38. Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.
God will arise for judgment and retribution. Calamities must scourge the guilty; mercy will spare the innocent and ultimately save his Zion. In the latter portion of this song (vs. 36–42), the divine agency seems to be of a twofold character; exterminating the hopelessly guilty, but sparing and restoring the penitent, and ultimately retrieving the fortunes of his kingdom.——When God seeth that his people are powerless and none remain, either bond or free, shut up or let go [the sense of the Heb. words translated “shut up or left”], he will ask, What has become of the gods to whom my people have apostatized, with whom they ate their sacrifices in common? Since those gods have utterly failed them, let me call their attention to myself. Perhaps now it will not be in vain.
39. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive. I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.
40. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live forever.
41. If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me.
42. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy.
They shall know the power of their God. When I lift up my awful hand to bring down retribution on the guilty apostates among my people, shall not my arrows be drunk with blood and my sword devour flesh? The guilty must fall; yet through the fires of these sore judgments Zion shall be purified and so redeemed.——The last clause of v. 42 were better read—“From the head of the princes of the enemy.”
43. Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.
This closing strain brings out in unmistakable terms the idea which seems to have been implied since v. 36, viz. that these great judgments on Israel will not ultimately break down God’s cause and kingdom, but will only cut off the hopelessly reprobate and really bring deliverance, purity, salvation to Zion. Therefore let all the nations rejoice with his people. They have a deeper interest than they are yet aware of in this purifying process for the ultimate redemption of Zion. The prophetic eye of Moses sees through to the glorious ingathering of the Gentiles to Christ, and seems to trace the connection of this ingathering with the judgments sent on apostate Israel in the first Christian age.——The outcome of this song is therefore ultimately hopeful to the real Zion. It gives a fearfully dark view of the guilty apostasies of Israel—those which culminated first in the captivity to Babylon; last in the fall of their city before the Romans. In the result God vindicates his great name; purifies his people, and spreads the glory of his name far abroad among the nations.
DEUT. 33.