BIBLES NET. COM
Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary
on the Whole Bible
Back to Biblesnet.com Home Page
|
[Previous] [Next] |
Matthew Henry |
D E U T E R O N O M Y
CHAP. VII.
Moses in this chapter exhorts Israel,
I. In general, to keep God’s commandments,
II. In particular, and in order to that, to keep themselves pure from
all communion with idolaters.
1. They must utterly destroy the seven devoted nations, and not spare
them, or make leagues with them,
2. They must by no means marry with the remainders of them,
3. They must deface and consume their altars and images, and not so
much as take the silver and gold of them to their own use,
To enforce this charge, he shows that they were bound to do so,
(1.) In duty. Considering
[1.] Their election to God,
[2.] The reason of that election,
[3.] The terms they stood upon with God,
(2.) In interest. It is here promised,
[1.] In general, that, if they would serve God, he would bless and
prosper them,
[2.] In particular, that if they would drive out the nations, that they
might not be a temptation to them, God would drive them out, that they
should not be any vexation to them,
ver. 17, &c.
| A Caution Against Idolatry. | B. C. 1451. |
|
|
|
1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither
thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before
thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and
the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the
Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou;
2 And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee;
thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt
make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them:
3 Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter
thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou
take unto thy son.
4 For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they
may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled
against you, and destroy thee suddenly.
5 But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their
altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves,
and burn their graven images with fire.
6 For thou art a holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD
thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself,
above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
7 The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you,
because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the
fewest of all people:
8 But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the
oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought
you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of
bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
9 Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the
faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that
love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations;
10 And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy
them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay
him to his face.
11 Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the
statutes, and the judgments, which I command thee this day, to do
them.
Here is,
I. A very strict caution against all friendship and fellowship with
idols and idolaters. Those that are taken into communion with God must
have no communication with the unfruitful works of darkness. These
things they are charged about for the preventing of this snare now
before them.
1. They must show them no mercy,
v. 1, 2.
Bloody work is here appointed them, and yet it is God’s work, and good
work, and in its time and place needful, acceptable, and
honourable.
(1.) God here engages to do his part. It is spoken of as a thing taken
for granted that God would bring them into the land of promise,
that he would cast out the nations before them, who were the present
occupants of that land; no room was left to doubt of that. His power is
irresistible, and therefore he can do it; his promise is inviolable,
and therefore he will do it. Now,
[1.] These devoted nations are here named and numbered
(v. 1),
seven in all, and seven to one are great odds. They are
specified, that Israel might know the bounds and limits of their
commission: hitherto their severity must come, but no further; nor must
they, under colour of this commission, kill all that came in their way;
no, here must its waves be stayed. The confining of this commission to
the nations here mentioned plainly intimates that after-ages were not
to draw this into a precedent; this will not serve to justify those
barbarous laws which give no quarter. How agreeable soever this method
might be, when God himself prescribed it, to that dispensation under
which such multitudes of beasts were killed and burned in sacrifice,
now that all sacrifices of atonement are perfected in, and superseded
by, the great propitiation made by the blood of Christ, human blood has
become perhaps more precious than it was, and those that have most
power yet must not be prodigal of it.
[2.] They are here owned to be greater and mightier than Israel. They
had been long rooted in this land, to which Israel came strangers; they
were more numerous, had men much more bulky and more expert in war than
Israel had; yet all this shall not prevent their being cast out before
Israel. The strength of Israel’s enemies magnifies the power of
Israel’s God, who will certainly be too hard for them.
(2.) He engages them to do their part. Thou shalt smite them, and
utterly destroy them,
v. 2.
If God cast them out, Israel must not take them in, no, not as tenants,
nor tributaries, nor servants. Not covenant of any kind must be made
with them, no mercy must be shown them. This severity was appointed,
[1.] By way of punishment for the wickedness they and their fathers had
been guilty of. The iniquity of the Amorites was now full, and the
longer it had been in the filling the sorer was the vengeance when it
came at last.
[2.] In order to prevent the mischiefs they would do to God’s Israel if
they were left alive. The people of these abominations must not be
mingled with the holy seed, lest they corrupt them. Better that all
these lives should be lost from the earth than that religion and the
true worship of God should be lost in Israel. Thus we must deal with
our lusts that was against our souls; God has delivered them into our
hands by that promise, Sin shall not have dominion over you,
unless it be your own faults; let not us them make covenants with them,
nor show them any mercy, but mortify and crucify them, and utterly
destroy them.
