Judea was so called as being the navel or center of the earth; (262) it is more likely that it was called high in reference to Egypt; and, indeed, it is by no means an unusual expression, that those who go into Egypt, are said to go down, and those who come into Judea to come up. Still I am rather disposed Lo think that by height he denotes its excellency; inasmuch as that land, on account of its illustrious endowments, was, as it were, the most noble theater in the world.
Moses celebrates its fertility, when he says that the people sucked honey from the rock and oil from the stones: for he means to indicate, that no part of it was unproductive, since they gathered honey from the rocks, and upon them also the olive grew. The same is the intention of the other figures, that they ate “butter of kine, and milk of sheep;” by which he signifies that the land was full of rich pastures. By “fat of lambs,” he undoubtedly means the plumpness of their flesh, because it was not lawful to eat their actual fat; but it is not unusual to denote by this word any kind of richness, as soon afterwards he calls the best meal or flour, from which the more delicate kind of bread was made, “the fat of wheat.” With respect to the wine, he magnifies God’s liberality by the use of a poetic figure, when he says they drank of the blood of the grape. There is no doubt but that he alludes to its color; yet he takes occasion to extol more highly the beneficence of God, by intimating that, when the juice of the grapes is expressed, it is just as if their blood flowed forth for the nutriment of men. Since, then, the metaphor is taken from the redness of wine, I have not hesitated to translate the epithet חמר, chamer, at the end of the verse, red. (263) From many passages it appears to have been very delicious; and in Isa 27:2 the word חמר, chamer, is used for a vine of great preciousness and of exquisite flavor. Those who render it pure, have rather taken into consideration the fact, than the signification of the word.
(262) “In summa parte orbis, qubd Terra Saneta sit in medio climate mund” — Vatablus, in Poole’s Synopsis.
(263) It may either mean red or effervescing; it is not easy to see why A. V. renders it pure — W.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
13. He made him ride on the high places He who possessed the high places had control. The figure is used to denote the subjugation of the land. Comp. Deu 33:29: “Them shalt tread upon their high places;” also, Psa 18:33: “Setteth me upon my high places.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ver. 13. He made him ride on the high places of the earth We may observe, that the verbs in this, as well as in the preceding verses, are all in the future. The meaning of the clause,
He will make him ride on the high places of the land, is fully explained by that which follows in apposition with it;
He will give him to eat the increase of the fields:
Thus expressing God’s donation to the Israelites of a noble and fertile country, full of lofty and fruitful mountains, and therefore called the high places of the land. There he made them to ride, i.e. to live deliciously. So to ride signifies, Hos 10:11. I will make Ephraim to ride: Judah shall plough; i.e. the people of Israel shall live in pleasure, when Judah shall live laboriously. He made him to suck honey out of the rock, &c. is a high, poetical expression, for a most rich and abundant country. Virgil’s description of the fruitfulness of the earth in the golden age is not unlike this:
Incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva, Et durae quercus sudabunt roscida mella.
Then clustering grapes on forest thorns shall grow; Swains without culture golden harvests reap, And knotted oaks shall showers of honey weep.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
See! what a good house our GOD keeps! They that sit down at his table, will find both plenty, and of the best. But are not gospel mercies veiled under these figures? It is true, our fathers in the wilderness, had all these things in abundance. But yet in a gospel sense: the pure milk of the word, and the wine of the grape, imply the feast of fat things in GOD’S holy mountain. Isa 25:6 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
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;
Ver. 13. To suck honey out of the rock. ] Water as sweet as honey in that necessity; so doth every worthy receiver by faith at the sacrament; whereas whoso comes thereunto without faith, is like a man, saith Mr Tyndale, that thinks to quench his thirst by sucking the ale bowl.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
That he might eat. Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint read “caused him to eat”. Hebrew text reads “And he did eat”.
increase. Hebrew. nub, fruit from land. First occurrence.
honey . . . oil. Put by Figure of speech Synecdoche (of Species) for all delicious things.
rock. Hebrew sel’a = a rock, as a fortress, immovable.
flinty rock. Hebrew. zur = rock in situ, sharp and precipitous. Hence a refuge and security.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
ride: Deu 33:26, Deu 33:29, Isa 58:14, Eze 36:2
honey: Job 29:6, Psa 81:16, Isa 48:21, Eze 21:17
Reciprocal: Deu 28:47 – General Deu 33:19 – suck of 2Sa 22:34 – setteth 2Ki 18:32 – like your own 2Ch 26:16 – when he was Neh 9:25 – a fat land Job 20:17 – of honey Psa 18:33 – high Isa 49:9 – high Eze 16:13 – thou didst Eze 20:6 – flowing Hos 2:7 – for Hos 13:6 – to Amo 4:13 – and treadeth Mic 1:3 – the high Hab 3:19 – to walk Mat 2:10 – they rejoiced Mat 3:4 – wild Rom 11:9 – their table
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Deu 32:13. He made him ride on the high places To conquer their strongest holds on the mountains, and their cities fenced with walls of the greatest height and strength: to ride upon being, in the phraseology of Scripture, to subdue and conquer. Or, he put him in possession of a country full of lofty and fruitful mountains, and therefore called the high places of the earth. To suck honey out of the rock Placed him in a country where honey flowed from the very rocks, the bees making it in the holes thereof, or in the hollow trees that grew upon or among the rocks. Oil out of the flinty rocks Olive-trees growing and bearing fruit best in rocky or hilly places. The expressions are proverbial, and denote a most fertile land.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
32:13 He made him ride on the high places of the {g} earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck {h} honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock;
(g) Meaning, of the land of Canaan, which was high in respect to Egypt.
(h) That is, abundance of all things even in the very rocks.