Deuteronomy 32:30-33 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 30-33. How should one chase a thousand— i.e. Would they but wisely reflect, and be moved by the terror of these punishments upon their posterity, to a different conduct, how flourishing should be their estate at home, how victorious their arms abroad! The sacred writer adds, how certainly should they do this, if their Rock had not sold them; i.e. entirely given them up, and quitted his protection of them! For their god is not as our God, &c. Their god, or rock, means here the idol gods, the dependance of the rebellious Israelites; (see ver. 37.) which idols, Moses asserts, even their very enemies being judges, were not to be compared with the God of Israel; for those enemies were often forced to acknowledge the over-ruling power of Jehovah, controuling all their designs, and all the efforts of their gods, though they considered him only as the local tutelary God of the Jews. See Exodus 8:19; Exodus 14:25.Numbers 23:23. 1 Samuel 4:7-8. Daniel 3:29. Perhaps the reader will think this whole clause from ver. 28 not improperly connected thus: Having in ver. 28 declared them to be a nation void of counsel and understanding, the sacred writer, in the 29th verse, bursts forth into a pathetic wish, saying, "O that they were wise! then they would understand this: they would understand what would happen to them hereafter; how one should chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight; if it was not because their Creator had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up. For, not as our God is their god, even our enemies being judges: for of the vine of Sodom is their vine, and of the fields of Gomorrah are their grapes; grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter." So the 32nd verse should be translated. It is observed, that the soil about Sodom and Gomorrah produced nothing but blasted fruits of a black hue, without substance; and so dry and sapless, that when pressed they would crumble as it were into ashes! Acra & inania velut in cinerem vanescunt, says Tacitus, Hist. lib. 5: cap. 6. In allusion hereto, the vine of Sodom became a metaphorical expression for depraved works; and this allusion is carried on in the next clause, as well as in the 33rd verse; where, when it is said their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter, it is meant, that their actions or fruits are most wicked and distasteful. See Isaiah 5:4 compared with the 7th verse; and so Josephus describes them before their last destruction, saying remarkably in the sixth Book of his Jewish War, that their city was so wicked, that if the Romans had not fallen upon them, he verily believes the earth would have opened its mouth and swallowed them up; or thunder and lightning from heaven must have destroyed them, as it did Sodom and Gomorrah; for they were a more atheistical nation than those who suffered such things. The corresponding clause to this in the 33rd verse, their wine is the poison of dragons, &c. is of the same import; signifying their fruits or works to be most pernicious and depraved, and so resembling the poison of dragons; Revelation 17:2. The Hebrew word תנים tanim, rendered dragons, signifies a kind of large serpents, which make a doleful and horrid noise and hissing. This property of theirs is observed by AElian; and to this Job alludes, chap. Job 30:29 and Micah 1:8. See Boch. vol. 3: p. 437. Lucan, lib. 9: ver. 727 and Parkhurst on the word. The poison of asps is called cruel, because it is accounted the subtilest of all, penetrating instantly into the vital parts. Hence the proverb δηγμα ασπιδων, the biting of asps, for an incurable wound. See Scheuchzer on the place.