Deuteronomy32chapter 32

Remember the days of old: What Israel is to hold on to is an event, and the method given is to “Ask your father, and he will tell you”. The men addressed were children or unborn when Egypt happened. The song lays on them a duty to question the generation that was there.

Deuteronomy 32:8-9

The King James follows the Masoretic text, the number of the children of Israel, which older writers tie to the seventy nations. The Septuagint, other Greek witnesses and a Qumran scroll support the reading the Berean follows, “the number of the sons of God”. Michael Heiser builds a divine council reading on it, while Keil and Delitzsch defend the Masoretic text and read the division through Genesis 10.

The word behind allotted is the measuring cord used to mark out a field, so Jacob is pictured as the plot surveyed for God Himself. The other nations received territory, and Israel became His. Psalm 33:12 and 135:4 repeat the claim.

Deuteronomy 32:10-12

He found him in a desert land: The eagle stirring its nest is the second use of that image for the exodus, after Exodus 19:4, where God carried Israel on eagles' wings. The “apple of His eye” is the pupil, guarded without any decision to guard it, and Psalm 17:8 and Zechariah 2:8 use the phrase the same way. Verse 12 rules out any partner in the rescue before the song turns to the charge.

The verb for hovers is the one Genesis 1:2 uses of the Spirit of God over the waters, and Adam Clarke reads it as brooding that gives warmth. Clarke also reads the stirred nest as the plagues that pushed a reluctant Israel out of Egypt. John Wesley pictures the young carried gently on the wings.

The word for alone returns at 33:28, where Israel lives in safety alone, so the God who led by Himself also sets His people apart. Matthew Henry observes that no foreign god helped Israel in the wilderness, so none had a claim on its worship. Verse 16 records that Israel served them anyway.

Deuteronomy 32:13-14

The phrase “honey from the rock” gives the chapter's name for God a second use, since the rock that is his title is also where food is drawn from. Psalm 81:16 repeats the honey from the rock. Verse 14 lists settled produce, curds, milk, lambs, rams of Bashan, wheat and wine, set down as gifts just before verse 15 says what was done with them.

The Hebrew for the choicest grains is the kidney fat of wheat, and Adam Clarke explains that kidney fat was the richest part of the animal. John Wesley notes that the fat of the inner parts went to God on the altar. Bashan's herds became a byword in Amos 4:1.

Deuteronomy 32:15-16

Jeshurun stands four times in Scripture, here and at 33:5 and 33:26 and again at Isaiah 44:2, and commentators take it from the root for upright, which makes the name affectionate and its use here bitter. What ruins Jeshurun is the danger 6:10-12 and 8:11-14 already named, which is having enough. Lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation sets the failure directly against the name given at verse 4.

Jealousy is the word of the second commandment at Exodus 20:5, and Exodus 34:14 gives Jealous as a name of God. It is the anger of a husband whose covenant has been broken. Abominations is the word 7:25-26 and 27:15 use for carved idols.

Deuteronomy 32:17-18

The Hebrew word behind “demons” stands twice in the Old Testament, here and at Psalm 106:37, where sons and daughters are sacrificed. Paul carries this clause into 1 Corinthians 10:20, where the Gentiles sacrifice to demons and not to God. Verse 18 puts the charge as forgetting, one of the book's two great commands, and what is forgotten is “the God who gave you birth”.

The verb behind gave you birth is used of a mother in labour, as at Isaiah 51:2 of Sarah who bore Israel. The Rock who fathered the nation is also pictured bearing it in pain. Isaiah 49:15 uses the same mother's picture.

Deuteronomy 32:19-21

Verse 21 is an exchange, a no-god answered by “those who are not a people”, with the same two verbs on both sides. Paul quotes the second half at Romans 10:19 of the Gentiles hearing what Israel did not, and returns to the jealousy at Romans 11:11 and 11:14. The phrase is turned over at Hosea 1:9-10 and applied to the church at 1 Peter 2:10.

I will hide my face from them: The Hebrew behind unfaithfulness comes from the root of amen, and Adam Clarke renders it as no steadfastness in them. Matthew Henry sets it beside Isaiah 63:8, where God had counted on sons who would keep faith. The hidden face was announced already at 31:17-18.

Worthless idols translates a Hebrew word for breath or vapour, the word Ecclesiastes uses for vanity. Matthew Henry sees a first fulfilment in the days of the judges, when Israel was oppressed by the Canaanites it had once defeated, as at Judges 4. God answers breath with a people of no account.

