and that the nations were divided, i.e., separate nations were formed from the families of the sons of Noah (Gen 10:32); that is to say, the nations were formed in the divinely-appointed way of generation and multiplication, and so spread over the earth. And the Scriptures say nothing about a division of the countries among the different nations at one particular time; they simply show, that, like the formation of the nations from families and tribes, the possession of the lands by the nations so formed was to be traced to God, - was the work of divine providence and government, - whereby God so determined the boundaries of the nations (“the nations” are neither the tribes of Israel, nor simply the nations round about Canaan, but the nations generally), that Israel might receive as its inheritance a land proportioned to its numbers.[1]
Verse 9
God did this, because He had chosen Israel as His own nation, even before it came into existence. As the Lord's people of possession (cf. Deu 7:6; Deu 10:15, and Exo 19:5), Israel was Jehovah's portion, and the inheritance assigned to Him. חבל, a cord, or measure, then a piece of land measured off; here it is figuratively applied to the nation.
Verse 10
He had manifested His fatherly care and love to Israel as His own property.
Deu 32:10
“He found him in the land of the desert, and in the wilderness, the howling of the steppe; He surrounded him, took care of him, protected him as the apple of His eye.” These words do not “relate more especially to the conclusion of the covenant at Sinai” (Luther), nor merely to all the proofs of the paternal care with which God visited His people in the desert, to lead them to Sinai, there to adopt them as His covenant nation, and then to guide them to Canaan, to the exclusion of their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt. The reason why Moses does not mention this fact, or the passage through the Red Sea, is not to be sought for, either solely or even in part, in the fact that “the song does not rest upon the stand-point of the Mosaic times;” for we may see clearly that distance of time would furnish no adequate ground for “singling out and elaborating certain points only from the renowned stories of old,” say from the 105th Psalm, which no one would think of pronouncing an earlier production than this song.
- ↑ The Septuagint rendering, “according to the number of the angels of God,” is of no critical value, - in fact, is nothing more than an arbitrary interpretation founded upon the later Jewish notion of guardian angels of the different nations (Sir. 17:14), which probably originated in a misunderstanding of Deu 4:19, as compared with Dan 10:13, Dan 10:20-21, and Dan 12:1.
