8.
“And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other” (Deut. xxviii, 64).
These words were uttered, not as a prophecy, but as a warning or threat. If they obey the Lord’s statutes a long list of blessings are promised; if they do not obey them, a hundred evils are threatened, among which is the one quoted. One of the most dreaded and one of the most common calamities in that age was the conquest or dispersion of one tribe or nation by another. In an enumeration of all known evils, it would be strange if this, the one most often threatened, had been omitted.