Deuteronomy 32:27

Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(27) Behave themselves strangely.—Possibly, misunderstand it, or take note of it (as a strange thing).

Benson Commentary

Deuteronomy 32:27-28. Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy — Their rage against me, as it is expressed Isaiah 37:28-29; their furious reproaches against my name, as if I were cruel to my people, or unable to deliver them. This is spoken after the manner of men; and the meaning is, that it would have been righteous in God to cut them entirely off and wipe out their very memory from the earth; but such a sudden and final destruction of a people in whose behalf God had done so much, for establishing his true worship among them, and for conveying it from them to the rest of the world, would have occasioned those heathen to insult God himself, by ascribing their destruction to their own valour, or to the power of their idols, and not to his righteous judgment. Therefore, to prevent this wrong construction of such desolating judgments, it became the divine wisdom to defer the execution of them. We find Moses more than once representing before God the blasphemous reflections which the heathen would make, in case of the total destruction of the Israelitish nation, as an argument to avert the effects of the divine displeasure. Void of counsel — Their enemies are ignorant and foolish, and therefore would readily form such a false and foolish judgment upon things.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

32:26-38 The idolatry and rebellions of Israel deserved, and the justice of God seemed to demand, that they should be rooted out. But He spared Israel, and continues them still to be living witnesses of the truth of the Bible, and to silence unbelievers. They are preserved for wise and holy purposes and the prophecies give us some idea what those purposes are. The Lord will never disgrace the throne of his glory. It is great wisdom, and will help much to the return of sinners to God, seriously to consider their latter end, or the future state. It is here meant particularly of what God foretold by Moses, about this people in the latter days; but it may be applied generally. Oh that men would consider the happiness they will lose, and the misery they will certainly plunge into, if they go on in their trespasses! What will be in the end thereof? Jer 5:31. For the Lord will in due time bring down the enemies of the church, in displeasure against their wickedness. When sinners deem themselves most secure, they suddenly fall into destruction. And God's time to appear for the deliverance of his people, is when things are at the worst with them. But those who trust to any rock but God, will find it fail them when they most need it. The rejection of the Messiah by the Jewish nation, is the continuance of their ancient idolatry, apostacy, and rebellion. They shall be brought to humble themselves before the Lord, to repent of their sins, and to trust in their long-rejected Mediator for salvation. Then he will deliver them, and make their prosperity great.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Rather, I would utterly disperse them, etc., were it not that I apprehended the provocation of the enemy, i. e., that I should be provoked to wrath when the enemy ascribed the overthrow of Israel to his own prowess and not to my judgments. Compare Deuteronomy 9:28-29; Ezekiel 20:9, Ezekiel 20:14, Ezekiel 20:22.

Behave themselves strangely - Rather, misunderstand it, i. e., mistake the cause of Israel's ruin.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

23. I will spend mine arrows upon them—War, famine, pestilence (Ps 77:17) are called in Scripture the arrows of the Almighty.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The wrath of the enemy, i.e. their rage against me, as it is expressed Isaiah 37:28,29; their insolent and furious reproaches against my name, as if I were unnatural and cruel to my people, or unable to deliver them. Compare Exodus 32:12 Numbers 14:13 Deu 9:28 Joshua 7:9. The fear hereof is ascribed to God after the manner of men.

Strangely, i.e. insolently and arrogantly, above what they used to do. Or,

make themselves strangers, i.e. either really not acknowledge, or pretend they did not know, that which I had publicly declared, and they either did or easily might have known, to wit, that this judgment was inflicted upon them by my hand for their sins.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy,.... Satan, the enemy of mankind in general, of the people of God in particular, and especially of the Messiah, the seed of the woman, and of God himself, whom he would dethrone, or at least place himself on an equality with him; this enemy is full of wrath, enmity, and blasphemy, against God, and stirs up all of this kind in the hearts of men, and instigates them to persecute the people of God; and does all he can to obscure the glory of God, and lessens his own "grief", as the word signifies, occasioned by it: and now though God has nothing to fear, either from the power and policy of the devil, being infinitely mightier and wiser than he; yet as Moses expressed his concern, if God should cut off the people of Israel as one man, that the Egyptians would say he brought them out of Egypt for mischief, or that he was not able to bring them into the land of Canaan, Exodus 32:12; so the Lord, speaking after the manner of men, as Aben Ezra observes, expresses his fears of the wrath of the enemy; not properly, but it denotes his precaution, provision, and preparation he made to put a check upon it, and a stop to it, that he might not have the opportunity of instilling it into the minds of men, that God was cruel to his people, or had not ability to save them from their enemies, or was unfaithful to his promises; and therefore he did not entirely cut them off, as he could and might have done, but made a reserve of them, as a standing proof to the contrary:

lest their adversaries; the Romans, who fought against them, took them, and carried them captive:

