25Your bars will be iron and bronze. As your days, so your strength will be.
26“There is no one like God, Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens for your help, in his excellency on the skies.
27The eternal God is your dwelling place. Underneath are the everlasting arms. He thrust out the enemy from before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’
28Israel dwells in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone, In a land of grain and new wine. Yes, his heavens drop down dew.
29You are happy, Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by Yahweh, the shield of your help, the sword of your excellency? Your enemies will submit themselves to you. You will tread on their high places.”
25 Your bars will be iron and bronze. As your days, so your strength will be.
26 “There is no one like God, Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens for your help, in his excellency on the skies.
27 The eternal God is your dwelling place. Underneath are the everlasting arms. He thrust out the enemy from before you, and said, ‘Destroy!’
28 Israel dwells in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone, In a land of grain and new wine. Yes, his heavens drop down dew.
29 You are happy, Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by Yahweh, the shield of your help, the sword of your excellency? Your enemies will submit themselves to you. You will tread on their high places.”
KJVKing James Version
25 Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
26 There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky.
27 The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them.
28 Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew.
29 Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the LORD, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.
Show all 3 translations
JPSJPS Tanakh (1917)
25 Iron and brass shall be thy bars; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
26 There is none like unto God, O Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven as thy help, and in His excellency on the skies.
27 The eternal God is a dwelling-place, and underneath are the everlasting arms; and He thrust out the enemy from before thee, and said: 'Destroy.'
28 And Israel dwelleth in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone, in a land of corn and wine; yea, his heavens drop down dew.
29 Happy art thou, O Israel, who is like unto thee? a people saved by the LORD, the shield of thy help, and that is the sword of thy excellency! And thine enemies shall dwindle away before thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.
Isaiah 41:10(v25)Don’t you be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. Yes, I will…
Psalms 138:3(v25)In the day that I called, you answered me. You encouraged me with strength in my soul.
Isaiah 40:29(v25)He gives power to the weak. He increases the strength of him who has no might.
Philippians 4:13(v25)I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.
Colossians 1:11(v25)strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, for all endurance and perseverance with joy,
Show all 100 cross-references
Psalms 90:1-2(v27)Lord, you have been our dwelling place for all generations. Before the mountains were born, before you had formed the earth and the world,…
Psalms 18:2(v27)Yahweh is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high…
2 Chronicles 16:9(v25)For Yahweh’s eyes run back and forth throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward…
Psalms 46:1(v27)God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Psalms 91:1-2(v27)He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of Yahweh, “He is my refuge and my…
Isaiah 25:4(v27)For you have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat, when…
Ephesians 6:10(v25)Finally, be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might.
Proverbs 18:10(v27)Yahweh’s name is a strong tower: the righteous run to him, and are safe.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10(v25)He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in…
Psalms 91:9(v27)Because you have made Yahweh your refuge, and the Most High your dwelling place,
Romans 16:20(v27)And the God of peace will quickly crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
1 Peter 1:5(v27)who by the power of God are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Deuteronomy 32:47(v25)For it is no vain thing for you, because it is your life, and through this thing you shall prolong your days in the land, where you go over…
Deuteronomy 4:40(v25)You shall keep his statutes and his commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you,…
Deuteronomy 8:9(v25)a land in which you shall eat bread without scarcity, you shall not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose…
Exodus 15:11(v26)Who is like you, Yahweh, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
Isaiah 26:4(v27)Trust in Yahweh forever; for in Yah, Yahweh, is an everlasting Rock.
Luke 15:22(v25)“But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe, and put it on him. Put a ring on his hand, and sandals on his feet.
1 Corinthians 10:13(v25)No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able,…
Ephesians 6:15(v25)and having fitted your feet with the preparation of the Good News of peace,
Isaiah 12:2(v29)Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid; for Yah, Yahweh, is my strength and song; and he has become my…
Isaiah 45:17(v29)Israel will be saved by Yahweh with an everlasting salvation. You will not be disappointed nor confounded to ages everlasting.
