Deuteronomy 32:25

32:19-25 The revolt of Israel was described in the foregoing verses, and here follow the resolves of Divine justice as to them. We deceive ourselves, if we think that God will be mocked by a faithless people. Sin makes us hateful in the sight of the holy God. See what mischief sin does, and reckon those to be fools that mock at it.

Either without the city, the sword of the Roman army besieging it, which destroyed all that came out or attempted to go in; or in the streets of the city, the sword of the seditious, which destroyed multitudes among themselves: and terror within; within the city, on account of the sword of the Romans, and the close siege they made of it; and on account of the famine and pestilence which raged in it, and the cruelty of the seditious persons among themselves; all these filled the people with horror and terror in their houses; and even in their bedchambers, as the word signifies, they were not free from terror; yea, from the temple, and inward parts, and chambers of that, which may be referred to, terror came, that being in the hands of the seditious; they sallied out from thence, and ravaged the city, and filled all places with the dread of them; and many, no doubt, through fear died, as well as by the sword and other judgments; which it is threatened shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also, with the man of gray hairs; none of any age or sex were spared, even those unarmed; not the young man, for his strength and promising usefulness; nor the virgin for her beauty and comeliness; nor the suckling for its innocence and tenderness; nor the aged man through any reverence of his gray hairs, or on account of the infirmities of old age, but all would be destroyed; and never was such a carnage made at the siege of anyone city in the world before or since; no

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. אימה is a sudden mortal terror, and Knobel is wrong in applying it to hunger and plague. The use of the verb שׁכּל, 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 ( Ezekiel 14:21 : see also Ezekiel 5:17 , and Jeremiah 15:2-3 ).

If it is evident from Deuteronomy 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 Deuteronomy 32:37 and Deuteronomy 32:38 , especially from the appeal in Deuteronomy 32:38 , Let your idols arise and help you ( Deuteronomy 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 Deuteronomy 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 ( 2 Samuel 2:26 ; 2 Samuel 18:8 , etc.); "the sword is said to devour bodies when it slays them by piercing" (Ges. thes. p. 1088). פּרעות, from פּרע, a luxuriant, uncut growth of hair ( Numbers 6:5 ; see at Leviticus 10:6 ).

[Bible] 32:20. And he said: I will hide my face from them, and will consider what their last end shall be: for it is a perverse generation, and unfaithful children. 32:21. They have provoked me with that which was no god, and have angered me with their vanities: and I will provoke them with that which is no people, and will vex them with a foolish nation. 32:22. A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell: and shall devour the earth with her increase, and shall burn the foundations of the mountains. 32:23. I will heap evils upon them, and will spend my arrows among them. 32:24. They shall be consumed with famine, and birds shall devour them with a most bitter bite: I will send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the fury of creatures that trail upon the ground, and of serpents. 32:25. Without, the sword shall lay them waste, and terror within, both the young man and the virgin, the sucking child with the man in years. 32:26. I said: Where are they? I will make the memory of them to cease from among men. 32:27. But for the wrath of the enemies I have deferred it: lest perhaps their enemies might be proud, and should say: Our mighty hand, and not the Lord, hath done all these things. 32:28. They are a nation without counsel, and without wisdom. 32:29. O that they would be wise and would understand, and would provide for their last end. 32:30. How should one pursue after a thousand, and two chase ten thousand? Was it not, because their God had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up? 32:31. For our God is not as their gods: our enemies themselves are judges. 32:32. Their vines are of the vineyard of Sodom, and of the suburbs of Gomorrha: their grapes are grapes of gall, and their clusters most bitter. 32:33. Their wine is the gall of dragons, and the venom of asps, which is incurable. 32:34. Are not these things stored up with me, and sealed up in my treasures?