Vers. 6-18. Expansion of the theme according to the thought expressed- in ver. 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 ver. 6, in a reproachful question addressed to the people, and then supported in vers. 7-14 by an enumeration of the benefits conferred by God, and in vers. 15-18 by a description of the ingratitude of the people. — Ver. 6. " Will ye thus repay the Lord? thou foolish people and unwise! Is He not thy Father, ivho hath founded thee, who hath made thee and prepared thee f" i'^?? ^^® primary idea of which is doubtful, signifies properly to show, or do, for the most part good, but sometimes evil (vid, Ps. vii. 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. Ixiii. 16, where Father and Redeemer are synonymous terms, with Isa. Ixiv. 7, God the Father, Israel the clay which He had formed, and Mai. ii. 10, where God as Father is said to have created Israel; see also the remarks at chap. xiv. 1 on the notion of Israel's sonship. — ^p^. He has acquired thee; njp^ KraaOau, to get, acquire (Gen. iv. 1), then so as to involve the idea of KTi^euv (Gen. xiv. 9), though without being identical with ^'^3. 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. — Ver. 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 y^'ords Moses summons the people to reflect upon what the Lord had done to them. The days of old (^J^i^), 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 djstant past, because he transported himself in spirit to the " latter days" (chap. xxxi. 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.
Vers. 8 and 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 Lords portion is His people; Jacob the cord of His inheritance." Moses commences his enumeratiort 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 ver. 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. xi., 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 (chap. xi.
9), and that the nations were divided, i.e, separate nations were formed from the families of the sons of Noah (Gen. x. 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.^ — Ver. 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. chap. vii. 6, x. 15, and Ex. xix. 5), Israel was Jehovah's portion, and the inheritance assigned to Him. i^^n^ a cord, or measure, then a piece of land measured off; here it is figuratively applied to the nation. — Yers. 10 sqq. He had manifested His fatherly care and love to Israel as His own property.
Ver. 10. " He found him in the land of thd desert, and in the wilderness, the howling of the steppe; He surrounded him, took care of him, protected him as the apple of His eyer 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.
^ 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. xvii. 14), which probably originated in a misunderstanding of chap. iv. 19, as compared with Dan. x. 13, 20, 21, and xii. 1.
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 throuf^h the desert (a fact which would need to be proved), or because the solemn conclusion of the covenant, whereby Israel first became 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 (vers. 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 one 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 (Ex. xiii. 20, Schultz). For although the figure of the desert is chosen, because In reality the Lord had led Israel through the A^rablan 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 '131 ^r\T\'2\ " and in fact (1 is explanatory) in a waste^' or wilderness (tohu recalls Gen. i. 2). " Howling of the desert " is in apposition to tohu (loaste), and not a genitive dependent upon it, viz. "w^aste of the howling of the desert, or of the desert in which wild beasts howl" (Ewald), as if 7P\ stood after P^^\ "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. ^^^Dy to surround with love and care, not merely to protect (vid. Ps. xxvi. 6; Jer. xxxi. 22). jj^U, from T^ or P^n, 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. Ps. xvii. 8; Prov. vii. 2).
Yer. 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 wingsT 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 Ex. xix. 4, where the Lord is said to have brought His people out of Egypt upon eagles' wings, and also the introduction intCJ 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 theapodosis. The nominative to " spreadeth abroad" is Jehovah; and the suffixes in 'innp^ and =inKC>^ (" taketh" and " beareth") refer to Israel or Jacob (ver. 9), like the suffixes in ver. 10. As 3 cannot open a sentence like ")^K3, we must supply the relative "1K^^5 after '^K^J. ii)p "i^yri, 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 (Ilieroz, ii. p. 762). ^n"|, from ^rn to be loose or slack (Jer. xxiii. 9): in the IHel it is applied to a bird in the sense of loosenintj; its wings, as distinguished from binding its wings to its body; hence (1) to sit u])on 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 lie 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 lie 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 Ilim," — except that the explanation of the expression " to fly" is narrowed too much.
Vers. 12—14. " The Lord alone did lead him, and with Ilim was no strange god. He made him drive over the high places of the earthy 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 Basliari 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 ail 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. — Vers. 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 Ps. xviii. 34, as Ewald assumes, but is original both here and in chap, xxxiii. 29. " Drive^ (ride) is only a more majestic expression for " advance." The reference to this passage in Isa. Iviii. 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 posses- sion 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 ^nd 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 ver. 14 are dependent upon "to suck" in ver. 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). i^^pr! and 3^n (though 37n seems to require a form ^S^n; vid. Ewaldy § 213, b.) denote 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, 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. xviii. 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 ]^^ ''pB, i.e. reared in Bashan (vid. Ezek. xxxix. 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" (ver. 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. " Grapeblood^^ for red wine (as in Gen. xlix. 11). "ipn^ from "IDH to ferment, froth, foam, lit. the foaming, i.e. fiery wine, serves as a more precise definition of the " blood of the grape."
Vers. 15-18. Israel had repaid its God for all these benefits by a base apostasy. — Ver. 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 "i^, and describes Israel as a nation of just or right men (a similar description to that given by- Balaam in Num. xxiii. 10), because Jehovah, who is just and right (ver, 4), had called it to uprightness, to walk in His righteousness, and chosen it as His servant (Isa. xliv. 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 dim.inutive signification in Hebrew (see Hengstenberg, Balaam, p. 415); and an appellatio hlanda et charitativa is by no means suitable to this passage, much less to chap, xxxiii. 5. The epithet Righteousnation^ as we may render Jeshurun, was intended to remind Israel of its calling, and involved the severest 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. chap, xxxiii. 5, 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 {yid. Isa. x. 27, Hos. iv. 16; and for the fact itself, Deut. vi. 11, viii. 10, xxxi. 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). 733 is no doubt a denom. verb from 73^^ lit, to treat as a fool, Le. to despise {vid. Micah vii. 6).
Vers. 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 uj), whom your fathers feared not. The rock which begat thee thou forsookest, and hast forgotten the God that bare theeV These three verses are only a further expansion of ver. \hb. 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. chap. xxxi. 16, and the com. on Ex. xxxiv. 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. ii. 25, iii. 13. The idols are called "abominations" because Jehovah abhorred them (chap. vii. 25, xxvii. 15; cf. 2 Kings xxiii. 13). D''1^ signifies demons in Syriac, as it has been rendered by the LXX. and Vulgate here; lit. lords, like Baalim. It is also used in Ps. cvi. 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. chap. xi. 2S); " 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 (ver. 7). "il^^, to shudder, construed here with an accusative, to experience a holy shuddering before a person, to revere with holy awe. — In ver. 18 Moses returns to the thought of ver. 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, ^ipin^ to twist round, then applied to the pains of childbirth. The dir. Xey. ^^JH is to be traced to n^^^ and is a pausal form like "'HJ in chap. iv. 33. n^K^' = nn^y to forget, to neglect.
