Chapter Thirty-Two

Deuteronomy 32:2. My teaching shall flow down like rain, my speech shall fall like dew, like gentle rain upon the grass, like a downpour upon the herbage. Comparisons indicating the beneficence of attentively heeding the prophet’s following words.

Deuteronomy 32:8. When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance and divided the sons of men, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.* Deuteronomy 32:9. For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance. When distributing the human race across the earth after the flood and the building of the tower, the Lord already foresaw those geographical boundaries within which his future chosen people would be enclosed; the position and limits of the other nations stood, as it were, in the closest connection with the number, boundaries, and calling of his “inheritance” (Exod 19:15).

Deuteronomy 32:10. He found him in a desert land, in a desolate, howling wilderness; he encircled him, watched over him, kept him as the apple of his eye. The actual adoption of the Hebrew people by the Lord took place in the wildernesses along the route of wandering from Egypt to Canaan.

Deuteronomy 32:13. He made him ride on the heights of the earth and fed him with the produce of the fields; he nourished him with honey from the rock and with oil from the flinty rock, “He made him ride on the heights of the earth,” that is, he led him up to the high mountains. “He nourished him with honey from the rock,” that is, with honey that bees collect and store in the crevices of cliffs in treeless regions. “With oil from the flinty rock,” that is, with oil from olive trees growing on hard ground.

Deuteronomy 32:14. with butter of cows and milk of sheep, and with the fat of lambs and rams of Bashan and goats, and with the finest wheat; and you drank wine, the blood of the grape. The cattle that grazed on the rich pastures of Bashan were noted for their exceptional fatness (Ps 21:13; Ezek 39:18).

Deuteronomy 32:17. They sacrificed to demons and not to God, to gods they had not known, to new ones that had come from nearby and whom their fathers had never feared. “They sacrificed to demons.” See 1 Cor 10:19-21.

Deuteronomy 32:21. They made me jealous with what is no god; they provoked me with their idols. So I will make them jealous with those who are no people; with a foolish nation I will provoke them. In the immediate sense, the reference is to the nations that enslaved Israel; in a more distant sense, it is to the calling of the dark pagans, devoid of true knowledge of God, into the bosom of Christ’s Church in place of the Israelites who stood at its threshold. “Those who believed in Christ the Savior,” remarks Theodoret, “are not one nation, but a countless multitude of nations. And they were once ‘foolish’ and senseless, as the blessed Paul says: ‘For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures’ (Titus 3:3). Therefore God says: ‘Just as you, having abandoned the one God, preferred many falsely named gods, so I too, having rejected one nation, grant salvation to all nations. But you rendered worship to those who are not gods and yet made them gods; whereas I will fill even the foolish nations with divine wisdom; and seeing this, you will waste away with envy’” (Commentary on Deut., question 41).

Deuteronomy 32:30. How could one pursue a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had given them up? Deuteronomy 32:31. For their rock is not like our Rock; our enemies themselves are judges of this. “Our enemies themselves are judges of this,” that the Lord is the strength of Israel. See Exod 14:25; Num 22-24; Josh 2:7-11.

Deuteronomy 32:32. For their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are poisonous grapes, their clusters are bitter. Deuteronomy 32:33. Their wine is the venom of serpents and the deadly poison of cobras. These refer to the Israelites, characterizing their moral corruption.

Deuteronomy 32:36. For the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants, when he sees that their power is gone and there is none remaining, shut up or left free. “The Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants” (only then), “when he sees that their power is gone” (the pride and intensity of vice have faded, and along with that their physical strength, wastefully expended, is exhausted), “and there is none remaining, shut up or left free.” A figurative expression indicating the enormity of the devastation.

Deuteronomy 32:43. [Rejoice, O heavens, with him, and let all the angels of God worship him.] Rejoice, O nations, with his people [and let all the sons of God be strong]! For he will avenge the blood of his servants, and render vengeance to his enemies, [and will repay those who hate him,] and the Lord will cleanse his land and his people! The closing chord of the Song of Moses: the judgment of God’s righteousness is terrible, but it is ruinous only for those who stubbornly apostatize from the Lord; his faithful sons, however, will be saved. Together with the faithful sons of Israel, the gentiles also are to rejoice, since “the blood of the servants has been cleansed,” “vengeance has been rendered to the enemies,” and “the people and the land have been purified.” According to the interpretations of the Apostle Paul (Rom 15:8-12) and Christian writers, Moses prefigured in this passage the spiritual joy of the members of the Church of Christ, into which both gentiles and Jews are to enter (Rom 11:1).

Deuteronomy 32:47. For it is not an empty word for you, but it is your life, and through this word you will live long in the land which you are crossing the Jordan to possess. Cf. Deut 30:15-20.

Deuteronomy 32:48. And the Lord spoke to Moses that very same day, saying: Deuteronomy 32:49. Go up into this mountain of Abarim, to Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite Jericho, and look at the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the sons of Israel as a possession; Deuteronomy 32:50. and die on the mountain which you go up to, and be gathered to your people, as Aaron your brother died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people, Deuteronomy 32:51. because you broke faith with me among the sons of Israel at the waters of Meribah-Kadesh in the wilderness of Zin, because you did not treat me as holy in the midst of the sons of Israel; Deuteronomy 32:52. You shall see the land before you, but you shall not enter there, into the land which I am giving to the sons of Israel. Cf. Num 20:7-13; Deut 1:37. Nebo (Navav) is one of the peaks of the Abarim mountain range. * * * In the Greek translation: according to the number of the angels of God.