The Song of Moses is full of rebuke and reproach because of the so many and so great benefits that have been shown by God to the ungrateful and wicked people. And he clearly indicates that it will happen that they will leave God, turn to foreign gods, and the aforementioned curses will come upon them. And in this Moses does a work worthy of him (officium), that is, worthy of the office of the law, namely, that he bites, accuses, chides, threatens, curses, and through and through shows nothing but anger, and yet knows well (sentit) that the people are not made any better by it, so that one can also see here, as it were in a mirror, the nature of the law, that it causes anger and keeps it under the curse.
V. 1. Take heed, you heavens 2c.
He calls heaven and earth, that is, all creatures, as witnesses. And it also happens that when the wicked are afflicted, they think that all creatures are hostile to them. This is done by the consciousness of sin, which is indicated to them by the law. Thus the whole creature agrees with the law as a witness to it.
V. 2. My teaching drips like the rain 2c.
But he wishes that his teaching may trickle and flow like the rain and the dew,
like the drops and downpours on herbage and grass, that is, that it may be strong and fruitful, lest he sing in vain and tell a story to a dove, singing of great and necessary things, that is, that one should serve the true God, and of the danger of those who forsake God and turn to idols.
He opposes drops, rain and dew to clouds without water, as there are human teachings that are of no use. Therefore he wants his word to be rain, not an empty cloud. He opposes herbs and grass to pebbles, sand and similar unfruitful things, on which it rains in vain, although the rain is beneficial, that is, he wants listeners, with whom his word brings fruit. For both are necessary, that the teaching be wholesome, and the hearer be taught (docilis).
V. 3: For I will call upon the name of the Lord.
That is, I will sing about calling upon and serving only One God against the idolaters who will be among my people.
Give glory to our God alone.
That is, do not honor any other God, nor ascribe any glory or power to any, but to ours alone.
GOtte. For he alone has glory, greatness, power. All other gods are vain, lying and nothing.
V. 4. He is a rock. His works are blameless.
He calls God a rock because he is faithful and reliable to those who trust in him. He calls his works wholesome, blameless, perfect works, and speaks of the works that he works in us and all the godly who worship him in truth, contrasting them with the works of vanity with which we, having invented them from ourselves, serve either GOD himself or other gods. These [works] are not blameless and perfect, but rejected and condemned.
It is the same thing that follows: "All that he does is right," that is, the whole life of his faithful is right and true, going along in word and commandment, not in his own ways and opinions. Thus "God is faithful, and there is no evil in him; just and pious is he." He says all this of God, provided one serves him and believes in him, not only of God according to his nature, as when he said against false gods and those who serve them: Whoever serves this God is certain to have a faithful God with whom he is at peace. In this service there is nothing evil, but only justice and righteousness, and all this is faithful, certain and well founded. On the other hand, the idolatrous have nothing certain, nothing faithful or certain, but they waver, since their conscience is always inconstant and uncertain, so that everything they live and do is only wickedness and evil, however much they may appear otherwise.
V. 5. The perverse and wicked kind fall away from him; they are stains and not his children.
Thus he says of them that it will come to pass with them that they will not remain in the wholesome doctrine and the right service of God, but, as it is wont to happen with an evil, adulterous kind (as also Christ [Matth. 12, 39.] calls them), they will be corrupted, so that now they are no longer children, because of their shamefulness and their corrupt service of God, which they themselves invented, but bastards, yes, adversaries.
V. 6. Do you then give thanks to the LORD your God, you foolish and foolish people? Is he not your Father and your Lord? Is it not he alone who made you and prepared you?
Here he begins to reproach the ungrateful people, and see how fervent and exceedingly violent words he uses. For all this (he says) that GOD is just and pious, his works are blameless 2c., and that he is your father, which was highly to him that he obtained you; likewise that he made you when you were not a people, and made you a ready people, that is, prepared you and made you, that all might go forth well; for all these things (I say) you pervert and pervert all things, so that now you are no longer children of such a father, but a perverted kind, following after strange gods and after their own lusts.
V. 7. Remember the former times until now, and consider what he did to the fathers of old. Ask your father, and he will tell you; your elders, and they will tell you.
He begins to enumerate in order the benefits that have been poured out on the ungrateful people and have been lost on them. He used "your father" in the singular instead of the plural, as if he wanted to say: If you look at the ancient fathers, as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, you will see how much good he did you in those, how much he cared for you.
V. 8 When the Most High divided the nations and scattered the children of men, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the children of Israel.