Vers. 19-33. For this foolish apostasy the Lord would severely visit His people. This visitation is represented indeed in ver. 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 ver. 19 the determination to reject the degenerate children is announced, and in vers. 20-22 this is still further defined and explained.— Ver. 19. '^ Arid the Lord saw it, and rejected — from indignation at His sons and daughters J^ 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. Y^^^] has been very well rendered by Kamphausen, "He resolved upon rejection," since vers. 20 sqq. 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. — Vers. 20—22. " And He said, I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end will he: 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 (ver. 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 " {tahpuchoth is moral perversity, Prov. ii. 14, vi. 14), i.e, " a thoroughly perverse and faithless generation" {Knobel)\ — and then, secondly (ver. 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 nogod, or ^7?!!lj nothingnesses, i.e, gods that were vanities or nothings (JEilili'hi, Lev. xix. 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 tliat Paul understood this passage as referring to the adoption of the Gentiles as the people of God (Rom. x. 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.^ 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 ver. 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 w^ould 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
^ 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 discipUne 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 (vers. 36 and 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. ix.-xi. The assertion that this verse refers to the whole nation is quite incorrect. The plural suffixes used throughout in vers. 20 and 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.
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 Jiad 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-peoph 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 nogod 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. xiv. 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 chap. iv. 6, because it possessed righteous statutes and rights in the law of the Lord. The foclish nation therefore is not " an ungodly nation, which despises all aws both human and divine" (Ros., Afaur.), but a people whose laws and rights are not founded upon divine revelation. Consequently the no-people is not " a barbarous and inhuman people " {Eos.)', 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. ii. 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 coiTespond 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 luanded, 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.
In ver. 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 have found in dealing with the word ''3. Ewald renders it dock (yet), in total disregard of the usages of the language; and Venema, certCj profecto (surely); whilst Ka nphausen supposes it to be used in a somewhat careless manner. Th( contents of ver. 22, which are introduced with ^3, by no means har nonize with the thought, " I will send a barbarous and inhuman hon'e;" 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 " nopeople." 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. chap, xxix. 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 (yid. Ps. xviii. 9). In this sense the Lord as "a jealous God" is a consuming fire (vid, chap. iv. 24, and the exposition of Ex. iii. 2). This fire burns down even to the lower hell. The lower hell, Le. 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 (^Katnphaiisen, A hen-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 bum 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 vers. 23—33 as it would discharge itself upon rebellious Israel.
Ver. 23. " / will heap up evils upon them, use up My arrows against thein." 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. HBD, to add one upon the other (yid. Num. xxxii. 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 ver. 42; cf. Ps. xxxviii. 3, xci. 5; Job vi. 4). np3j to bring to an end, to use up to the very last. — Ver. 24. " Have they wasted away with hunger, are they consumed with pestilential heat and hitter plague: I will let loose the tooth of heasts upon them, with the poison of things that crawl in the dustJ^ — Ver. 25. " If the sword without shall sweep them away, and in the chamhers of terrors, the young man as the maiden, the suckling with the greyhaired manV The evils mentioned are hunger, pestilence, plague, wild beasts, poisonous serpents, and war. The first hemistich in ver. 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. ^yo, construct state of HT^, am. Xey., with which Cocceius compares nVD and y^, 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. xxvi. 22, where wild beasts are mentioned as a plague along with pestilence, famine, and sword. — ^Ver. 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. n^"'X is a sudden mortal terror, and Knohel is wrong in applying it to hunger and plague. The use of the verb /'S^, 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 (Ezek. xiv. 21: see also v. 17, and Jer. xv. 2, 3).
Vers. 26 and 27. "/ 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 thisT 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. Wp^? to be construed conditionally requires w: 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 ver. 20. The air. \€y. Dn^^fDK, which has been rendered in very different ways, cannot be regarded, as it is by the Rabbins, as a denom. verb from HNIQ^ 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 HijQj to blow, — related to ny3 (Isa. xlii. 14) and ^^^^, from which comes nSj — in the Hiphil " to blow away," not to blow asunder. JT'SK^Hj not " to cause to rest," but to cause to cease, delere (as in Amos viii. 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). |3, lest, after "iiji, to fear. On this reason for sparing Israel, see chap. ix. 28; Ex. xxxii. 12; Num. xiv. 13 sqq.; Isa. x. 5 sqq. Enemy is a generic term, hence it is followed by the plural. "I3J, 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 work 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 (Ex. xiv. 8; cf. Isa. xxvi. ll)._The reason why Israel did not deserve to be spared is given in ver. 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 vers. 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.— Vers. 29-3L " 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 ver. 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.— Ver. 30. If Israel were wise, it could easily conquer all its foes in the power of its God {vid. Lev. xxvi. 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. ^3 N7 DK is more emphatic or distinct than ^h D« 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 ideal past or present, but not a real and historical one. The assertion of Hupfeld and Kamphausen^ that "i^D, 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.— Ver. 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 ver. 30 contains a circumstantial clause, introduced to strengthen the thought which precedes it. The heathen themselves could be arbitrators (vid. Ex. xxi. 22), and decide whether the gods of the heathen were not powerless before the God of Israel. " 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). The objection offered by Scliultz, namely, that " the heathen would not admit that their idols were inferior to Jehovah, ^nd actually denied this at the time when they had the upper hand (Isa. x. 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 tliey must be convinced by experience." As a confirmation of this, Luther and others refer not only to the testimony of Balaam (Num. xxiii. and xxiv.), but also to the Egyptians (Ex. xiv. 2b) and PhiHstines (1 Sam. v. 7 sqq.), to which we may add Josh. ii. 9, 10.