2. They must make no marriages with those of them that escaped the
sword,
The families of the Canaanites were ancient, and it is probable that
some of them were called honourable, which might be a temptation
to the Israelites, especially those of them that were of least note in
their tribes, to court an alliance with them, to ennoble their blood;
and the rather because their acquaintance with the country might be
serviceable to them in the improvement of it: but religion, and the
fear of God, must overrule all these considerations. To intermarry
with them was therefore unlawful, because it was dangerous; this
very thing had proved of fatal consequence to the old world
(Gen. vi. 2),
and thousands in the world that now is have been undone by irreligious
ungodly marriages; for there is more ground of fear in mixed marriages
that the good will be perverted than of hope that the bad will be
converted. The event proved the reasonableness of this warning: They
will turn away thy son from following me. Solomon paid dearly for
his folly herein. We find a national repentance for this sin of
marrying strange wives, and care taken to reform
(Ezra ix. x., and Neh. xiii.),
and a New-Testament caution not to be unequally yoked with
unbelievers,
2 Cor. vi. 14.
Those that in choosing yokefellows keep not at least within the bounds
of a justifiable profession of religion cannot promise themselves helps
meet for them. One of the Chaldee paraphrases adds here, as a reason
of this command
(v. 3),
For he that marries with idolaters does in effect marry with their
idols.
3. They must destroy all the relics of their idolatry,
v. 5.
Their altars and pillars, their groves and graven images, all must be
destroyed, both in a holy indignation against idolatry and to prevent
infection. This command was given before,
A great deal of good work of this kind was done by the people, in their
pious zeal
and by good Josiah
and with this may be compared the burning of the conjuring books,
II. Here are very good reasons to enforce this caution.
1. The choice which God had made of this people for his own,
v. 6.
There was such a covenant and communion established between God and
Israel as was not between him and any other people in the world. Shall
they by their idolatries dishonour him who had thus honoured them?
Shall they slight him who had thus testified his kindness for them?
Shall they put themselves upon the level with other people, when God
had thus dignified and advanced them above all people? Had God taken
them to be a special people to him, and no other but them, and will not
they take God to be a special God to them, and no other but him?
2. The freeness of that grace which made this choice.
(1.) There was nothing in them to recommend or entitle them to this
favour. In multitude of the people is the king’s honour,
Prov. xiv. 28.
But their number was inconsiderable; they were only seventy souls when
they went down into Egypt, and, though greatly increased there, yet
there were many other nations more numerous: You were the fewest of
all people,
v. 7.
The author of the Jerusalem Targum passes too great a compliment upon
his nation in his reading this, You were humble in spirit, and meek
above all people; quite contrary: they were rather stiff-necked and
ill-natured above all people.
(2.) God fetched the reason of it purely from himself,
v. 8.
[1.] He loved you because he would love you. Even so, Father,
because it seemed good in thy eyes. All that God loves he loves freely,
Those that perish perish by their own merits, but all that are saved
are saved by prerogative.
[2.] He has done his work because he would keep his word. “He has
brought you out of Egypt in pursuance of the oath sworn to your
fathers.” Nothing in them, or done by them, did or could make God a
debtor to them; but he had made himself a debtor to his own promise,
which he would perform notwithstanding their unworthiness.
3. The tenour of the covenant into which they were taken; it was in
short this, That as they were to God so God would be to them. They
should certainly find him,
(1.) Kind to his friends,
v. 9.
“The Lord thy God is not like the gods of the nations, the creatures of
fancy, subjects fit enough for loose poetry, but no proper objects of
serious devotion; no, he is God, God indeed, God alone, the faithful
God, able and ready not only to fulfil his own promises, but to answer
all the just expectations of his worshippers, and he will certainly
keep covenant and mercy,” that is, “show mercy according to covenant,
to those that love him and keep his commandments” (and in vain
do we pretend to love him if we do not make conscience of his
commandments); “and this” (as is here added for the explication of the
promise in the second commandment) “not only to thousands of persons,
but to thousands of generations–so inexhaustible is the fountain, so
constant are the streams!”
(2.) Just to his enemies: He repays those that hate him,
v. 10.
Note,
[1.] Wilful sinners are haters of God; for the carnal mind is enmity
against him. Idolaters are so in a special manner, for they are in
league with his rivals.
