Deuteronomy 32:23

SORROWS AND DESTRUCTIONS TO COME UPON ISRAEL (Deuteronomy 32:23-27)

"I will heap evils upon them,

I will spend mine arrows upon them:

They shall be wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat

And bitter destruction;

And the teeth of beasts will I send upon them,

With the poison of crawling things of the dust.

Without shall the sword bereave,

And in the chambers terror;

It shall destroy both young man and virgin,

The suckling with the man of gray hairs.

I said I would scatter them afar,

I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men;

Were it not that I feared the provocation of the enemy,

Lest their adversaries should judge amiss,

Lest they should say, Our hand is exalted,

And Jehovah hath not done all this."

An episode from the life of Moses himself is incorporated into his poem at this point. It will be remembered that when Moses pleaded with God not to destroy Israel, he said, "Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, saying, For evil did (God) bring them forth, to slay them in the mountains" (Exodus 32:12).

The identical thought is here: God would utterly destroy Israel (Deuteronomy 32:26), but God's enemies would make the wrong conclusions from such an event (Deuteronomy 32:27). This is but one of many internal evidences of Moses' authorship, any one of these evidences seeming to be a small thing, but in the aggregate they constitute a voice of thunder affirming the Mosaic authorship of the poem.

The principal thought of this paragraph is that, "God will not utterly destroy Israel, but when Israel's strength has been totally exhausted, God would have compassion upon them."[18] God's reasons for not utterly destroying Israel also most certainly included the fact that "the salvation of all mankind" would have been countermanded, or at least, seriously delayed by such a destruction. Also, God's ultimate compassion promised to the rebellious nation should never be understood as being an unconditional boon to the wicked nation; it was a compassion to be poured out at last upon "the righteous remnant," the few souls who were indeed "true children of Abraham," which persons would, in time constitute the New Israel of the kingdom in Jesus Christ.