Vers. 32 and 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 "/or" in ver. 32 is neither co-ordinate nor subordinate to that in ver. 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 vers. 32 and 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 a 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, th-at throughout the Old Testament it is the moral corruption and ungodliness of the Israelites, and never the vices of the heathen, that arc compared to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Israelites who were forsaken by the Lord, were designated by Isaiah (i. 10) as a people of Gomorrah, and their rulers as rulers of Sodom (cf. Isa. iii. 9); the inhabitants' of Jerusalem were all of them like Sodom and Gomorrah (Jer. xxiii. 14); and the sin of Jerusalem was greater than that of Sodom (Ezek. xvi. 46 sqq.). The only sense in which the " for" in ver. 32 can be regarded as co-ordinate to that in ver. 31', is on the supposition that the former gives the reason for the thought in ver. 30Z>, whilst the latter serves to support the idea in ver. 2>0a. 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 heati,en 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 w^as not only a degenerate, but also a poisonous vine, producing nothing but what was deadly" {Calvin), This figure is expanded still further by Isa. v. 2 sqq. Israel was a vineyard planted by Jehovah, that it might bring forth good fruits, instead of which it brought forth wild grapes {yid, Jer. ii. 21; Ps. Ixxx. 9 sqq.; Hos. x. 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. ^'^1^, the construct state of Hbl^'^ floors, fields. The grapes of this vine are worse than wild grapes, they are bitter, poisonous grapes. — Yer. 33. The wine of these grapes is snakepoison. Tannin: see Ex. vii. 9, 10. Pethen: the asp or adder, one of the most poisonous kinds of snake, whose bite was immediately fatal {yid. Bosenmilller, hihl. Althh iv. 2, pp. 364 sqq.). 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 ver. 34. Israel liad deserved for its corruption to be destroyed from the earth (ver. 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. — Ver. 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. xiii. 12, and Job xiv. 17, the binding and sealing of sins in a bundle are spoken of, yet it is very evident from Ps. cxxxix. 16, Mai. iii. 16, and Dan. vii. 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. 0. v. Gerlaah 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 oltt. Xey. DD3 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.
Vers. 35 and 36. " Vengeance is 3Iine, 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 go7u." — 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, u^}^ is a noun here for the usual D^?^, retribution (yid, Ewald, § 156, h.). The shaking of the foot is a figure representing the commencement of a fall, or of stumbling (yid. Ps. xxxviii. 17, xciv. 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 thought 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 treasuries, 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. T'i^ signifies misfortune, and sometimes utter destruction. The primary meaning of the word cannot be determined with certainty. That it docs 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 ver. 26 and also in vers. 36 sqq., 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, KampJiausen), but to the vengeance or retribution which God w^ould inflict upon Israel. This is evident, apart from what has been said above against the application of vers. 33, 34, to the heathen, simply from ver. 366, which unquestionably refers to Israel, and has been so interpreted by every commentator. — The first clause is quoted in Rom. xii. 19 and Heb. x. 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 ver. 36a, " the Lord will judge His people." — In ver. 36 the reason is given for the thought in ver. 35. n is mostly taken here in the sense of " procure right," help to right, which it certainly often has (e.g. Ps. liv. 3), and which is not to be excluded here; but this by no means exhausts the idea of the word. The parallel ^^pp\ 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. i. 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, "ij, the hand, with which one grasps and works, is a figure employed to denote power and might (vid, Isa. xxviii. 2). ^t«, to run out, or come to an end (1 Sam. ix. 7; Job xiv. 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 DD&5, cessation, disappearance, takes the place of a verb. The words itV^ "lOT are a proverbial phrase used to denote all men, as we may clearly see from 1 Kings xiv. 10, xxi. 21; 2 Kings iv. 8, xiv. 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, Le, married, and the single or free. For 21TV the meaning caelebs is established by the Arabic, though the Arabic can hardly be appealed to as proving that "i^^V means paterfamilias^ as this meaning, which Roediger assigns to the Arabic word, is founded upon a mistaken interpretation of a passage in Kamus.
Vers. 37-39. 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 J' ">^^?'| 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 ver. 39, and what Jehovah says there is simply a deduction from what is addressed to the people in vers. 37 and 38, there can hardly be any doubt that Jehovah is speakyig in vers.
37, 38, as well as in vers. 34, 35, and tlierefore that Moses simply distinguishes himself from Jehovah in ver. 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 (yid. vers. 16, 17), and to which they had brought their sacrifices and drink-offerings. In ver. 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 ^^''nnt, as the LXX., Vulg.y and Luther have rendered it, viz. " whose sacrifices they (the Israelites) ate," which neither suits the context nor the word y^J} (f^t)? 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 expressing 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, sl shelter or defence. — Ver. 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 " /" is emphatic: " /, / onl^ it,^^ as an expression of being; I am it, iyco elfJUj John viii. 24, xviii. 5. The predicate Elohim (vid, 2 Sam. vii. 28; Isa. xxxvii. 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 to life of the people of Israel, which
God had delivered up to death (so 1 Sam. ii. 6; 2 Kings v. 7; cf. Isa. xxvi. 19; Hos. xiii. 10; Wisd. xvi. 13; Tobit xiii. 2). This thought, and the following one, which is equally consolatory, that God smites and heals again, are frequently repeated by the prophets (yid, Hos. vi. 1; Isa. xxx. 26, Ivii. 17, 18; Jer. xvii. 14). None can deliver out of His hand (vid. Isa. xliii. 13; Hos. v. 14, ii. 12). Vers. 40-43. 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 flashiiig 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; ivith the blood of the slain and prisoners, with the hairy head of the foeJ' 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. xiv. 22). Here, as in Ex. vi. 8 and Num. xiv. 30, it is used anthropomorphically of God, who is in heaven, and can swear by no greater than Himself (vid, Isa. xiv. 23; Jer. xxii. 5; Heb. vi. 17). The oath follows in vers. 41 and 42. ^^, however, is not the particle employed in swearing, which has a negative meaning (yid. Gen. xiv. 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 wkets His sword, and has a quiver filled with arrows (as in Ps. vii. 13). "As long as the Church has to make war upon the world, the flesh, and the devil, it needs a warlike head" (Schultz). ^'^J] P"]^, the flash of the sword, i.e. the flashing sword (yid. Gen. iii. 24; Nahum iii. 3; Hab. iii. 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. Di^3 y^[}, to lead back vengeance, i.e. to repay it. Punishment is retribution for evil done. By the enemies and haters of Jehoval^ 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 vers. 25-27, where God is spoken of as punishing Israel to the utmost when it had fallen into itlolatry, 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 vers. 37 and 38, especially from the appeal in ver. 38, Let your idols arise and help you (ver. 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 thtj Lord. In ver. 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 flesli of the hairy head of the foe. The edge of the sword is represented poetically as the mouth with which it eats (2 Sam. ii. 26, xviii. 8, etc.); " the sword is said to devour bodies when it slays them by piercing" (Ges, thes. p. 1088). ^^i^S, from inQ, a luxuriant, uncut growth of hair (Num. vi. 5; see at Lev. x. 6). The hairy head is not a figure used to denote the " wild and cruel foe " (^Knobel), but a luxuriailt abundance of strength, and the indomitable pride of the foe, w^ho had grown fat and forgotten his Creator (ver. 15). This explanation is confirmed by Ps. Ixviii. 22; whereas the rendering ap')(ovTe^j princes, leaders, which is given in the Septuagint, has no foundation in the language itself, and no tenable support in Judg. V. 2. — Ver. 43. For this retribution which God accomplishes upon His enemies, the nations w^ere to praise the people of the Lord. As this song commenced with an appeal to heaven and earth to give glory to the Lord (vers. 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 ver. 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 {yid. Ps. xlvii. 2, Ixvi. 8, Ixvii. 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 ver. 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 {yid. Isa. i. 27, iv. 4, 5).