should behave themselves strangely; alienate the glory of God from him, and give it to their strange gods; which the Romans were wont to do, when they obtained victories, and did do something of this kind to Jupiter Capitolinus, when they carried the Jews captive, and their trophies in triumph to Rome: yet there was such an apparent hand of God in this affair, that the Heathens were obliged to own it. Titus the conqueror himself confessed that it was God that favoured him, and that it was he that brought the Jews out of the fortresses and fastnesses in which they were; and that no hands of men, or machines, were anything against such towers as they had (g): and when some neighbouring nations would have crowned him because of his victories over the Jews, he refused it, saying, he was unworthy of it, he had not done this of himself, but had only lent an hand to God that was angry with them (h). Cicero also observes (i) the hand of God in the conquest, captivity, and servitude of the Jewish nation; moreover, a remnant was preserved to be to the Romans, as the Canaanites were to the Israelites, thorns in their sides, and pricks in their eyes; to be a burden to them, a dead weight upon them, and to check their ovations and triumphs over them; for, that people conquered gave them great trouble, raised commotions and insurrections in many places, which obliged the emperors in succeeding reigns to come from distant parts, and quell them, and were the occasion of vast quantities of blood being shed; insomuch that one of their poets (k) wishes Judea had never been subdued by them: likewise a number of them was preserved to prevent the growth and spread of idolatry, and that they might be a standing example and caution to Christians among the Gentiles not to give into it, when they should observe what they suffered on the account of it, as their prophecies, extant in their sacred books preserved, abundantly testified and declared:

and lest they should say, our hand is high, and the Lord hath not done all this; lest anyone should say among the Gentiles, as particularly deists, lest they should lift up their horn on high, and speak with a stiff neck, and deny that ever any such things were done for this people the Scriptures speak of, as the miracles in the land of Egypt, at the Red sea, and in the wilderness; and confidently affirm there never was any such people, and defy Christians to show them a Jew if they could: now here was a reserve made of them, to be a standing proof of the truth of divine revelation against such infidels; as also that they might be a check unto all false teachers, and leave them inexcusable who embrace the same errors that have been condemned in them, and God has shown his displeasure at, and which they still retain; such as the doctrines of freewill, of justification by a man's own righteousness, of salvation not being wholly by the Messiah, and of his being non-Jehovah, or only a mere creature; for the words may be rendered, "non-Jehovah hath done all this" (l); or he that is not Jehovah hath done all that is done for the people of the Jews; and say, all that the Messiah hath done, with respect to salvation, is done by him that is not Jehovah, or God, but a creature. These were the doctrines of the Jews in Christ's time; the Pharisees, the prevailing sect among them, were freewillers, as Josephus relates (m); and the whole nation were self-justiciaries, as the Apostle Paul assures us, and sought for righteousness not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law, Romans 9:31; and such they are to this day, as well as Unitarians to a man; now Arians, Socinians, Pelagians, and Arminians, may look upon these people, who are continued, as having imbibed the same errors; and may read theirs in them, and God's displeasure at them.

(g) Joseph. de Bello Jud. l. 6. c. 9. sect. 1.((h) Philostrat. Vit. Apolion. l. 6. c. 14. (i) Orat. 24. pro Flacco. (k) "Atque utinam nunquam Judaea subacta fuisset", Rutilius. (l) "et non Jehovah operatus est omne hoc", Cocceius; so Van Till, Vitringa. (m) Antiqu. l. 18. c. 1. sect. 3.

Geneva Study Bible

Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should {p} behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the LORD hath not done all this.

{p} Rejoicing to see the godly afflicted, and attributing to themselves that which is wrought by God's hand.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

27. provocation] Cp. Deuteronomy 32:19, but here the vexation caused to Himself by the foes’ misconstruction. The anthropomorphism is very strong. Sam. reads my foe. On the Heb. for feared see Deuteronomy 1:17, Deuteronomy 18:22.

Deuteronomy 32:27

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"I 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 this." 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. אמרתּי to be construed conditionally requires לוּלי: 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 Deuteronomy 32:20. The ἁπ. λεγ. אפאיחם, which has been rendered in very different ways, cannot be regarded, as it is by the Rabbins, as a denom. verb from פּאה, 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 פּאה, to blow, - related to פּעה (Isaiah 42:14) and פּהה, from which comes פּה, - in the Hiphil "to blow away," not to blow asunder. השׁבּית, not "to cause to rest," but to cause to cease, delere (as in Amos 8:4). "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). פּן, lest, after גּוּר, to fear. On this reason for sparing Israel, see Deuteronomy 9:28; Exodus 32:12; Numbers 14:13.; Isaiah 10:5. Enemy is a generic term, hence it is followed by the plural. נכר, 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 word 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 (Exodus 14:8; cf. Isaiah 26:11). - The reason why Israel did not deserve to be spared is given in Deuteronomy 32:28 : "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 Deuteronomy 32:29-32, 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.