The first blessing is that although he is God, and God of all nations, since he scattered them, Gen. 11, 8, and divided the whole earth among them, he gave to each nation its part and its border, as Paul teaches in the Acts of the Apostles, Cap. 17, 26, following this verse, yet he did not choose all of them to be the people whose God he was in particular by true and right worship, but he set boundaries so that only where the children of Israel were, his people would be; but where the children of Israel were, his people would be.
the border of the children of Israel ceased, then the people of God should cease, and the borders of the Gentiles should begin.
V. 9: For the Lord's portion is His people, Jacob is the cord of His inheritance.
That means, his people does not extend further than Jacob or Israel is. For by these words it is described how this people is specifically God's people.
V. 10 He found him in the wilderness, in the arid desert, howling. He led him and gave him the law. He guarded him like the apple of his eye.
That is, he made a covenant with him on Mount Sinai, where he found him and accepted him, after which he led him around in the wilderness and instructed and protected him so that he never lacked anything. This is the second glorious blessing.
V. 11: As an eagle carries out its young and soars over them. He spread out his wings, and took him, and carried them on his wings.
With these words he indicates how he took care of them in the wilderness, carried their customs, and tried them and did them good, so that they learned to fly, that is, to trust in him, as we saw in Cap. 8.
V. 12. The Lord alone guided him, and no foreign god was with him.
That is, under Moses, the true service of God went on in the wilderness. God Himself went before them both by word and by the outward guidance of the cloud and the fire.
V.13. He made him come up on high on the earth, and fed him with the fruit of the field, and made him suck honey from the rocks, and oil from the hard stones.
This is the third benefit that describes the wealth that was given to them in the land of Canaan. Canaan, namely, that they dwelt in a high and excellent land, and were abundantly fed by the fruits of the field, that is, he gave them to dwell in an
good and fertile land. Then he says in a poetic way and in figurative speech that honey is sucked from the rocks and oil from the stones, namely, the land is so good that where there is no field, but rock and stone, there is still oil and the bees carry honey, since the oil trees also like to grow in stony and barren places, and the bees carry honey everywhere, even where there is no field.
V.14. Butter from the cows, and milk from the sheep, with the fat from the lambs, and fat rams and goats with fat kidneys, and wheat, and watered him with the blood of grapes.
Here, too, he describes in a poetic way, as it is wont to happen in songs, the wealth, that they should be fed with butter and milk and fat lambs, and with fattened rams, and with rams with fat kidneys, that is, which were also well fed and fattened.
Another translation has translated thus: "And with rams of the children of Bashan", because the translator did not know the Hebrew way of speaking, that "child of Bashan", that is, a child of fatness, is the same as fat, as a child of the year, that is, a yearling; a child of peace, that is, a peaceable one; a child of death, that is, doomed to death. Thus he calls the wine "grape blood", because in those countries red wine grows in general.
V. 15. But when he became fat and full, he became horny. He became fat and fat and strong, and let go the God who made him. He despised the rock of his salvation.
That is, the one who made him and saved him from all evil, in whom he should have trusted, he, puffed up and satiated by wealth, neglected by devoting himself to other gods, as follows:
V. 16: And hath provoked him to zeal by strangers, by abominations hath he provoked him to anger.
Those who should have been grateful to him for this, turned and irritated him rather, by
1) Namely the Vulgate, which offers: Lt srietum Worum Lasan.
they forgave him evil for good, as we see in the histories, how they fornicated with foreign gods. A satiated belly does not endure godliness, because it stands in safety and does not care about God.
V. 17. They sacrificed to the devils of the field and not to their God; to the gods they did not know, to the new ones that were not before, which your fathers did not honor.
That is, the idols in the field, namely in groves, in valleys, on mountains, of which nothing was said to them in the Law, of which they had also heard nothing, but after their ears pricked; as soon as someone brought up some new worship, they flocked to it most strongly, and left God, whom they had learned from their fathers.
V. 18. You have forgotten your rock that begat you, and you have forgotten God who made you.
This is a bitter rebuke and reproach of ingratitude that they forgave so much evil for so much good. Therefore now follows with what punishment they should be beaten for such a great guilt.
V.19. And when the Lord saw it, he was angry with his sons and daughters.
The wrath is all the more terrifying because the sons and daughters offended such a great father with such and such great sins.
V. 20. And he said: I will hide my face from them, I will see what shall befall them at the last, for it is a perverse way, they are unfaithful children.
"That the face of God be hid" means that they become blind, that they neither recognize nor find him, however much they seek and call him. The meaning of this is known from the antithesis [Ps. 80:4], "Let thy face shine, and we shall recover." He calls them "unfaithful," that is, those who are not children in truth and in heart, but outwardly pretend with a fictitious appearance (hypocrisi) of works, and boast that they are children.
