And Moses called unto all Israel, and said unto them, Ye have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land of Egypt unto Pharaoh, and unto all his servants, and unto all his land;
Moses called unto all Israel ... Ye have seen all that the Lord did ... This appeal to the experience of the people, though made generally, was applicable only to that portion of them who had been very young at the period of the exodus, and who remembered the marvelous transactions that preceded and followed that era.
Yet, alas, those wonderful events made no good impression upon them (Deuteronomy 29:4)! They were strangers to that grace of wisdom which is liberally given to all who ask it; and their insensibility was all the more inexcusable that so many miracles had been performed which might have led to a certain conviction of the presence and the power of God with them. The preservation of their clothes and shoes, the supply of daily food and fresh water-these, continued without interruption or diminution during so many years' sojourn in the desert, were miracles which unmistakeably proclaimed the immediate hand of God, and were performed for the express purpose of training them to a practical knowledge of, and habitual confidence in, Him.
Their experience of this extraordinary goodness and care, together with their remembrance of the brilliant successes by which, with little exertion or loss on their part, God enabled them to acquire the valuable territory on which they stood, is mentioned again, to enforce a faithful adherence to the covenant, as the direct and sure means of obtaining its promised blessings.
Several authors of note are inclined to take the statement made respecting 'the clothes and the shoes' in a figurative sense, as denoting that the Israelites were not reduced at any time to the necessity of wearing garments and shoes tattered and torn; for they never wanted the means and opportunities of having them renewed. Their own flocks would supply them with wool and leather skins (and that they possessed skill in the manufacture of textile fabrics, the works contributed to the tabernacle afford abundant evidence), or they might obtain articles of wearing apparel by purchase from the mercantile caravans, which periodically traversed the desert (Rosenmuller's 'Scholia').
Hence, those writers consider the declaration of Moses amounts simply to this, that through the special grace of God they had, during all their wanderings in the wilderness, a sufficient supply of clothes and shoes. But surely, if such necessaries were obtained from natural and ordinary sources, there was no occasion to mention the fact. The additional circumstance, however, mentioned in the parallel passage (Deuteronomy 8:4), "neither did thy foot swell," is, we think, unfavourable to this view, while the preservation of the clothes and shoes is classed here with the gift of manna, which was unquestionably miraculous. On these grounds, then, we interpret the words before us literally, as indicating a miracle, and doubtless a miracle of a most astonishing character, considering the mass of people who had to be suitably clad.
Rabbinical writers, indeed, in their endeavours to magnify the miracle, assert that the clothes and shoes grew with the growth of the individual wearer. But such fancies are superfluous, as well as groundless. Clothes among the Hebrews, as among other Oriental people, were loose, and not fitted, as ours, to the shape and dimensions of the wearer's person; so that the clothes of persons who had died would suit young members of the family when they advanced in age and stature.
The miracle, then, consisted in the habiliments which the Israelites wore at the exodus, and their stock of which was increased by the gifts of the Egyptians, as well as the spoil of the Amalekites, being, by a distinguished act of grace, preserved entire during the 40 years' sojourn in the wilderness; and Moses' appeal to the people's consciousness of the extraordinary fact could not have been effectively made sooner than at the end of that period (see Graves' 'Pentateuch,' 2:, pp. 445, 446).