992 matching verse commentaries
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
When thou shall beget children, and children's children,.... Children and grandchildren, and several ages and generations have passed: and shalt have remained long in the land; many years and even ages, or have grown old (h) in it: now they were in their infancy, and as such they were about to enter into it; during the times of the judges, they...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day,.... Should they be guilty of such a sin, since they were so strongly and publicly cautioned against it; and even the heaven and the earth were called upon as witnesses of the law being set before them, which so expressly forbids it, Deuteronomy 30:19 that ye shall soon utterly perish from...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And the Lord shall scatter you among the nations,.... As they were by both captivities; the ten tribes were dispersed among the cities of the Medes, and the two tribes throughout the empire of Babylon: and ye shall be left few in number among the Heathen, whither the Lord shall lead you; or be "men of number" (i), so few that they might be easily...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And there ye shall serve gods, the work of men's hands, wood and stone,.... Idols made by men, cut out of wood and stone; these they should be enticed into the service of, or compelled to serve; which was still more brutish and stupid than to worship the sun, moon, and stars, which were not the works of men's hand, but the glorious works of the...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God,.... By prayer and supplication, acknowledging and confessing sin, and desiring that God would be gracious and forgive it, and bring them out of their miserable condition; even if out of those depths of affliction and distress, and though scattered about in the world, and in the uttermost parts...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
When thou art in tribulation,.... In a strange land, in the power of a foreign enemy, and used ill: and all these things are come upon thee; captivity, thraldom, hard labour, and want of the necessaries of life: [even] in the latter days: in their present captivity for the rejection of the Messiah: if thou turn to the Lord thy God; as the Jews...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
For the Lord thy God is a merciful God,.... In Christ, in whom he has proclaimed his name as such, of which Moses had a comfortable view, Exodus 34:6 and therefore could attest it from his own knowledge and experience: he will not forsake thee; though in a strange country, but bring them from thence into their own land again, and favour them with...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee,.... Inquire into and consult the annals of former times, of ages past: since the day that God created man upon the earth; trace them quite up to the creation of the world, and men in it: and [ask] from the one side of heaven to the other; traverse the whole globe, and examine the...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Did [ever] people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of fire,.... None ever heard the voice of God as they did, much less speaking such words as they heard, and still less out of the midst of fire, which was their case, Deuteronomy 4:12 as thou hast heard, and live? which was stranger still, when they might have expected they should,...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation,.... As he now had done, namely, the nation of Israel out of the nation of the Egyptians; this he not only had assayed to do, but had actually done it; whereas no such instance like it could be produced, and especially as done in the manner this was: by temptations,...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Unto thee it was showed,.... What the Lord did in Egypt: that thou mightest know that the Lord he [is] God, [there is] none else besides him; that he is the one only living and true God, and there is no other: this phrase is often used by the Prophet Isaiah, to express the same great article of faith.
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee,.... Thunder is the voice of God, and by which he instructs men in the greatness of his power, Job 26:14, c. unless his voice in giving the law, which was for the instruction of Israel, is meant for that was heard on earth, on Mount Sinai, to which the following refers: and...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And because he loved thy fathers,.... Not their immediate fathers, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness, and entered not into the good land because of their unbelief, but their more remote fathers or ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who had some singular testimonies of the love of God to them, Abraham is called their friend of God, and...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
To drive out nations from before thee, greater and mightier than thou art,.... The seven nations of the land of Canaan, which were more in number and mightier in power and strength than they, and particularly the Amorites, who were already driven out and dispossessed of their country, even the kingdoms and nations of Sihon and Og: to bring thee in...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart,.... Own and acknowledge it now with thy mouth, and lay it up and consider it in thine heart hereafter, as a truth of the greatest importance to be professed and held fast, and to be thought of and meditated upon continually, and never to be forgotten: that the Lord he is God in heaven above,...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Thou shall keep therefore his statutes, and his commandments,.... All his laws, moral, ceremonial, and judicial, partly being under obligation to him for all the great and good things done by him for them before enumerated, and partly and chiefly because he is the Lord God in heaven and in earth, and has a right to command and ought to be obeyed:...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
Then Moses severed three cities,.... To be cities of refuge, according to the command of God, Numbers 35:14 this he did when he had conquered the two kingdoms of the Amorites, that God had given them for an inheritance to the tribes of Reuben and Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh, Deuteronomy 4:38 though Jarchi says, and so other Jewish writers,...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
That the slayer might flee thither,.... For refuge; the slayer of a man, but not any slayer, but which should kill his neighbour unawares; by accident to him, without any design and intention to kill him; ignorantly, as the Septuagint version; and so Onkelos: and hated him not in times past; it having never appeared that there had been a quarrel...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
[Namely], Bezer in the wilderness,.... In Joshua 20:8, it is added "upon the plain"; this perhaps was the wilderness of Moab, in the plains of it, the same with Bozrah, see Jeremiah 48:24 and in the Apocrypha: "Hereupon Judas and his host turned suddenly by the way of the wilderness unto Bosora; and when he had won the city, he slew all the males...
John Gill - Exposition - John Gill
And this is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel. Not the law concerning the cities of refuge, but the law of the ten commands repeated in the following chapter; so Jarchi remarks, "this which he should set in order after this section;'' as he does in the next chapter, where he repeats in order the ten precepts, and makes...