V.21. They have provoked me against that which is not God; with their idolatry they have provoked me to anger. And I will provoke them again in that which is not a people; in a foolish people will I provoke them.
That is, just as they have forsaken me and accepted another god, which was not to my liking, so I will again reject them and accept another people, which will also torment them greatly, as happened according to the testimony of the apostle Rom. 11:25, when the Gentiles were accepted through the gospel. Therefore, the Jews are angry to this day in an unforgiving way that we say they are not the people of God and claim that we are the people of God, according to this verse.
V.22. For the fire is kindled by my wrath, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall devour the land with her increase, and shall set on fire the foundations of the mountains.
"The fire" here does not mean fire alone, but under the fire [is meant] the whole desolation, as was the fire of the king in Babylon and of the Romans, where the land, though not the whole land, was burned and laid waste, as in Jerusalem and other places, where also not one stone was left upon another. This means that he says it will burn to hell, that is, there will be nothing left on earth, neither buildings nor vegetation, but also the ground itself and the mountains where the buildings stood will be burned, as if the fire wanted to burn from above through the earth into hell, as we see in the places that are devastated by fire.
V. 23. I will heap all calamities upon them; I will shoot all my arrows into them.
The arrows mean here the plagues and the omission of the divine wrath. And he himself now describes these arrows and evils in the following verse by saying:
V. 24. They shall faint with hunger, and be consumed with fever and sudden death. I will send the teeth of beasts among them, and the poison of serpents.
Here he mentions four or three arrows, famine, fever, pestilence, wild animals, after which he adds the sword in the following verse, and the prophets often repeat these plagues. Our translation (the Vulgate), which says: Cum furore trahentium super terram, has not taken into account that this is a poetic paraphrase, as it is used in songs, and that "those who drag themselves along in the dust" (trahentes in pulvere) are called the snakes.
V. 25. The sword shall take them away outwardly, and inwardly terror; both young men and virgins, babes with manhood.
That is, all protection is taken away from them, and everything they can trust.
V. 26. I will say, Where are they? I will lift up their memory among men.
That is, after everything they have is destroyed and made into nothing, they will be mocked: Where is your kingdom now? Where is your priesthood? Not as if nothing or no Jews were left, but that they will have no certain place, kingdom or priesthood, as all other nations have. And "that their remembrance may be abolished," that is, that nothing more may be praised of them, as before, that they were anything, or could be anything, after the manner of other nations, and as they were before.
V.27. If I did not provoke the wrath of the enemies, lest their enemies should be proud, and say, Our power is great, and the Lord hath not done all these things.
He says this because he has at times postponed this wrath and has also delivered the unworthy, and those who did not deserve it; but this he has done for the sake of his name, so that he would not be blasphemed by the idolaters. So in this verse he cancels the boasting of the Jews and preempts it, since they might want to say: We are not as wicked as Moses sings, nor does he sing of us, for, as experience testifies, God has often wonderfully delivered us. To these he answers: This has not happened by your merit, who always have kept everything that was said before.
Because I had accepted you as a people, I am forced to take care of my name for you, who are exceedingly unworthy of it. But I will not do this forever, nevertheless your deserved end will finally come.
V.28. For there is a people where there is no counsel within, and there is no understanding in them.
That is, they care for nothing, neither for anger nor for mercy, nor do they care how their cause stands before me; they presumptuously imagine that I am merciful to them, while I am angry. Therefore they are not anxious to get counsel for themselves and to mend their ways.
V. 29. Oh that they would be wise, and hear these things, that they might understand what is to come upon them hereafter!
All this is said because they do not consider their present condition and their future punishment, as if they were sure that they were good and hoped for the best, while by far the opposite is true and imminent.
V. 30: How is it that one shall chase a thousand of them, and two shall make ten thousand to flee? Is it not so that she has sold her rock, and the Lord has delivered her up?
That is, through the Babylonian as well as through the Roman captivity they were supposed to realize from experience that they were abandoned by God, since one Gentile put a thousand Jews to flight, while before the opposite happened, that one put a thousand Gentiles to flight, Deut. 26, 8.
V. 31 For our rock is not like their rock, for our enemies themselves are judges.
This is understood to say that the other gods and worshippers of the gods themselves admitted that the God of Israel was such a God that if he did not surrender it, no one could overcome his people Israel, but if he surrendered it, they could never stand, as Balaam therefore advised the king of Moab that he should cause the people to sin, and then he would be victorious. So here Balaam is one of the witnesses,
of which Moses says here, who said glorious things about God. Witnesses are also the Egyptians, who said, Ex. 14, 25: "Let us flee from Israel, the LORD fights for them." Witnesses are also the Philistines, 1 Sam. 5, 7. who were afraid of the Ark of God. Thus no gods have so assisted their peoples, so shown their power 2c. For there is no other nation so highly exalted, as is said above Cap. 2, 25. is said.
