Deuteronomy 32:22 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For a fire is kindled in mine anger In this verse are predicted the dreadful calamities which God would bring upon the land of Judea, in words which seem to import the total ruin of it. Devouring judgments are here compared to fire, as they are also Ezekiel 30:8; Amos 2:5. And from hence to Deuteronomy 32:28, the destruction of their city and country by the Romans, and the dreadful calamities which they have suffered since in different ages, seem chiefly to be intended. And shall burn to the lowest hell Or to the lowest parts of the earth, as the word שׁאול, sheol, here rendered hell, signifies: Numbers 16:30-33. Most destructive calamities are meant, judgments that should never cease till they had overturned the whole Jewish constitution. And set on fire the foundations of the mountains That is, subvert their strongest fortresses, yea, Jerusalem itself, founded on the holy mountains, which was perfectly fulfilled in its destruction by Titus. And, according to Josephus, Titus himself, though a heathen, saw and acknowledged the hand of God in the affair. For, observing the vast height of the walls, the largeness of every stone, and the exact order wherein they were laid and compacted, he cried out, “God was with us in this war: it is he that drove the Jews from these munitions. For what could the hands of men or machines have availed against such towers?” Perhaps it may not be improper to mention here, as a further illustration of this prophecy, and its accomplishment, what is related, not only by the Christian writers of that age, Chrysostom, Sozomen, and Socrates, but also by Ammianus Marcellinus, a heathen historian, that when Julian the Apostate ordered the temple of Jerusalem to be rebuilt, with a view to give the lie to our Saviour's prophecy concerning it, “terrible globes of fire burst out near the foundations, which overturned all, burned the workmen, and made the place so inaccessible, that they desisted from the attempt.” See Bishop Warburton's book, entitled Julian.