[2.] Those that hate God cannot hurt him, but certainly ruin
themselves. He will repay them to their face, in defiance of them and
all their impotent malice. His arrows are said to be made ready
against the face of them,
Ps. xxi. 12.
Or, He will bring those judgments upon them which shall appear to
themselves to be the just punishment of their idolatry. Compare
He rewardeth him, and he shall know it. Though vengeance seem to
be slow, yet it is not slack. The wicked and sinner shall be
recompensed in the earth,
Prov. xi. 31.
I cannot pass the gloss of the Jerusalem Targum upon this place,
because it speaks the faith of the Jewish church concerning a future
state: He recompenses to those that hate him the reward of their
good works in this world, that he may destroy them in the world to
come.
12 Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these
judgments, and keep, and do them, that the LORD thy God shall
keep unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy
fathers:
13 And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he
will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land,
thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine,
and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy
fathers to give thee.
14 Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be
male or female barren among you, or among your cattle.
15 And the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will
put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon
thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.
16 And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God
shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them:
neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare
unto thee.
17 If thou shalt say in thine heart, These nations are more
than I; how can I dispossess them?
18 Thou shalt not be afraid of them: but shalt well remember
what the LORD thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt;
19 The great temptations which thine eyes saw, and the signs,
and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched out arm,
whereby the LORD thy God brought thee out: so shall the LORD thy
God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid.
20 Moreover the LORD thy God will send the hornet among them,
until they that are left, and hide themselves from thee, be
destroyed.
21 Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for the LORD thy God
is among you, a mighty God and terrible.
22 And the LORD thy God will put out those nations before thee
by little and little: thou mayest not consume them at once, lest
the beasts of the field increase upon thee.
23 But the LORD thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall
destroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.
24 And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou
shalt destroy their name from under heaven: there shall no man be
able to stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them.
25 The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire:
thou shalt not desire the silver or gold that is on them, nor
take it unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it is an
abomination to the LORD thy God.
26 Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house,
lest thou be a cursed thing like it: but thou shalt utterly
detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed
thing.
Here,
I. The caution against idolatry is repeated, and against communion with
idolaters: “Thou shalt consume the people, and not serve their gods.”
We are in danger of having fellowship with the works of darkness if we
take pleasure in fellowship with those that do those works. Here is
also a repetition of the charge to destroy the images,
The idols which the heathen had worshipped were an abomination to God,
and therefore must be so to them: all that truly love God hat what he
hates. Observe how this is urged upon them: Thou shalt utterly
detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; such a holy indignation
as this must we conceive against sin, that abominable thing which
the Lord hates. They must not retain the images to gratify their
covetousness: Thou shalt not desire the silver nor gold that is on
them, nor think it a pity to have that destroyed. Achan paid dearly
for converting that to his own use which was an anathema. Nor must they
retain them to gratify their curiosity: “Neither shalt thou bring it
into thy house, to be hung up as an ornament, or preserved as a
monument of antiquity. No, to the fire with it, that is the fittest
place for it.” Two reasons are given for this caution:–
1. Lest thou be snared therein
(v. 25),
that is, “Lest thou be drawn, ere thou art aware, to like it and love
it, to fancy it and pay respect to it”
2. Lest thou be a cursed thing like it,
v. 26.
Those that make images are said to be like the, stupid and senseless;
here they are said to be in a worse sense like them, accursed of God
and devoted to destruction. Compare these two reasons together, and
observe that whatever brings us into a snare brings us under a
curse.
II. The promise of God’s favour to them, if they would be obedient, is
enlarged upon with a most affecting copiousness and fluency of
expression, which intimates how much it is both God’s desire and our
own interest that we be religious. All possible assurance is here given
them,
1. That, if they would sincerely endeavour to do their part of the
covenant, God would certainly perform his part. He shall keep the
mercy which he swore to thy fathers,
v. 12.
Let us be constant in our duty, and we cannot question the constancy of
God’s mercy.
2. That if they would love God and serve him, and devote themselves and
theirs to him, he would love them, and bless them, and multiply them
greatly,
What could they desire more to make them happy?
(1.) “He will love thee.” He began in love to us
and, if we return his love in filial duty, then, and then only, we may
expect the continuance of it,
(2.) “He will bless thee with the tokens of his love above all people.”
If they would distinguish themselves from their neighbours by singular
services, God would dignify them above their neighbours by singular
blessings.
