Ver. 10. He found him in a desart land, &c. He led him about, &c.— He sustained him, &c. He compassed him about, &c. Houbigant renders this, after the Samaritan:
He sustain'd them in a desart land: He made him fat in a dry and sandy place: He was present with him; he took care of him: He kept him as the apple of his eye.
See his note on the place. It highly amplifies the divine power and goodness, to recollect the place in which God thus sustained and preserved his people: a place where, according to credible travellers, there was nothing but sands and rocky mountains; and for many days' journey together, scarcely any green thing to be seen, neither beast nor fowl to be heard, nothing but sand and stones:—neither plough-land nor meadow, tree nor bush, leaf nor grass, nor path to go in. The verbs here rendered in the perfect, are in the Hebrew all in the future sense. We observed from Dr. Lowth on ver. 5 that the Hebrews frequently use the past for the future, and the future for the past tense. An instance of the former was given in that note: we have here an example of the latter; a practice, as that able writer observes, very different from that of other writers, and of a difficult nature; for a solution of which, we shall consult in vain the grammarians and interpreters. But, that all these things have their due force and propriety, cannot be doubted; any more than it is to be wondered, that in a language of such great antiquity as the Hebrew, there are many things obscure and difficult; upon which, however, much light might possibly be thrown, if we diligently considered in what disposition of mind the writer was when he delivered such and such things, and what images might then be rising before him. The present passage affords us a remarkable example of this construction. Moses, having mentioned the divine decree by which the Israelites were chosen to be the peculiar people of God, goes on to set forth with what love God had embraced them, even from the time when he delivered them from Egypt; how he had fed them in the wilderness, led them through it by his hand, and, as it were, carried them in his bosom; all which, though manifestly past, is expressed in the future tense:
He will find him in a desart land, And in the waste, howling wilderness; He will encompass him; he will instruct him; He will keep him as the apple of his eye.
May not this well be explained, that Moses imagines himself to be present at the immediate transaction, when God now, as it were, separated his people from the other nations; and thence contemplates, as if from some elevated point of view, what was then immediately to follow from that divine purpose? This seems to be the case in some places, particularly in Psalms 78:38-40 and the whole 104th Psalm affords us an elegant example of this construction. Though these, and several other passages of this kind, may be happily enough elucidated in this manner; yet there are many which cannot, and in which the situation and disposition of the writer's mind is not so much to be considered, as the peculiar nature and genius of the language itself; for the Hebrews seem often to use the form of the future tense, so as not so much to regard the speaker, as the thing of which he has just spoken; therefore, an action which is connected with or consequent to another action, or which follows itself, that is, which is repeated or continued, which a person does, and goes on to do, which he does frequently, assiduously, and diligently; that they express as if it was future; for which cause the grammarians call this form עתיד atid, that is to say, prompt, expedite, imminent. Many examples hereof may easily be produced: we shall only mention that most elegant prosopopoeia of the mother of Sisera, Joshua 5:29 the allegory of the vine brought out of Egypt, Psalms 80:9; Psalms 80:19 and the comparison in the following verse, taken from the paternal love and solicitude of the eagle; the force of all which, I am persuaded, the attentive reader will feel, but the most diligent interpreter will not easily express. We refer for more on this subject to Dr. Lowth's 15th Praelection. See Zachar. Deuteronomy 2:10.