In vers. 44-47 it is stated that Moses, with Joshua, spake the song to the people; and on finishing this rehearsal, once more impressed upon the hearts of the people the importance of observing all the commandments of God. This account proceeds from the author of the supplement to the Tliorah of Moses, who inserted the song in the book of the law. This explains the name Hoshea, instead of Jeliosliuali (Joshua), which Moses had given to his servant (Num. xiii. 8, 16), and invariably uses (compare chap. xxxi. 3, 7, 14, 23, with chap. i. 38, iii. 21, 28, and the exposition of Num. xiii. 16). — On ver. 46, vid. chap. vi. 7 and xi. 19; and on ver. 47, md. chap. XXX. 20.
Vers. 48-52. " That self-same day^^ viz. the day upon which Moses had rehearsed the song to the children of Israel, the Lord renewed the announcement of his death, by repeating the command already given to him (Num. xxvii. 12-14) to ascend Mount Nebo, there to survey the land of Canaan, and then to be gathered unto his people. In form, this repetition differs from the previous announcement, partly in the fact that the situation of Mount Nebo is more fully described (in the land of Moab, etc., as in chap. i. 5, xxviii. 69), and partly in the continual 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.
Before ascending Mount Nebo to depart this life, Moses took leave of his people, the tribes of Israel, in the blessing which is very nttingly inserted in the book of the law between the divine announcement of his approaching death and the account of the death itself, as being the last words of the departing man of God. The blessing opens with an allusion to the solemn conclusion of the covenant and giving of the law at Sinai, by which the Lord became King of Israel, to indicate at the outset the source from which all blessings must flow to Israel (vers. 2-5). Then follow the separate blessings upon the different tribes (vers. 6—25). And the whole concludes with an utterance of praise to the Lord, as the mighty support and refuge of His people in their conflicts with all their foes (vers. 26-29). This blessing was not written down by Moses himself, like the song in chap, xxxii., but simply pronounced in the presence of the assembled tribes. This is evident, not only from the fact that there is nothing said about its being committed to writing, but also from the heading in ver. 1, where the editor clearly distinguishes himself from Moses, by speaking of Moses as ^Hhe man of God," like Caleb in Josh. xiv. 6, and the author of the heading to the prayer of Moses in Ps. xc. 1. In later times, "man of God" w^as the title usually given to a prophet (yid. 1 Sam. ix. 6; 1 Kings xii. 22, xiii. 14, etc.), as a man who enjoyed direct intercourse with God, and received supernatural revelations from Him. Nevertheless, we have Moses' own words, not only in the blessings upon the several tribes (vers. ^-2^), but also in the introduction and conclusion of the blessing (vers. 2-5 and 26-29). The introductory words before the blessings, such as " and this for Judah " in ver. 7, " and to Levi he said " (ver. 8), and the similar formulas in vers. 12, 13, 18, 20, 22, 23, and 24, are the only additions made by the editor who inserted the blessing in the Pentateuch. The arrangement of the blessings in their present order is probably also his work. It neither accords with the respective order of the sons of Jacob, nor with the distribution of the tribes in the camp, nor with the situation of their possessions in the land of Canaan. It is true that Keuben stands first as the eldest son of Jacob; but Simeon is then passed over, and Judah, to whom the dying patriarch bequeathed the birthright which he withdrew from Reuben, stands next; and then Levi, the priestly tribe. Then follow Benjamin and Joseph, the sons of Rachel; Zebulun and Issachar, the last sons of Leah (in both cases the younger before the elder); and lastly, the tribes descended from the sons of the maids: Gad, the son of Zilpah; Dan and Naphtali, the sons of Bilhah; and finally, Asher, the second son of Zilpah. To discover the guiding principle in this arrangement, we must look to the blessings themselves, which indicate partly the position already obtained by each tribe, as a member of the whole nation, in the earthly kingdom of God, and partly the place which it was to reach and occupy in the further development of Israel in the future, not only in relation to the Lord, but also in relation to the other nations. The only exception to this is the position assigned to Reuben, who occupies the foremost place as the first-born, notwithstanding his loss of the birthright. In accordance with this principle, the first place properly belonged to the tribe of Judali, who was raised into the position of lord over his brethren, and the second to the tribe of Levi, which had been set apart to take charge of the sacred things; whilst Benjamin is associated with Levi as the " beloved of the Lord." Then follow Joseph, as the representative of the might which Israel would manifest in conflict with the nations; Zebulun and Issachar, as the tribes which would become the channels of blessings to the nations through their w^ealth in earthly good; and lastly, the tribes descended from the sons of the maids, Asher being separated from his brother Gad, and placed at the end, in all probability simply because it was in the blessing promised to him that the earthly blessedness of the people of God was to receive its fullest manifestation.
On comparing the blessing of Moses with that of Jacob, we should expect at the very outset, that if the blessings of these two men of God have really been preserved to us, and they are not later inventions, their contents would be essentially the same, so that the blessing of Moses would contain simply a confirmation of that of the dying patriarch, and would be founded upon it in various ways. This is most conspicuous in the blessing upon Joseph; but there are also several other blessings in which it is unmistakeable^ although Moses' blessing is not surpassed in independence and originality by that of Jacob, either in its figures, its similes, or its thoughts. But the resemblance goes much deeper. It is manifest, for example, in the fact, that in the case of several of the tribes, Moses, like Jacob, does nothing more than expound their names, and on the ground of the peculiar characters expressed in the names, foretell to the tribes themselves their peculiar calling and future development within the covenant nation. Consequently we have nowhere any special predictions, but simply prophetic glances at the future, depicted in a purely ideal manner, whilst in the case of most of the tribes the utter want of precise informati'^n concerning their future history prevents us from showing in what way they were fulfilled. The difference in the times at which the two blessings were uttered is also very apparent. The existing circumstances from which Moses surveyed the future history of the tribes of Israel in the light of divine revelation, were greatly altered from the time when Jacob blessed the heads of the twelve tribes before his death, in the persons of his twelve sons. These tribes had now grown into a numerous people, with which the Lord had established the covenant that He had made with the patriarchs. The curse of dispersion in Israel, which the patriarch had pronounced upon Simeon and Levi (Gen. xlix. 5-7), had been changed into a blessing so far as Levi was concerned. The tribe of Levi had been entrusted with the " light and right " of the Lord, had been called to be the teacher of the rights and law of God in Israel, because it had preserved the covenant of the Lord, after the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai, even though it involved the denial of flesh and blood. Eeuben, Gad, and half Manasseh had already received their inheritance, and the other tribes were to take possession of Canaan immediately. These circumstances formed the starting-point for the blessings of Moses, not only in the case of Levi and Gad, where they are expressly mentioned, but in that of the other tribes also, where they do not stand prominently forward, because for the most part Moses simply repeats the leading features of their future development in their promised inheritance, as already indicated in the blessing of Jacob, and " thus bore his testimony to the patriarch who anticipated him, that the spirit of his prophecy was truth" (Ziegler, p. 159).