(3.) “He will multiply thee.” Increase was the ancient blessing
for the peopling of the world, once and again
and here for the peopling of Canaan, that little world by itself. The
increase both of their families and of their stock is promised: they
should neither have estates without heirs nor heirs without estates,
but should have the complete satisfaction of having many children and
plentiful provisions and portions for them.
3. That, if they would keep themselves pure from the idolatries of
Egypt, God would keep them clear form the diseases of Egypt,
v. 15.
It seems to refer not only to those plagues of Egypt by the force of
which they were delivered, but to some other epidemical country disease
(as we call it), which they remembered the prevalency of among the
Egyptians, and by which God had chastised them for their national sins.
Diseases are God’s servants; they go where he sends them, and do what
he bids them. It is therefore good for the health of our bodies to
mortify the sin of our souls.
4. That, if they would cut off the devoted nations, they
should cut them off, and none should be able to stand before
them. Their duty in this matter would itself be their advantage:
Thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall
deliver thee–this is the precept
(v. 16);
and the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy
them–this is the promise,
Thus we are commanded not to let sin reign, not to indulge ourselves in
it nor give countenance to it, but to hate it and strive against it;
and then God has promised that sin shall not have dominion over
us
but that we shall be more than conquerors over it. The difficulty and
doubtfulness of the conquest of Canaan having been a stone of stumbling
to their fathers, Moses here animates them against those things which
were most likely to discourage them, bidding them not to be afraid
of them,
v. 18,
and again,
(1.) Let them not be disheartened by the number and strength of their
enemies: Say not, They are more than I, how can I dispossess
them?
v. 17.
We are apt to think that the most numerous must needs be victorious:
but, to fortify Israel against this temptation, Moses reminds them of
the destruction of Pharaoh and all the power of Egypt,
They had seen the great temptations, or miracles (so the
Chaldee reads it), the signs and wonders, wherewith God had brought
them out of Egypt, in order to his bringing them into Canaan, and
thence might easily infer that God could dispossess the
Canaanites (who, though formidable enough, had not such advantages
against Israel as the Egyptians had; he that had done the greater could
do the less), and that he would dispossess them, otherwise his
bringing Israel out of Egypt had been no kindness to them. He that
begun would finish. Thou shalt therefore well remember this,
The word and works of God are well remembered when they are improved as
helps to our faith and obedience. That is well laid up which is ready
to us when we have occasion to use it.
(2.) Let them not be disheartened by the weakness and deficiency of
their own forces; for God will send them in auxiliary troops of
hornets, or wasps, as some read it
(v. 20),
probably larger than ordinary, which would so terrify and molest their
enemies (and perhaps be the death of many to them) that their most
numerous armies would become an easy prey to Israel. God plagued the
Egyptians with flies, but the Canaanites with hornets. Those who take
not warning by less judgments on others may expect greater on
themselves. But the great encouragement of Israel was that they had God
among them, a mighty God and terrible,
v. 21.
And if God be for us, if God be with us, we need not fear the power of
any creature against us.
(3.) Let them not be disheartened by the slow progress of their arms,
nor think that the Canaanites would never be subdued if they were not
expelled the first year; no, they must be put out by little and
little, and not all at once,
v. 22.
Note, We must not think that, because the deliverance of the church and
the destruction of its enemies are not effected immediately, therefore
they will never be effected. God will do his own work in his own method
and time, and we may be sure that they are always the best. Thus
corruption is driven out of the hearts of believers by little and
little. The work of sanctification is carried on gradually; but
that judgment will at length be brought forth into a complete victory.
The reason here given (as before,
is, Lest the beast of the field increase upon thee. The earth
God has given to the children of men; and therefore there shall rather
be a remainder of Canaanites to keep possession till Israel become
numerous enough to replenish it than that it should be a habitation of
dragons, and a court for the wild beasts of the desert,
Isa. xxxiv. 13, 14.
Yet God could have prevented this mischief from the beasts,
But pride and security, and other sins that are the common effects of a
settled prosperity, were enemies more dangerous than the beasts of the
field, and these would be apt to increase upon them. See
|
[Previous] [Next] |
Matthew Henry |
|
Back to Bibles Net . Com – Online Christian Library Matthew Henry’s Complete Commentary – Free Download |
Copyright 2008. Bibles Net. Com. All Rights Reserved.