Deuteronomy 28:42

gs, with a sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head. 36 The LORD shall bring thee, and thy king which thou shalt set over thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers have known; and there shalt thou serve other gods, wood and stone. 37 And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee. 38 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field, and shalt gather but little in; for the locust shall consume it. 39 Thou shalt plant vineyards, and dress them, but shalt neither drink of the wine, nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them. 40 Thou shalt have olive trees throughout all thy coasts, but thou shalt not anoint thyself with the oil; for thine olive shall cast his fruit. 41 Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity. 42 All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume. 43 The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. 44 He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail

28:15-44 If we do not keep God's commandments, we not only come short of the blessing promised, but we lay ourselves under the curse, which includes all misery, as the blessing all happiness. Observe the justice of this curse. It is not a curse causeless, or for some light cause. The extent and power of this curse. Wherever the sinner goes, the curse of God follows; wherever he is, it rests upon him. Whatever he has is under a curse. All his enjoyments are made bitter; he cannot take any true comfort in them, for the wrath of God mixes itself with them. Many judgments are here stated, which would be the fruits of the curse, and with which God would punish the people of the Jews, for their apostacy and disobedience. We may observe the fulfilling of these threatenings in their present state. To complete their misery, it is threatened that by these troubles they should be bereaved of all comfort and hope, and left to utter despair. Those who walk by sight, and not by faith, are in danger of losing reason itself, when every thing about them looks frightful.

All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume. Which is a creature that not only consumes grass, and herbs, and the corn of the field, but all green trees; see Exodus 10:15 . This sort here has its name from the shade they make, hiding the light of the sun, and darkening the face of the earth at no on day; or from the noise they make with their wings in flying; see Joel 2:5 .

37. And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee, &c.—The annals of almost every nation, for eighteen hundred years, afford abundant proofs that this has been, as it still is, the case—the very name of Jew being a universally recognized term for extreme degradation and wretchedness.

Deuteronomy 28:23 f. with Deuteronomy 28:12 a , Deuteronomy 28:25 with Deuteronomy 28:7 b , Deuteronomy 28:37 and Deuteronomy 28:46 with Deuteronomy 28:10 , Deuteronomy 28:43 f. with Deuteronomy 28:12 b , Deuteronomy 28:13 a ), the rest is a detailed antithesis to the summary blessing in 11; and diseases, calamities to man and beast, failures of seed and harvest, losses of children and property, and even exile, are set forth in detail. The opinion that Deuteronomy 28:26-37 and Deuteronomy 28:41 are later additions is plausible, not because they contain predictions of exile but because they elaborate the rest; and this rest, Deuteronomy 28:21-25 (or 26), Deuteronomy 28:38-40 and Deuteronomy 28:42-46 , more nearly corresponds to Deuteronomy 28:8-14 . In view of the repeating style of D it is impossible to say whether some even of those vv . are original or expansions; there are no sufficient grounds for the detailed analysis by Steuernagel.

All the trees and fruits of the land would the buzzer take possession of. צלצל, from צלל to buzz, a rhetorical epithet applied to locusts, not the grasshopper, which does not injure the fruits of the tree or ground sufficiently for the term ירשׁ, "to take possession of," to be applicable to it.

37 . If there be in the land famine ] In this verse the king gathers together various judgements which God had threatened on His people if they sinned. For famine cf. Leviticus 26:20 ; Deuteronomy 11:17 : for blasting and mildew, Deuteronomy 28:22 ; for locust, Deuteronomy 28:38 . The particular insect rendered ‘caterpillar’ in this verse is not mentioned in the Pentateuch, but we know from Joel 2:25 , that some other kind, or stage of development, of locust is meant by it. In Deuteronomy 28:42 we have mention of an insect, also rendered ‘locust,’ which has a different name in the original from that spoken of in 1 Kings 8:38 of the same chapter. The siege by an enemy is threatened in Deuteronomy 28:52 . in the land of their cities ] The Hebrew word translated ‘cities’ usually signifies ‘gates,’ and it is so rendered Deuteronomy 28:52 ‘He shall besiege thee in all thy gates.’ But in ‘gates’ the ‘cities,’ which alone possessed them, are implied. The LXX. and other versions have ‘in one of their cities.’ The Vulg. has ‘gates.’