Deuteronomy 26:5 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 5. And thou shalt speak, &c.— The sum of the acknowledgment amounts to this: that their possession of that land was entirely owing to the bounty of God, and not left them by their ancestors; for Jacob or Israel, their progenitor, was forced to fly into Syria in a poor condition, and afterwards to go down into Egypt, where his posterity was sorely afflicted; but, by the mercy of God, they increased there, and were by him miraculously brought into this good land. The Vulgate, and some other versions, render it, A Syrian persecuted my father, referring to Laban; and others, my father passed into Syria: but our translation is more agreeable to the Hebrew. For though Jacob himself was born in Canaan, yet was he a Syrian by descent, Abraham being a native of Syria; and as he himself lived twenty years with Laban the Syrian, he is, on these accounts, very properly called a Syrian, or an inhabitant of Mesopotamia, which, in Scripture, is comprehended under the name of Syria, or Aram. Le Clerc observes, that Syrian was a name of reproach; for the Syrians were thought more fraudful and cunning than others: but I should imagine, that the expression could not be used here in any such sense; the low and unfortunate state of Jacob and his family, when going down into Egypt, being here evidently contrasted with their happy and fortunate state in the land of Canaan. What we render, ready to perish, Dr. Waterland renders wandering; a translation which he has taken from Mr. Wesseling's Observations, who remarks, that the same word אבד abed, is used, Psalms 119:176 in the same sense, where the Psalmist compares himself to a sheep that was wandering or lost; and he adds, that nothing can answer better than this expression to the kind of life which Jacob led. We find exactly the same manner of speaking in the OEdipus of Sophocles, ver. 1039. See Wesseling's Observ. Var. l. 2. c. 3. p. 148. Houbigant dissents from others in his interpretation of this text.