the heathen who oppressed Israel, but also in the fact that He punished the wicked in Israel who oppressed the righteous. “His people” is no doubt Israel as a whole (as, for example, in Isa 1:3), but this whole was composed of righteous and wicked, and God could only help the righteous to justice by punishing and destroying the wicked. In this way the judging of His people became compassion towards His servants. “His servants” are the righteous, or, speaking more correctly, all who in the time of judgment are found to be the servants of God, and are saved. Because Israel was His nation, the Lord judged it in such a manner as not to destroy it, but simply to punish it for its sins, and to have compassion upon His servants, when He saw that the strength of the nation was gone. יד, the hand, with which one grasps and works, is a figure employed to denote power and might (vid., Isa 28:2). אזל, to run out, or come to an end (1Sa 9:7; Job 14:11). The meaning is, “when every support is gone,” when all the rotten props of its might, upon which it has rested, are broken (Ewald). The noun אפס, cessation, disappearance, takes the place of a verb. The words עזוּב עצוּר are a proverbial phrase used to denote all men, as we may clearly see from 1Ki 14:10; 1Ki 21:21; 2Ki 4:8; 2Ki 14:6. The literal meaning of this form, however, cannot be decided with certainty. The explanation given by L. de Dieu is the most plausible one, viz., the man who is fettered, restrained, i.e., married, and the single or free. For עזוּב the meaning caelebs is established by the Arabic, though the Arabic can hardly be appealed to as proving that עצוּר means paterfamilias, as this meaning, which Roediger assigns to the Arabic word, is founded upon a mistaken interpretation of a passage in Kamus.
verses 37-38
The Lord would then convince His people of the worthlessness of idols and the folly of idolatry, and bring it to admit the fact that He was God alone. “Then will He say, Where are their gods, the rock in whom they trusted; who consumed the fat of their burnt-offerings, the wine of their libations? Let them rise up and help you, that there may be a shelter over you! See now that I, I am it, and there is no God beside Me: I kill, and make alive; I smite in pieces, and I heal; and there is no one who delivers out of My hand.” ואמר might be taken impersonally, as it has been by Luther and others, “men will say;” but as it is certainly Jehovah who is speaking in Deu 32:39, and what Jehovah says there is simply a deduction from what is addressed to the people in Deu 32:37 and Deu 32:38, there can hardly be any doubt that Jehovah is speaking in Deu 32:37,
