of Israel into the power of the heathen arose, not from the superior power of the heathen and their gods, but solely from the apostasy of Israel from its own God. “Our rock,” as Moses calls the Lord, identifying himself with the nation, is not as their rock, i.e., the gods in whom the heathen trust. That the pronoun in “their rock” refers to the heathen, is so perfectly obvious from the antithesis “our rock,” that there cannot possibly be any doubt about it. The second hemistich in Deu 32:30 contains a circumstantial clause, introduced to strengthen the thought which precedes it. The heathen themselves could be arbitrators (vid., Exo 21:22), and decide whether the gods of the heathen were not powerless before the God of Israel. “Having experience so often the formidable might of God, they knew for a certainty that the God of Israel was very different from their own idols” (Calvin). The objection offered by Schultz, namely, that “the heathen would not admit that their idols were inferior to Jehovah, and actually denied this at the time when they had the upper hand (Isa 10:10-11),” has been quite anticipated by Calvin, when he observes that Moses “leaves the decision to the unbelievers, not as if they would speak the truth, but because he knew that they must be convinced by experience.” As a confirmation of this, Luther and others refer not only to the testimony of Balaam (Num 23 and 24), but also to the Egyptians (Exo 14:25) and Philistines (1Sa 5:7.), to which we may add Jos 2:9-10.
verses 32-33
“For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are poisonous grapes, bitter clusters have they. Dragon-poison is their wine, and dreadful venom of asps.” The connection is pointed out by Calovius thus: “Moses returns to the Jews, showing why, although the rock of the Jews was very different from the gods of the Gentiles, even according to the testimony of the heathen themselves, who were their foes, they were nevertheless to be put to flight by their enemies and sold; and why Jehovah sold them, namely, because their vine was of the vine of Sodom, i.e., of the very worst kind, resembling the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, as if they were descended from them, and not from their holy patriarchs.” The “for” in Deu 32:32 is neither co-ordinate nor subordinate to that in Deu 32:31. To render it as subordinate would give no intelligible meaning; and the supposition that it is co-ordinate is precluded by the fact, that in that case Deu 32:32 and Deu 32:33 would contain a description of the corruptions of the heathen. The objections to this view have been thus expressed