Deuteronomy 32:22-23

The word rendered hell here is sheol, the place of the dead, and the fire is said to burn to its lowest part, so what is described has no floor under it. Chapter 28 gave these same judgments as the consequences of a broken covenant, and the song gives them as the act of a person who is angry. Arrows spent upon them makes God the archer, and verse 42 comes back to that image at the end.

Verse 24 names what the arrows are, and Adam Clarke counts them one by one as famine, fever, plague, beasts and serpents. Ezekiel 5:16 calls famine an arrow in the same way. Clement of Alexandria read such threats as an appeal meant to keep people from sin.

Deuteronomy 32:24-25

The list runs through famine, fever, wild beasts and serpents, which is close to the covenant curse of Leviticus 26:22 and 26:25. Verse 25 names four ages in a single line, the young man, the virgin, the suckling and the man of gray hairs, so nobody stands outside the sentence. Lamentations 1:20 describes Jerusalem in the same two halves, the sword abroad and death at home.

Ezekiel 7:15 repeats this division of the sword outside and terror inside for the fall of Jerusalem. Jeremiah 9:21 pictures death climbing through the windows to take children from the streets. Neither the field nor the house offers cover.

Deuteronomy 32:26-27

The judgment stops short because of what the enemy would conclude: “Our own hand has prevailed; it was not the LORD who did all this”. Moses used that argument in prayer at Exodus 32:12 and Numbers 14:13-16, and at Ezekiel 20:9 and 20:14 God gives it as his own reason for holding back. Israel's survival rests on the name of God.

John Wesley says the dread of the enemy's taunt is given to God after the manner of men. Adam Clarke reports that Houbigant read it as the LORD's own indignation at the adversaries' boast. Either way, the claim that their own hand prevailed is refused.

Deuteronomy 32:28-30

One man chasing a thousand reverses the promise of Leviticus 26:8 and Joshua 23:10, where Israel does the chasing. The words “their Rock had sold them” use the verb Judges 2:14 and 3:8 use for what God does with Israel when it turns, so the defeat is put as a transaction. The song was given at 31:19 as a witness for the day they understand “their fate”.

Adam Clarke reads their fate, literally their latter end, as the days of the Messiah who would rise among them. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read it as the judgments that would close their national history. The wish echoes God's own at 5:29.

Isaiah 30:17 turns the same reversal on Judah, where a thousand flee at the threat of one. The verb behind given them up means to shut in or hand over, and Psalm 78:62 uses it of God giving His people to the sword. Defeat is traced to God.

Deuteronomy 32:31-33

Verse 31 makes the enemies the judges between the two rocks. The vine of Sodom sends a reader back to Genesis 19, and Isaiah 5:1-7 works the vineyard image the same way against Judah. Commentators divide over whose vine verses 32 and 33 describe, since verse 31 speaks of the enemies while the song around it charges Israel, and Gill and Keil take opposite sides.

Matthew Henry reads their vine as Israel itself, planted as a choice vine and turned into the strange vine of Jeremiah 2:21. He adds that Ezekiel 16 finds Jerusalem worse than Sodom. Poisonous grapes and bitter clusters show the root.

Wine was the drink of feasts and offerings, and here it becomes the venom of snakes. John Gill gathers ancient writers on the dragon's poison. Job 20:14 uses the same cobra's venom for the sinner's sweet food turning sour inside him.

Deuteronomy 32:34-35

Romans 12:19 and Hebrews 10:30 both quote “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay”, following the Hebrew more closely than the Septuagint does here. Paul uses it to forbid private revenge, and Hebrews to warn a church. Jonathan Edwards took the clause on the slipping foot as the text of his 1741 sermon at Enfield, which is how most English readers have met the verse since.

Calmet, cited by Adam Clarke, took the words their foot will slip as spoken against the Canaanites, while others apply them to Israel. John Gill notes that all three Targums read I will repay, the form Paul quotes. Ambrose joined Vengeance is Mine to the command to love enemies.

Deuteronomy 32:36-38

Hebrews 10:30 quotes this clause right after verse 35, so both halves of that argument come from two verses of the song, and Psalm 135:14 repeats the line. The turn comes here, when God sees “that their strength is gone”. Verses 37 and 38 then put the question to the gods that had been fed: “Let them rise up and help you”.

