earth with its increase,” i.e., all its vegetable productions, and sets on fire the foundations of the mountains. This description is not a hyperbolical picture of the judgment which was to fall upon the children of Israel alone (Kamphausen, Aben-Ezra, etc.); for it is a mistake to suppose that the judgment foretold affected the Israelitish nation only. The thought is weakened by the assumption that the language is hyperbolical. The words are not intended to foretell one particular penal judgment, but refer to judgment in its totality and universality, as realized in the course of centuries in different judgments upon the nations, and only to be completely fulfilled at the end of the world. “Calvin is right therefore when he says, “As the indignation and anger of God follow His enemies to hell, to eternal flames and infernal tortures, so they devour their land with its produce, and burn the foundations of the mountains;...there is no necessity therefore to imagine that there is any hyperbole in the words, 'to the lower hell.'” This judgment is then depicted in Deu 32:23-33 as it would discharge itself upon rebellious Israel.
Verse 23
“I will heap up evils upon them, use up My arrows against them.” The evils threatened against the despisers of the Lord and His commandments would be poured out in great abundance by the Lord upon the foolish generation. ספה, to add one upon the other (vid., Num 32:14); hence in Hiphil to heap up, sweep together. These evils are represented in the second clause of the verse as arrows, which the Lord as a warrior would shoot away at his foes (as in Deu 32:42; cf. Psa 38:3; Psa 91:6; Job 6:4). כּלּה, to bring to an end, to use up to the very last.
verses 24-25
“Have they wasted away with hunger, are they consumed with pestilential heat and bitter plague: I will let loose the tooth of beasts upon them, with the poison of things that crawl in the dust.” (Deu 32:25) “If the sword without shall sweep them away, and in the chambers of terrors, the young man as the maiden, the suckling with the grey-haired man.” The evils mentioned are hunger, pestilence, plague, wild beasts, poisonous serpents, and war. The first hemistich in Deu 32:24 contains simply nouns construed absolutely, which may be regarded as a kind of circumstantial clause. The literal meaning is, “With regard to those who are starved with hunger, etc., I will send against them;” i.e., when hunger, pestilence, plague, have brought them to the verge of destruction, I will send, etc. מזי, construct state of מזה, ἁπ. λεγ. with which Cocceius compares מצה and מצץ, to suck out, and for which Schultens has cited analogies from the Arabic. “Sucked out by hunger,” i.e., wasted away.