V. 32 For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the field of Gomorrah; their grapes are gall, they have bitter berries.
That is, instead of the sweet fruit, they bear the exceedingly bitter and evil fruit of idolatry, and are worthy to perish like Sodom and Gomorrah. For he says everything with fierce indignation against the godlessness and idolatry that rages under the name of God and among the people of God.
V. 33. Their wine is the poison of dragons and the gall of fierce vipers.
That is, its doctrine and life is so harmful and poisoned that it incurably poisons very many, because it is worked in vain by so many prophets 2c. It remains a poisoned vine.
V. 34. Is not this hidden with me and sealed in my treasures?
That is, I know all this wickedness and keep it hidden, even though I am outwardly forced to do good to these wicked because of my name. But they do not see what is decided about them with me, therefore they are safe. Therefore he frightens them with this serious threat, so that they may see, not how much good they have received as unworthy, but how much evil they have deserved, lest anyone think that he has a gracious God because of this, because he showers him with goods, but then be most afraid of what is hidden with him and sealed up in his treasures.
V. 35. Vengeance is mine, I will repay. In his time shall her foot slide; for the time of her calamity is at hand, and her future hasteth on.
This he says, because at last the larva of good deeds will cease, under which they are safe, but the punishment will come forth, which has so long been postponed for the sake of his name, namely, that they shall be made nothing at all among the Romans, which they have long and always well deserved. For so their foot slid, that their kingdom was no more. And so you see that Moses clearly prophesies that the end of this people will come one day, that is, of its kingdom.
V. 36 For the LORD will judge his people, and have mercy on his servants. For he will see that their power is gone, and both the shut up and the forsaken are gone.
That is, he will not spare even his people, so that they will not boast that they are his people. But he will be reconciled, regardless of the person, only with those who serve him, that is, with the survivors of the people who have been converted to Christ. Otherwise, their power will be gone from all of them, so that even the closed and abandoned will be gone, that is, nothing of the kingdom will be left in the land of Judah, because all of them will be scattered among the Gentiles.
V. 37. And they will say, Where are their gods? their rock in which they trusted?
Thus both the conscience and the persecutor scorn them. Then they will see what they have been and done under their security, who their God has been, and whom they have served, as follows:
V. 38. Of which sacrifice they ate fat, and drank the wine of their libation. Let them arise and help you, and protect you.
While they thought that at that time they were eating from the sacrifices of the Lord, but now they see too late their idolatry (vanitatem).
V. 39. Do you see now that I am alone, and there is no God beside me? I can kill and I can bring to life, I can strike and I can heal, and there is no one to deliver out of my hand.
Thus, experience teaches what they have not learned before under the security.
V. 40. For I will lift up my hand to heaven, and will say, I live forever.
This is said in the manner of a swearer, or one who boasts that apart from God no one (nihil) can boast either of his being (esse) or of his life (vivere), but he alone says, I am, I live; namely, so that he may be feared and our presumption destroyed.
V. 41. When I shall sharpen the lightning of my sword, and my hand shall take hold to punish; then will I again avenge myself upon mine enemies, and recompense them that hate me.
That is, terrible is my vengeance because it pierces through (and cannot be stopped, like lightning) by my enemies, whether they be Jews or Gentiles.
V. 42. I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh, over the blood of the slain, and over the prison, and over the uncovered head of the enemy.
This vengeance will I repay (says he), that my arrows shall be full of blood, and my sword shall not wound, but devour the bodies: so many shall be slain, so many shall be taken captive. Then also the
Head of the enemies will be bare, that is, they will be deprived of the kingdom, that they shall be scattered throughout the world without the glory of the kingdom.
V. 43. Rejoice, all you who are his people.
That is, the Gentiles will be united in faith with the believing remnant.
For he will avenge the blood of his servants.
Namely, those who kill the prophets and apostles.
And will be gracious to the land of his people.
Namely, [the people] who are left of Israel who have converted; to them he will prepare a new kingdom under Christ, amen.
V. 48. And the LORD spoke to Moses 2c.
Finally, he describes the commandment of the Lord from the death of Moses, how he showed him the whole land of Canaan, but did not allow him to go in because of the sin of unbelief he had committed (admissum) at the Haderwasser. The mountain Abarim is the same as the mountain of Arabia, on the top of which is the mountain Nebo, on the top of [the mountain] Pisgah [5Mos. 34, 1.], on which Moses went up and died.