troubles God, and little as the pleasure may be which He has in the death of the wicked, yet the holiness of His love demands the punishment and destruction of those who despise the riches of His goodness and long-suffering; so that He displays His glory in the judgment and destruction of the wicked no less than in blessing and prospering the righteous.
verses 63-64
Those who had not succumbed to the plagues and strokes of God, would be torn from the land of their inheritance, and scattered among all nations to the end of the earth, and there be compelled to serve other gods, which are wood and stone, which have no life and no sensation, and therefore can hear no prayer, and cannot deliver out of any distress (cf. Deu 4:27.).
verses 65-66
When banished thus among all nations, Israel would find no ease or rest, not even rest for the sole of its foot, i.e., no place where it could quietly set its foot, and remain and have peace in its heart. To this extreme distress of homeless banishment there would be added “a trembling heart, failing of the eyes (the light of life), and despair of soul” (vid., Lev 26:36.).
Verse 66
“Thy life will be hung up before thee,” i.e., will be like some valued object, hanging by a thin thread before thine eyes, which any moment might tear down (Knobel), that is to say, will be ever hanging in the greatest danger. “Thou wilt not believe in thy life,” i.e., thou wilt despair of its preservation (cf. Job. Deu 24:22).[1]
Verse 67
In the morning they would wish it were evening, and in the evening would wish it were morning, from perpetual dread of what each day or night would bring.
Verse 68
Last of all, Moses mentions the worst, namely, their being taken back to Egypt into ignominious slavery. “If the Exodus was the birth of the nation of God as such, return would be its death” (Schultz). “In ships:” i.e., in a way which would cut off every possibility of escape. The clause, “by the way whereof I spake unto thee, thou shalt see it no more again,” is not a more precise explanation of the expression “in ships,” for it was not in ships that Israel came out of Egypt, but by land, through the desert; on the contrary, it simply serves to strengthen the announcement, “The Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again,” namely, in the sense that God would cause them to take a road which they would never have been again if they had continued in faithful dependence upon the Lord.
- ↑ “I have never seen a passage which describes more clearly the misery of a guilty conscience, in words and thoughts so fitting and appropriate. For this is just the way in which a man is affected, who knows that God is offended, i.e., who is harassed with the consciousness of sin”' (Luther).
