Deuteronomy 28:43

The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Deuteronomy 28:43. The stranger that is within thee — Within thy gates; who formerly honoured and served thee, and were, some of them, glad of the crumbs which fell from thy table. Shall get above thee very high — Shall rise to great wealth and prosperity upon thy ruin.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

28:15-44 If we do not keep God's commandments, we not only come short of the blessing promised, but we lay ourselves under the curse, which includes all misery, as the blessing all happiness. Observe the justice of this curse. It is not a curse causeless, or for some light cause. The extent and power of this curse. Wherever the sinner goes, the curse of God follows; wherever he is, it rests upon him. Whatever he has is under a curse. All his enjoyments are made bitter; he cannot take any true comfort in them, for the wrath of God mixes itself with them. Many judgments are here stated, which would be the fruits of the curse, and with which God would punish the people of the Jews, for their apostacy and disobedience. We may observe the fulfilling of these threatenings in their present state. To complete their misery, it is threatened that by these troubles they should be bereaved of all comfort and hope, and left to utter despair. Those who walk by sight, and not by faith, are in danger of losing reason itself, when every thing about them looks frightful.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Contrast Deuteronomy 28:12 and Deuteronomy 28:13.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

37. And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the Lord shall lead thee, &c.—The annals of almost every nation, for eighteen hundred years, afford abundant proofs that this has been, as it still is, the case—the very name of Jew being a universally recognized term for extreme degradation and wretchedness.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Within thee, i.e. within thy gates; who formerly honoured and served thee, and were some of them glad of the crumbs which fell from thy table.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high,.... In wealth and riches, in power and authority, in honour and dignity. This Manasseh Ben Israel (r) interprets of the Samaritans, whom the king of Assyria drove out of Samaria, and the neighbouring places; but the design of the expression is to show how mean and abject they should be in another country; that even one who had been a stranger or proselyte of the gate, when in their own country, should now be vastly above them:

and thou shall come down, very low; into a very mean condition, to be in great subjection, a vassal and a slave; see Psalm 106:41; and much more when reduced by the Romans, and sent to the mines in Egypt.

(r) De Termino Vitae, l. 3. sect. 3. p. 128.

Geneva Study Bible

The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

43, 44. The antithesis to 12b, 13a (q.v.).

Pulpit Commentary

Verses 43, 44. - (Cf. vers. 12, 13.) Deuteronomy 28:43

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Israel would be utterly impoverished, and would sink lower and lower, whilst the stranger in the midst of it would, on the contrary, get above it very high; not indeed "because he had no possession, but was dependent upon resources of other kinds" (Schultz), but rather because he would be exempted with all his possessions from the curse of God, just as the Israelites had been exempted from the plagues which came upon the Egyptians (Exodus 9:6-7, Exodus 9:26).