Deuteronomy 8

Chap. VIII. Ver. 1—20. Grateful recollections of the Lord’s dealings.—It is here said, that Israel were led forty years through the wilderness, “to prove them and to humble them;” but this was accomplished by a very slow process; for, even to the fortieth year of their pilgrimage, we find them as full of murmuring and repining as at their first setting out. Now, there seems but one way to account for this, and that is, by looking into our own experience. Do not the most aged and true Christians often find in their own hearts the same disposition to repine at the dispensations of Providence, and to be as much discouraged by the dangers and inconveniences of the way, as in early life; and these are kept down, not by national calamities, but by personal afflictions; not by pestilence and lightning, but by gout and rheumatism, scrofula and nervous fever: these, accompanied by the gracious influences of God’s Spirit, are the means employed both to humble and to prove us in our Christian course.

On this most interesting fact we may far- 1. That the Lord’s great end in all his dealings with his people, is to do them even All their trials, on the part of God, are the effect of infinite wisdom and goodness united, for their deliverance from sin and all its consequences. & 2. That pride is natural to the human heart; and no degree of meanness, wretchedness, or dependence, can exclude it. Like some disgusting animals, who extract poison from the most harmless vegetables, pride inflates itself from circumstances the most humiliating. Would one suppose that a people, after forty years slavery at the brick-kilns and iron-furnaces —after being treated as the offscouring of the earth, and degraded to the very lowest degree—that, after all this, they should need the thorns of the wilderness to humble them?

But such is man. 3. The best things are not always the pleasantest; but the most efficacious medicines are often the most unpalatable. Israel, as we have observed, met with many painful and mortifying circumstances in the desert; but it was to do them good. Humbling providences are often our greatest mercies. 4. Mercies are doubly sweet when intermingled with trials. Contrasts produce great effects in nature; and it is by comparison with other objects, we form our most correct ideas of the excellent and beautiful. So pain and sickness teach the value of health and ease; and to hunger and thirst we principally owe our relish for food: therefore it is that the Lord mingles in the cup of his people such a contrariety of ingredients.

Let us,

Notes on the verses

Chap. VIII. Ver. 3. By every word, &c.—That is, by every dispensation of his providence. He that commanded light out of darkness, commanded bread and flesh from heaven, water from the rock, &c. See (Luke 4:4). Ver. 4. Thy raiment waxed not old.—‘The plain meaning of this much tortured text, (says Dr. Clarke,) appears to me to be this: “God so amply provided for them all the necessaries of life, that they were never obliged to wear tattered garments, nor were their feet injured for lack of shoes or sandals. If they had carvers, engravers, silversmiths, and jewellers among them, as plainly appears from the account we have of the tabernacle and its utensils, is it to be wondered at if they had habit and sandal-makers, &c.

as we are certain they had weavers, embroiderers, and such like.” As to materials, they had the skins of animals, slain either for food or sacrifice, and other materials might easily be obtained in exchange with the travelling Arabs. So the late Editor of Calmet, Dr. Boothroyd, &c. The Rabbinical fable of their clothes growing large with their bodies, &c. is now universally rejected. Ver. 8. A land of wheat and barley, &c.—Harmer, on the fertility of Judea, quotes Hasselquist, (the celebrated traveller,) who speaks of the olives and figs in Judea as equal to any he had tasted in the Levant. Honey is very plentiful, and cultivated in Egyptian hives, made of clay. Its vines and pomegranates were also famous.

Ver. 9. Whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.—Not only were there iron mines, but many of their loose stones were strongly impregnated with iron ore. They had also mines of copper, (perhaps always meant by brass, in the Old Testament,) for our brass is an artificial metal, formed by the addition of lapis calaminaris. See Dr. Harris’s Nat. His. of the Bible, in Brass and Copper. Ver. 15. Wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions.—On fiery serpents, see Note on (Numbers 21:6). A scorpion is similar in form to a lobster, with a sharp poisonous sting in its tail; the Arabs call lobsters “sea-scorpions.” See Dr. Harris’s Nat. Hist.—Dr. Shaw, in his Travels through this wilderness, observes, that, “We were now and then offended with several little swarms of locusts, and hornets, both of them of an unusual size, though of the ordinary colours.

Vipers, especially in the wilderness of Sin, were dangerous and troublesome, not only our camels, but the Arabs who attended them, running every moment the risk of being bitten.” The Doctor having given the reptiles only the general name of viper, we cannot, from his account, name the species. He again alludes to this desert, as affording a great serpentine kinds; ss ny dahon [text lost].