In this peculiar characteristic of the blessing of Moses, we have the strongest proof of its authenticity, particularly in the fact that there is not the slightest trace of the historical circumstances of the nation at large and the separate tribes which were peculiar to the post-Mosaic times. The little ground that there is for the assertion which Knohel repeats, that the blessing betrays a closer acquaintance w4th the post-Mosaic times, such as Moses hi«iself could not possibly have possessed, is sufficiently evident from the totally different expositions which have been given by the different commentators of the saying concerning Judah in ver. 7, which is adduced In proof of this. Whilst Knohel finds the desire expressed in this verse on behalf of Judah, that David, who had fled from Saul, might return, obtain possession of the government, and raise his tribe Into the royal tribe, Graf imagines that it expresses the longing of the kingdom of Judah for reunion with that of Israel;
and Hofmann and Maurer even trace an allusion to the inhabitants of Judea who were led into captivity along with Jehoiachin: one assumption being just as arbitrary and as much opposed to the text as the other. — All the objections brought against the genuineness of this blessing are founded upon an oversight or denial of its prophetic character, and upon untenable interpretations of particular expressions abstracted from it. Not only is there no such thing in the whole blessing as a distinct reference to the peculiar historical circumstances of Israel which arose after Moses' death, but there are some points in the picture which Moses has drawn of the tribes that it is impossible to recognise in these circumstances. Even Knohel from his naturalistic stand-point is obliged to admit, that no traces can be found in the song of any allusion to the calamities which fell upon the nation in the Syrian, Assyrian, and Chaldaean periods. And hitherto it has proved equally impossible to point out any distinct allusion to the circumstances of the nation in the period of the judges. On the contrary, as Schultz observes, the speaker rises throughout to a height of ideality which it would have been no longer possible for any sacred author to reach, when the confusions and divisions of a later age had actually taken place. He sees nothing of the calamities from without, which fell upon the nation again and again with destructive fury, nothing of the Canaanites who still remained in the midst of the Israelites, and nothing of the hostility of the different tribes towards one another; he simply sees how they work together in the most perfect harmony, each contributing his part to realize the lofty ideal of Israel. And again he grasps this ideal and the realization of it in so elementary a way, and so thoroughly from the outer side, without regard to any inward transformation and glorification, that he must have lived in a time preceding the prophetic age, and before the moral conflicts had taken place.
Vers. 2-5. In the introduction Moses depicts the elevation of Israel into the nation of God, in its origin (ver. 2), its nature (ver. 3), its intention and its goal (vers. 4, 5). — Ver. 2. " Jehovah came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; He shone from the mountains of Paran, and came out of holy myriads, at His right rays of fire to themP To set forth the glory of the covenant which God made with Israel, Moses depicts the majesty and glory in which the Lord appeared to the Israelites at Sinai, to give them the law, and become their king. The three clauses, " Jehovah came from Sinai... from Seir... from the mountains of Paran," do not refer to different manifestations of God [Knobel), but to the one appearance of God at Sinai. Like the sun when it rises, and fills the whole of the broad horizon with its beams, the glory of the Lord, when He appeared, was not confined to one single point, but shone upon the people of Israel from Sinai, and Seir, and the mountains of Paran, as they came from the west to Sinai. The Lord appeared to the people from the summit of Sinai, as they lay encamped at the foot of the mountain. This appearance rose like a streaming light from Seir, and shone at the same time from the mountains of Paran. Seir is the mountain land of the Edomites to the east of Sinai; and the mountains of Paran are in all probability not the mountains of et^Tih, which form the southern boundary of the desert of Paran, but rather the mountains of the Azazimeh, which ascend to a great height above Kadesh, and form the boundary wall of Canaan towards the south. The glory of the Lord, who appeared upon Sinai, sent its beams even to the eastern and northern extremities of the desert. This manifestation of God formed the basis for all subsequent manifestations of the omnipotence and grace of the Lord for the salvation of His people. This explains the allusions to the description before us in the song of Deborah ( Judg. v. 4) and in Hab. iii. 3. — The Lord came not only from Sinai, but from heaven, " out of holy myriads," i.e. out of the midst of the thousands of holy angels who surround His throne (1 Kings xxii. 19; Job i. 6; Dan. vii. 10), and who are introduced in Gen. xxviii. 12 as His holy servants, and in Gen. xxxii. 2, 3, as the hosts of God, and form the assembly of holy ones around His throne (Ps. Ixxxix. 6, 8; cf. Ps. Ixviii. 18; Zech. xiv. 5; Matt. xxvi. 53; Heb. xii. 22; Rev. V. 11, vii. 11). — The last clause is a difficult one. The writing Dl k^K in two words, " fire of the law," not only fails to give a suitable sense, but has against it the fact that T)'!^ law, edictiim^ is not even a Semitic word, but was adopted from the Persian into the Chaldee, and that it is only by Gentiles that it is ever applied to the law of God (Ezra vii. 12, 21, 25, 26; Dan. vi. 6). It must be read as one word, mt^K, as it is in many MSS. and editions, — not, however, as connected with *lti^^, nn^^'t^, the pouring out of the brooks, slopes of the mountains (Num. xxi. 15), but in the form 'T^l^^, composed, according to the probable conjecture of Bottcher, of ^^y fire, and nn^" (in the Chaldee and Syriac), to throw, to shoot arrows, in the sense of " fire of throwing," shooting fire, a figurative description of the flashes of lightning. Gesenius adopts this explanation, except that he derives ni from HT^ to throw. It is favoured by the fact that, according to Ex. xlx. 16, the appearance of God upon Sinai was accompanied by thunder and lightning; and flashes of lightning are often called the arrows of God, whilst nnK^'^ in Hebrew, is established by the name "'^^^''l^ (Num. i. 5, ii. 10). To this we may add the parallel passage, Hab. iii. 4, " rays out of His hand," which renders this explanation a very probable one. By " them,"* in the second and fifth clauses, the Israelites are intended, to whom this fearful theophany referred. On the signification of the manifestation of God in fire, see chap. iv. 11, and the exposition of Ex. iii. 2.
