Deuteronomy 32:36 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Ver. 36. For the Lord shall judge his people— Houbigant renders this verse, For the Lord will give judgment to his people, and in his servants he will comfort himself; words, says he, which cannot belong to the Jewish nation, concerning whom it was just said, that the day of their ruin is at hand; wherefore, those servants, and that people of the Lord, are to be understood, who were to become such at that crisis when the Jewish nation and republic was to perish; namely, the servants of God, who were to be, by faith, the sons of Abraham, and who were to be made the people of God, instead of the Jews. Concerning this people of God, it is said, that their hands shall be weak, and there shall be none shut up or left; i.e. there shall be nothing safe for the servants of God against their oppressors; no refuge to which they may fly; no help to be expected from man. A similar expression is found, 2 Kings 14:26. In the next verse, (37.) the idolatrous Jews are addressed, and not their enemies; for all the menaces in this song are against the Jews. Those, however, who may not choose to rely on Houbigant's interpretation, and who rather believe that the same people are spoken of in this as in the 35th and 37th verses, may understand the verse as declaring, that when God shall find his people greatly reduced, sensible of their own weakness and of his power, he will plead their cause, and deliver them from the oppression of their enemies; Psalms 10:18 and repent himself for his servants: i.e. will revisit them with mercy. So the phrase signifies, Psalms 90:13; Psalms 135:14.