Deuteronomy 1
DOYLYChap. II. ver. 1.—we compassed mount Seir many days.] We spent near thirty-eight years in the encampments we made in the wilderness, which lies round the west and south borders of the country of Edom. Dr. Wells. “Mount Seir” is put for the rest of the country of the Edomites, of which that mount was a remarkable place. We find that Exion-gaber, ver. 8, which was on the shore of the Red sea, was in the land of Edom, 1 Kings ix. 26. Bp. Kidder.
Deuteronomy 1:12
- — your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife?] How is it possible for one man alone to undergo the labour of hearing all the complaints of such a multitude; and of remedying all their grievances; and of determining all their controversies? Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 1:17
- — for the judgment is God’s.] You are God’s ministers, and act by His authority, and therefore may be confident that He will defend you in the discharge of your office. Dr. Wells.
Deuteronomy 1:26
- Notwithstanding ye would not go up,] Moses, in his recapitulation of his conduct on this occasion, omits altogether the menace of God to disinherit the Jews,
A repetition of former things. Before CHRIST 1451. commandment of the LORD your God:
Deuteronomy 1:27
- — to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites,] Nothing can be more pernicious, as Grotius here observes, than a persuasion that God doth not love us, but hath a design upon us, to destroy us. Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 1:28
- — the cities are great and walled up to heaven;] If the people of these countries anciently raised up the walls of their cities so high, as not to be liable to be scaled, they thought them safe. The same simple contrivance is to this day sufficient to guard places from the Arabs, who live in the very wilderness, in which Israel was now wandering, and who are a nation more inured to warlike enterprises than the Israelites were. The expression “up to heaven” is a strong Eastern way of speaking. Harmer.
Deuteronomy 1:29
- — Dread not,] Moses here notices two very powerful arguments, which he had used to deliver the Israelites from fear: 1. A promise of Divine assistance; “The Lord your God, which goeth before you, He shall fight for you:” 2. The experience of God’s mercies towards them in Egypt, and in the wilderness; where God had borne them as a tender father carries an infirm child. Compare Is. xlix. 22, with Exod. xix. 4. Bp. Kidder. The long experience they had had of God’s watchful and indulgent care over them should have made them confident of His gracious Providence for the future. He does not mention these arguments in the book of Numbers, where we read only of his falling down before God, that he might awaken this generation to a greater confidence in God, and a dread of His judgment. Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 1:34
- — the Lord — was wroth,] The Scriptures ascribe
to God hands, eyes, and feet, not that He has literally any of these members; but because He has a power of executing all those acts, to which these members in us are made subservient. In the same manner, the Scriptures represent Him, as affected with the like passions, which we feel in ourselves, when we are angry or pleased, when we have our hearts softened, or provoked to revenge. Not that any of these passions belong to the Divine nature: but the meaning is, that God will as certainly punish the wicked, as if He were prompted by the passion of anger or revenge; and as infallibly relieve or reward the good, as we do those, for whom we entertain compassion or affection. So that it is only by way of analogy or comparison, that the nature and passions of men are ascribed to God; and out of a gracious condescension to our faculties: for which therefore we should be grateful, and be cautious to interpret His words in a sense suitable to His Divine Majesty. Stackhouse.
— and sware,] An oath is a solemn asseveration, made as strong and binding as possible, in order to beget faith and confidence in others, as to the certainty of what is affirmed. When men swear, nothing can make their asseveration so strong and binding, as the invocation of God, to be their witness or avenger. In like manner, when God Himself is said to swear, we are to suppose that He informs His asseveration, to beget the firmest belief in His revelations, not by invoking a superior, for that is not in his power, but by condescending to make use of human forms of swearing, with such alterations as the case requires. Thus, when God swears by Himself, Gen. xxii. 16; or by His great name, Jer. xliv. 26; or by His life, Jer. li. 14; or by His right hand, Is. lxii. 8; or by His holiness, Amos vr. 2; or by His truth, Ps. lxxxix. 49; or by His excellency, Amos viii. 7; or by any other of His attributes or perfections: the meaning of these expressions is, that He thereby declares the thing to be as certain and as surely to be relied on, as are His own being and attributes. This is the whole purport of the thing; and God is therefore said to make use of this manner of speaking, because it is more awful and solemn, and consequently fit to make a deeper impression and to produce a firmer confidence in the hearers. Dr. Waterland, Stackhouse.
A repetition of former things. The story is continued. Before CHRIST 1451. fulfilled to go after. 12. & 27. 14. & 4. 21. & 34. 4. cause he hath † wholly followed the LORD.
Deuteronomy 1:37
37.—the Lord was angry with me for your sakes.] When Moses was so provoked by their fresh discontents and mutinous upbraidings of him, that “he spake unadvisedly with his lips,” Ps. cvi. 32, 33. This was an high aggravation of their guilt, that they not only ruined themselves, but brought great displeasure upon their worthy leader and governour, whom they wearied with their tumults and rebellions. Bp. Patrick.
Deuteronomy 1:38
- But Joshua shall go in thither: &c.] The introduction of this his own rejection, and the substitution of Joshua, as the person destined by God to lead the Jews to conquer the promised land, was here peculiarly natural and useful: lest the people, recollecting their former defeat, in attempting to invade that land, when Moses did not accompany them, should dread a similar defeat now, when they were to be entirely deprived of him. Dr. Graves.
Deuteronomy 1:46
46.—many days, according unto the days that ye abode there.] The most natural sense of these words is that of our learned Bishop Patrick; namely, “that they stayed