Ver. 3. " Yea, nations He loves; all His holy ones are in Thy hand: and they lie down at Thy feet; they rise up at Thy words J^ D"'!2y nih is the subject placed first absolutely: " nations loving," sc. is he; or " as loving nations — all Thy holy ones are in Thy hand." The nations or peoples are not the tribes of Israel here, any more than in chap, xxxii. 8, or Gen. xxviii. 3, xxxv. 11, and xlviii. 4; whilst Judg. v. 14 and Hos. x. 14 cannot come into consideration at all, for there the word is defined by a suffix. The meaning of the words depends upon whether " all His holy ones" are the godly in Israel, or the Israelites generally, or the angels. There is nothing to favour the first explanation, as the distinction between the godly and the wicked would be out of place in the introduction to a blessing upon all the tribes. The second has only a seeming support in Dan. vii. 21 sqq. and Ex. xix. 6. It does not follow at once from the calling of Israel to be the holy nation of Jehovah, that all the Israelites were or could be called " holy ones of the Lord." Least of all should Num. xvi. 3 be adduced in support of this. Even in Dan. vii. the holy ones of the Most High are not the Jews generally, but simply the godly, or believers, in the nation of God. The third \'iew, on the other hand, is a perfectly natural one, on account of the previous reference to the holy myriads. The meaning, therefore, would be this: The Lord embraces all nations with His love. He who, so to speak, has all His holy angels in His hand, i.e. His power, so that they serve Him as their Lord. They lie down at His feet. The air. Xey. ^3^ is explained by Kimchi and Saad. as signifying adjuncti sequuntur vestigia sua; and by the Syriac, They follow thy foot, from conjecture rather than any certain etymology. The derivation proposed by modern linguists, from the verb nisn^ according to an Arabic word signifying recubuit, innixus est, has apparently more to support it. ^f^,, it rises up: intransitive, as in Hab. i. 3, Nah. i. 5, Hos. xiii. 1, and Ps. Ixxxix. 10.
"n^ninip is not a Hithpael participle (that which is spoken); for '^3'np has not a passive, but an active signification, to converse (Num. vii. 89; Ezek. ii. 2, etc.). It is ratlier a noun, ^12*1^ from "TJ^^, words, utterances. The singular, fc<^*^, is distributive: every one (of them) rises on account of thine utterances, i.e. at thy words. The suffixes relate to God, and the discourse passes from the third to tlie second person. In our own language, such a change in a sentence like this, " all His (God's) holy ones are in Thy (God's) hand," would be intolerably harsh, but in Hebrew poetry it is by no means rare (see, for example, Ps. xlix. 19).
Vers. 4, 5. " Moses appointed us a law^ a possession of the congregation of Jacob. A nd He became King in righteous-nation ( Jeshurun); there the heads of the people assembled^ in crowds the tribes of Israel.'* The God who met Israel at Sinai in terrible majesty, out of the myriads of holy angels, who embraces all nations in love, and has all the holy angels in His power, so that they lie at His feet and rise up at His word, gave the law through Moses tc the congregation of Jacob as a precious possession, and became King in Israel. This was the object of the glorious manifestation of His holy majesty upon Sinai. Instead of saying, " He gave the law to the tribes of Israel through my mediation," Moses personates the listening nation, and not only speaks of himself in the third person, but does so by identifying his own person with the nation, because he wished the people to repeat his words from thorough conviction, and because the law which he gave in the name of the Lord was given to himself as well, and was as binding upon him as upon every other member of the congregation. In a similar manner the prophet Habakkuk identifies himself with the nation in chap, ill., and says in ver. 19, out of the heart of the natiofi, " The Lord is my strength,... who maketh me to walk upon mine high places," — an expression which did not apply to himself, but to the nation as a whole. So again in the 20th and 21st Psalms, which David composed as the prayers of the nation for its king, he not only speaks of himself as the anointed of the Lord, but addresses such prayers to the Lord for himself as could only be offered by the nation for its king. " A possession for the congregation of Jacob." " Israel was distinguished above all other nations by the possession of the divinely revealed law (chap. iv. 5—8); that was its most glorious possession, and therefore is called its true KeifirfKiov'^ (Knobel). The subject in ver. 5 is not Moses but Jehovah, who became King in Jeshurun (see at chap, xxxii. 15 and Ex. xv. 18).
Ver. 6. The blessings upon the tribes commence with this verse. ''Let Reuben live and not die, and there he a (small) number of his menJ^ The rights of the first-born had been withheld from Reuben in the blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 3); Moses, however, promises this tribe continuance and prosperity. The words, " and let his men become a number," have been explained in very different ways, "tspp in this connection cannot mean a large number (ttoXu? iv apiO^w, LXX.), but, like "ispp ^^^ (chap, iv. 27; Gen. xxxiv. 30; Jer. xliv. 28), simply a small number, that could easily be counted (cf. chap, xxviii. ^2), The negation must be carried on to the last clause. This the language will allow, as the rule that a negation can only be carried forward when it stands with emphatic force at the very beginning {Ewald, § 351) is not without exceptions; see for example Prov. xxx. 2, 3, where three negative clauses follow a positive one, and in the last the NP is omitted, without the particle of negation having been placed in any significant manner at the beginning. — Simeon was the next in age to Reuben; but he is passed over entirely, because according to Jacob's blessing (Gen. xlix. 7) he was to be scattered abroad in Israel, and lost his individuality as a tribe in consequence of this dispersion, in accordance with which the Simeonites simply received a number of towns within the territory of Judah (Josh. xix. 2-9), and, "having no peculiar object of its own, took part, as far as possible, in the fate and objects of the other tribes, more especially of Judah " (^Schultz), Although, therefore, it is by no means to be regarded as left without a blessing, but rather as included in the general blessings in vers. 1 and 29, and still more in the blessing upon Judah, yet it could not receive a special blessing like the tribe of Reuben, because, as Ephraem Syrus observes, the Simeonites had not endeavoured to wipe out the stain of the crime which Jacob cursed, but had added to it by fresh crimes (more especially the audacious prostitution of Zimri, Num. xxv.). Even the Simeonites xlid not become extinct, but continued to live in the midst of the tribe of Judah, so that as late as the eighth century, in the reign of Hezekiah, thirteen princes are enumerated with their families, whose fathers' houses had increased greatly (1 Chron. iv. 34 sqq.); and these families effected conquests in the south, even penetrating into the mountains of Seir, for the purpose of seeking fresh pasture (1 Chron. iv. 39-43). Hence the assertion that the omission of Simeon is only conceivable from the circumstances of a later age, is as mistaken as the attempt made in some of the MSS. of the Septuagint to interpolate the name of Simeon in the second clause of ver. 6.