Where are their gods: The idols are called a rock, the refuge Israel ran to in place of the Rock of verse 4. Judges 10:14 puts the same challenge to Israel, telling them to cry out to the gods they had chosen. Jeremiah 2:28 asks where those gods are.

John Gill notes that the fat of sacrifices and the wine of drink offerings were claimed by the LORD, as at Leviticus 3:11 and Numbers 15. Israel had given His portion to gods that could eat nothing. Psalm 50:13 asks whether God eats the flesh of bulls.

Deuteronomy 32:39-40

Hannah says the same at 1 Samuel 2:6, and Isaiah 45:7 states it in the same shape: “I bring death and I give life”. The lifted hand is the gesture of an oath, used by Abram at Genesis 14:22, and God swears by his own life, having nothing higher, the point Hebrews 6:13 makes. Revelation 10:5-6 has an angel lift a hand and swear by him who lives forever.

As surely as I live becomes a regular oath of God, at Numbers 14:21 and more than a dozen times in Ezekiel. Ezekiel 33:11 uses it to swear that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. The same oath carries judgment and mercy.

Deuteronomy 32:41-42

The last clause of verse 42 is hard in Hebrew: the King James reads the beginning of revenges, others the long-haired heads of the enemy, and the Berean “the heads of the enemy leaders”. Isaiah 34:5-6 and 63:1-6 work the same picture of sword and stained garment, and Revelation 19:11-15 gives it to the rider on the white horse. This judgment falls on the adversaries, the hinge into verse 43.

Jeremiah 46:10 takes up this picture against Egypt, where the sword devours and drinks its fill of blood. Isaiah 49:26 turns it on the oppressors of Zion, who become drunk on their own blood. The image stays with the prophets.

Paul quotes this line at Romans 15:10 as one of four texts for Gentiles praising God with Israel. The Septuagint and a Qumran scroll carry the clause the Berean prints, “let all God’s angels worship Him”. Hebrews 1:6 quotes it, though others take it from Psalm 97:7, and the standard commentaries name both.

Deuteronomy 32:44-45

The Hebrew and the King James give Joshua his older name here, Hoshea, which Numbers 13:16 says Moses changed when the spies were sent out, where the Berean reads Joshua. This is the one place after the change where the earlier form returns, and the text gives no reason. The song is recited to the whole people, as 31:19 and 31:22 required.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown record that Robert Lowth called these words of Moses the song of the dying swan. They add that the people of Israel were to keep the song as a national anthem. At Revelation 15:3 the song of Moses is heard in heaven.

Deuteronomy 32:46-47

What the fathers are told to do with the words is what 6:6-7 told them, to take them to heart and command them to their children. The words “they are your life” repeat the terms of 30:19-20, where life and death were set before the people. This is the last thing Moses says to the assembly.

The Hebrew for idle is empty, the word used of the pit with no water in Genesis 37:24. These words carry weight and life. Leviticus 18:5 had made the same promise, that the one who keeps God's statutes will live by them.

Deuteronomy 32:48-50

The order was given at Numbers 27:12-14 in nearly the same words without the name Nebo, and here it comes again on the day of the song. To be “gathered to your people” is said of Abraham at Genesis 25:8 and Isaac at Genesis 35:29, and each time the text keeps it apart from burial. Aaron is the pattern, and Numbers 20:28 and 33:38 record his death on Mount Hor.

Adam Clarke explains Abarim as the mountains of the crossings, the range above the place where Israel would pass over. Nebo is one summit of that range, facing Jericho across the Jordan. Deuteronomy 34:1-4 describes the view from it.

Adam Clarke answers those who held that Moses was taken up alive, for the verse says he will die and be gathered to his people, just as Aaron died on Mount Hor. Deuteronomy 34:5-6 records the death and a burial by God in a grave no one knows. Jude 9 mentions a dispute over his body.

Deuteronomy 32:51-52

Three times earlier in this book Moses gives the people as the reason, at 1:37, 3:26 and 4:21. Here and at Numbers 20:12 the reason is his own act at Meribah, “failing to treat Me as holy in their presence”, and the two accounts stand side by side. The sight of the land is granted and the entry refused, and chapter 34 carries it out.

Hebrews 11:13 says the patriarchs died having seen the promises from a distance, and Moses joins them, seeing the land he shall not enter. Matthew Henry notes that Moses later stood in the land at the transfiguration, with Jesus at Matthew 17:3. The word given here held for his lifetime.