The Lord’s Judgment on Israel
January 28, 2022
Commentary
Keep in mind that when Moses composes this song, Israel is not yet in the promised land. It is prophetic as it is intended to challenge them to godliness. It shows how prosperity is more dangerous than adversity (v. 15). In adverse circumstances a believer is reminded of how desperate he is for God’s help, but in times of prosperity he may easily forget God.
This song predicts the coming judgment on Israel because of their apostasy (vv. 18-21). God saw Israel’s sin of idol worship and rejected it. There were two results of this rejection: first God would withdraw his favor from Israel; and second, He would chasten them according to His promises. He will use hunger, pestilence, wild beasts, poisonous serpents and war to carry out this destruction (vv. 22-28). The devastation will be so great that Israel would almost be annihilated (v. 26). Furthermore He says he will scatter them to the four corners of the earth. This means that He will remove them from the place He has given them. The enemies who bring God’s judgment on Israel were as evil as Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 32). This points out the depth of evil into which Israel had fallen.
Application
This is a warning to me as to how easy it is to forget God during times of prosperity. This is really what has happened in America during the last several years and now as a nation we are far from God.
Deuteronomy 32:15– 33 (NET)
15 But Jeshurun became fat and kicked; you got fat, thick, and stuffed! Then he deserted the God who made him, and treated the Rock who saved him with contempt.
16 They made him jealous with other gods, they enraged him with abhorrent idols.
17 They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had not known; to new gods who had recently come along, gods your ancestors had not known about.
18 You forgot the Rock who fathered you, and put out of mind the God who gave you birth.
19 But the Lord took note and despised them because his sons and daughters enraged him.
20 He said, “I will reject them. I will see what will happen to them; for they are a perverse generation, children who show no loyalty.
21 They have made me jealous with false gods, enraging me with their worthless gods; so I will make them jealous with a people they do not recognize, with a nation slow to learn I will enrage them.
22 For a fire has been kindled by my anger, and it burns to lowest Sheol; it consumes the earth and its produce, and ignites the foundations of the mountains.
23 I will increase their disasters; I will use up my arrows on them.
24 They will be starved by famine, eaten by plague, and bitterly stung; I will send the teeth of wild animals against them, along with the poison of creatures that crawl in the dust.
25 The sword will make people childless outside, and terror will do so inside; they will destroy both the young man and the virgin, the infant and the gray-haired man.
26 “I said, ‘I want to cut them in pieces. I want to make people forget they ever existed.
27 But I fear the reaction of their enemies, for their adversaries would misunderstand and say, “Our power is great, and the Lord has not done all this!”’
28 They are a nation devoid of wisdom, and there is no understanding among them.
29 I wish that they were wise and could understand this, and that they could comprehend what will happen to them.”
30 How can one man chase a thousand of them, and two pursue ten thousand, unless their Rock had delivered them up — and the Lord had handed them over?
31 For our enemies’ rock is not like our Rock, as even our enemies concede.
32 For their vine is from the stock of Sodom, and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes contain venom; their clusters of grapes are bitter.
33 Their wine is snakes’ poison, the deadly venom of cobras.
Illustration: Ironside The Flames Can Not Reach Us
Pioneers were making their way across one of the central states to a distant place that had been opened up for homesteading. They traveled in covered wagons, and progress was slow. One day they were horrified to see a long line of smoke in the west, and soon the dried grass was burning fiercely and coming toward them rapidly. They had crossed a river the day before but it would be impossible to go back to that before the flames would be upon them. Only one man only seemed to have understanding as to what could be done. He gave the command to set fire to the grass behind them. Then when a space was burned over, the whole company moved back upon it. As the flames roared on toward them from the west, a little girl cried out in terror, “Are you sure we shall not all be burned up?” The leader replied, “My child, the flames cannot reach us here, for we are standing where the fire has been!” What a picture of the believer, who is safe in Christ! The fires of God’s judgment burned themselves out on Him, and all who are in Christ are safe forever, for they are now standing where the fire has been. (H.A. Ironside, Illustrations of Bible Truth, Moody Press, 1945, pp. 34-35)