Ver. 7. The blessing upon Judah is introduced with the formula, ^' And this for Judah, and he said:" '^ Hear, Jehovah, the voice of Judah, and bring him to his people; with his hands he fights for him; and help against his adversaries wilt Thou be." Judah, from whom the sceptre was not to depart (Gen. xlix. 10), is mentioned before Levi as the royal tribe. The prayer. May Jehovah bring Judah to his people, can hardly be understood in any other way than it is by Onkelos and Hengstenberg (Christol. i. 80), viz. as founded upon the blessing of Jacob, and expressing the desire, that as Judah was to lead the way as the champion of his brethren in the wars of Israel against the nations, he might have a prosperous return to his people; for the thought, " introduce him to the kingdom of Israel and Judah " {Luther), or " give up to him the people which belongs to him according to Thine appointment " {Schultz), is hardly implied in the words, "bring to his people." Other explanations are not worth mentioning. What follows points to strife and war: " With his hands (VT' accusative of the instrument, vid. Ges, § 138, 1, note 3; Evmld, § 283, a.) is he fighting (3"] participle of 3^")) for it (the nation); Thou wilt grant him help, deliverance before his foes."
Vers. 8-11. Levi. — Vers. 8, 9. " Thy right and Thy light is to Thy godly man, rohom Thou didst prove in Massah, and didst strive with him at the water of strife; who says to his father and his mother, I see him not; and does not regard his brethren, and does not know his sons; for they observed Thy word^ and kept Thy covenant." This blessing is also addressed to God as a prayer. The UHm and Thvmmim — that pledge, which the high priest wore upon his breastplate, that the Lord would always give His people light to preserve His endangered right (yid. Ex. xxviii. 29, 30) — are here regarded as a prerogative of the whole of the tribe of Levi. Thummim is placed before Urim, to indicate at the outset that Levi had defended the right of the Lord, and that for that very reason the right of the Urim and Thummim had been given to him by the Lord. " Thy holy one " is not Aaron, but Levi the tribe-father, who represents the whole tribe to which the blessing applies; hence in vers. 9i and 10 the verb passes into the plural. To define more precisely the expression "Thy holy one," reference is made to the trials at Massah and at the water of strife, on the principle that the Lord humbles His servants before He exalts them, and confirms those that are His by trying and proving them. The proving at Massah refers to the murmuring of the people on account of the w^ant of water at Rephidim (Ex. xvii. 1-7, as in chap. vi. 16 and ix. 22), from which the place received the name of Massah and Meribah; the striving at the water of strife, to the rebellion of the people against Moses and Aaron on account of the want of water at Kadesh (Num. xx. 1-13). At both places it was primarily the people who strove with Moses and Aaron, and thereby tempted God. For it is evident that even at Massah the people murmured not only against Moses, but against their leaders generally, from the use of the plural verb, " Give ye us water to drink " (Ex. xvii. 2). This proving of the people, however, was at the same time a proof, to which the Lord subjected the heads and leaders of the nation, for the purpose of tiying their faith. And thus also, in chap. viii. 2 sqq., the whole of the guidance of Israel through the desert is described as a trial and humiliation of the people by the Lord. But in Moses and Aaron, the heads of the tribe of Levi, the whole of the tribe of Levi was proved. The two provings by means of water are selected, as Schultz observes, " because in their correlation they were the best adapted to represent the beginning and end, and therefore the whole of the temptations." — Ver. 9. In these temptations Levi had proved itself " a holy one," although in the latter Moses and Aaron stumbled, since the Levites had risen up in defence of the honour of the Lord and had kept His covenant, even with the denial of father, mother, brethren, and children (Matt. x. 37, xix. 29). The words, "who says to his father," etc., relate to the event narrated in Ex. xxxii. 26-29, where the Levites draw their swords against the Israelites their brethren, at the command of Moses, after the worship of the golden calf, and execute judgment upon the nation without respect of person. To this we may add Num. xxv. 8, where Phinehas interposes with his sword in defence of the honour of the Lord against the shameless prostitution with the daughters of Moab. On these occasions the Levites manifested the spirit which Moses predicates here of all the tribe. By the interposition at Sinai especially, they devoted themselves with such self-denial to the service of the Lord, that the dignity of the priesthood was conferred upon their tribe in consequence. — In vers. 10 and 11, Moses celebrates this vocation: " They will teach
Jacob Thy rightSy and Israel Thy law; bring incense to Thy nose, and whole-offering upon Thine altar. Bless, Lord, his strength, and let the work of his harids be well-pleasing to Thee: smite his adversaries and his haters upon the hips, that they may not rise /" The tribe of Levi had received the higli and glorious calling to instruct Israel in the rights and coniniandnu'nts of God (Lev. x. 11), and to present the sacrifices of the peoj)le to tlie Lord, viz. incense in the holy place, whole-offering in the court. " Whole-offering," a term applied to the burnt-offering (see vol. ii. p. 291), which is mentioned instar omnium as being the leading sacrifice. The priests alone were actually entrusted with the instruction of the people in the law and the sacrificial worship; but as the rest of the Levites w^ere given them as assistants in their service, this service might very properly be ascribed to the whole tribe; and no greater blessing could be desired for it than that the Lord should give them power to discharge the duties of their office, should accept their service with favour, and make their opponents powerless. The enemies and haters of Levi were not only envious persons, like Korah and his company (Num. xvi. 1), but all opponents of the priests and Levites. The loins are the seat of strength (Ps. Ixix. 24; Job xl. 16; Prov. xxxi. 17). This is the only place in which |D is used before a finite verb, whereas it often stands before the infinitive {e.g. Gen. xxvii. 1, xxxi. 29).
Ver. 12. Benjamin. — " The beloved of the Lord will dwell safely with Him; He shelters him at all times, and he dwells between His shoulders." Benjamin, the son of prosperity, and beloved of his father (Gen. xxxv. 18, xliv. 20), should bear his name with right. He would be the beloved of the Lord, and as such would dwell in safety with the Lord (Ivy, lit. founded upon Him). The Lord would shelter him continually. The participle expresses the permanence of the relation: is his shelterer. Li the third clause Benjamin is the subject once more; he dwells between the shoulders of Jehovah. ^^ Between the shoulders" is equivalent to "upon the back" {vid. 1 Sam. xvii. 6). The expression is founded upon the figure of a father carrying his Son (chap. i. 29). This figure is by no means so bold as that of the eagle's wings, upon which the Lord had carried His people, and brought them to Himself (Ex. xix. 4; vid. Deut. xxxii. 11). There is nothing strange in the change of subject in all three clauses, since it is met with repeatedly even in plain prose (e.g. 2 Sam. xi. 13); and here it follows simply enough from the thoughts contained in the different clauses, whilst the suffix in all three clauses refers to the same noun, Le. to Jehovah/ There are some who regard Jehovah as the subject in the third clause, and explain the unheard-of figure which they thus obtain, viz. that of Jehovah dwelling between the shoulders of Benjamin, as referring to the historical fact that God dwelt in the temple at Jerusalem, which was situated upon the border of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah. To this application of the words KnoheL has properly objected, that God did not dwell between ridges (= shoulders) of mountains there, but upon the top of Moriah; but, on the other hand, he has set up the much more untenable hypothesis, that the expression refers to Gibeon, where the tabernacle stood after the destruction of Nob by Saul. — Moreover, the whole nation participated in the blessing which Moses desired for Benjamin; and this applies to the blessings of the other tribes, also. All Israel was, like Benjamin, the beloved of the Lord (yid. Jer. xi. 15; Ps. Ix. 7), and dwelt with Him in safety (yid, ver. 28).
Vers. 13-17. Joseph. — Ver. 13. ''Blessed of the Lord he his land, of (in) the most precious things of heaven, the dew, and of the flood which lies beneath, (ver. 14) and of the most precious of the produce of the sun, and of the most precious of the growth of the moons, (ver. 15) and of the head of the mountains of olden time, and of the most precious thing of the everlasting hills, (ver. 16) and of the most precious thing of the earth, and of its fulness, and the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the hush: let it come upon the head of Joseph, and upon the crown of him that is illustrious among his brethren" What Jacob desired and solicited for his son Joseph, Moses also desires for this tribe, namely, the greatest possible abundance of earthly blessing, and a vigorous manifestation of power in conflict with the nations. But however unmistakeable may be the connection between these words and the blessing of Jacob (Gen. xlix. 22 sqq.), not only in the things desired, but even in particular expressions, there is an important difference which equally strikes us, namely, that in the case of Jacob the main point of the blessing is the growth of Joseph into a pow^erful tribe, whereas with Moses it is the development of power on the part of this tribe in the land of its inheritance, in perfect harmony with the different times at which the blessings were pronounced. Jacob described the growth of Joseph under the figure of the luxuriant branch of a fruit-tree
^ " To dwell upon God and between His shoulders is the same as to repose upon Him: the simile being taken from fathers who carry their sons while delicate and y^ung" (Calvin),
planted by the water; wliilst Moses fixes liis eye primarily upon the land of Joseph, and desires for him the richest productions. *' May liis land be blessed by Jehovah from (ip of the cause of the blessintr, whose author was Jehovah; tnd. Ps. xxviii. 7, civ. 3) the most precious thing of the heaven.'* "l^i^p, which only occurs attain in the Song of Sol. iv. 13, 16, and vii. 14, is applied to precious fruits. The most precious fruit which the heaven yields to the land is the dew. The " productions of the sun," and t^^3^ air. Xey, from t^^3, " the produce of the moons," are the fruits of the earth, which are matured by the influence of the sun and moon, by their light, their warmth. At the same time, we can hardly so distinguish the one from the other as to understand by the former the fruits which ripen only once a year, and by the latter those which grow several times and in different months; and Ezek. xlvii. 12 and Rev. xxii. 2 cannot be adduced as proofs of this. The plural " moons^' in parallelism with the sun does not mean months, as in Ex. ii. 2, but the different phases which the moon shows in its revolution round the earth. t;*N")p (from the head), in ver. 15, is a contracted expression signifying *•' from the most precious things of the head." The most precious things of the head of the mountains of old and the eternal hills, are the crops and forests with which the tops of the mountains and hills are covered. Moses sums up the whole in the words, "the earth, and the fulness thereof:" everything in the form of costly good that the earth and its productions can supply. — To the blessings of the heaven and earth there are to be added the good-will of the Lord, who appeared to Moses in the thorn-bush to redeem His people out of the bondage and oppression of Egypt and bring it into the land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey (Ex. iii. 2 sqq.). The expression " that dwells in the bush" is to be explained from the significance of this manifestation of God as shown at Ex. iii., which shadowed forth a permanent relation between the Lord and His people. The spiritual blessing of the covenant grace is very suitably added to the blessings of nature; and there is something no less suitable in the way in which the construction commencing with |i^*^.1 is dropped, so that an anakolouthon ensues. This word cannot be taken as an accusative of more precise definition, as Schultz supposes; nor is ip to be supplied before it, as Kiiohel suggests. Grammatically considered, it is a nominative to which the verb nnsinn properly belongs, although, as a matter of fact, not only the goodwill, but the natural blessings, of the Lord were also to come upon the head of Joseph. Consequently we have not fc<i3^ (masc), which |iv^ would require, but the lengthened poetical feminine form nriNnn (vid. Ewald, § 191, c), used in a neuter sense. It, Le, everything mentioned before, shall come upon Joseph. On the expression, " illustrious among his brethren," see at Gen. xlix. 26. In the strength of this blessing, the tribe of Joseph would attain to such a development of power, that it would be able to tread down all nations. — Ver. 17. " The Jirst-hom of his ox, majesty is to him, and huffalo-horns his horns: with them he thrusts down nations, all at once the ends of the earth. These are the myriads of Ephraim, and these the thousands of Manasseh^ The "first-born of his (Joseph's) oxen " {shor, a collective noun, as in chap. xv. 19) is not Joshua (Rabb., Schultz); still less is it Joseph {Bleek, Diestel), in which case the pronoun his ox would be quite out of place; nor is it King Jeroboam II., as Graf supposes. It is rather Ephraim, whom the patriarch Jacob raised into the position of the first-born of Joseph (Gen. xlviii. 8 sqq.). All the sons of Joseph resembled oxen, but Ephraim was the most powerful of them all. He was endowed with majesty; his horns, the strong weapon of oxen, in which all their strength is concentrated, were not the horns of common oxen, but horns of the wild buffalo (reem. Num. xxiii. 22), that strong indomitable beast (cf. Job xxxix. 9 sqq.; Ps. xxii. 22). With them he would thrust down nations, the ends of the earth, i,e, the most distant nations (yid. Ps. ii. 8, vii. 9, xxii. 28). " Together,^^ Le. all at once, belongs rhythmically to " the ends of the earth." Such are the myriads of Ephraim, Le. in such might will the myriads of Ephraim arise. To the tribe of Ephraim, as the more numerous, the ten thousands are assigned; to the tribe of Manasseh, the thousands.