Jude 1:24(v27)Now to him who is able to keep them from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory in great joy,
Isaiah 32:2(v27)A man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the storm, as streams of water in a dry place, as the shade of a large…
Numbers 23:9(v28)For from the top of the rocks I see him. From the hills I see him. Behold, it is a people that dwells alone, and shall not be listed among…
Deuteronomy 4:7-8(v29)For what great nation is there that has a god so near to them as Yahweh our God is whenever we call on him? What great nation is there that…
Isaiah 43:11-13(v26)I myself am Yahweh. Besides me, there is no savior. I have declared, I have saved, and I have shown, and there was no strange god among…
Isaiah 57:15(v27)For the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy, says: “I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also who is of a…
Psalms 115:9-11(v29)Israel, trust in Yahweh! He is their help and their shield. House of Aaron, trust in Yahweh! He is their help and their shield. You who…
Jeremiah 10:6(v26)There is no one like you, Yahweh. You are great, and your name is great in might.
Habakkuk 3:8(v26)Was Yahweh displeased with the rivers? Was your anger against the rivers, or your wrath against the sea, that you rode on your horses, on…
Genesis 15:1(v29)After these things Yahweh’s word came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Don’t be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great…
Genesis 27:28(v28)God give you of the dew of the sky, of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and new wine.
Genesis 49:24(v27)But his bow remained strong. The arms of his hands were made strong, by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob, (from there is the shepherd,…
Exodus 33:16(v28)For how would people know that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Isn’t it that you go with us, so that we are separated,…
Numbers 23:20-24(v29)Behold, I have received a command to bless. He has blessed, and I can’t reverse it. He has not seen iniquity in Jacob. Neither has he seen…
2 Samuel 7:23(v29)What one nation in the earth is like your people, even like Israel, whom God went to redeem to himself for a people, and to make himself a…
Psalms 68:33-34(v26)To him who rides on the heaven of heavens, which are of old; behold, he utters his voice, a mighty voice. Ascribe strength to God! His…
Psalms 102:24(v27)I said, “My God, don’t take me away in the middle of my days. Your years are throughout all generations.
Psalms 104:3(v26)He lays the beams of his rooms in the waters. He makes the clouds his chariot. He walks on the wings of the wind.
Isaiah 9:6(v27)For a child is born to us. A son is given to us; and the government will be on his shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor,…
Isaiah 19:1(v26)The burden of Egypt. “Behold, Yahweh rides on a swift cloud, and comes to Egypt. The idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence; and the…
Jeremiah 10:10(v27)But Yahweh is the true God. He is the living God, and an everlasting King. At his wrath, the earth trembles. The nations aren’t able to…
John 10:28-29(v27)I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is…
Revelation 20:10(v27)The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet are also. They will be…
2 Samuel 22:45(v29)The foreigners will submit themselves to me. As soon as they hear of me, they will obey me.
Psalms 46:11(v27)Yahweh of Armies is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Psalms 84:11(v29)For Yahweh God is a sun and a shield. Yahweh will give grace and glory. He withholds no good thing from those who walk blamelessly.
Psalms 86:8(v26)There is no one like you among the gods, Lord, nor any deeds like your deeds.
Psalms 91:15(v27)He will call on me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble. I will deliver him, and honor him.
Proverbs 10:25(v27)When the whirlwind passes, the wicked is no more; but the righteous stand firm forever.
Song of Solomon 2:6(v27)His left hand is under my head. His right hand embraces me.
Isaiah 34:5-6(v29)For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky. Behold, it will come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, for judgment. Yahweh’s sword…
Jeremiah 23:6(v28)In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely. This is his name by which he will be called: Yahweh our righteousness.
Micah 5:2(v27)But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, being small among the clans of Judah, out of you one will come out to me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose…
1 Timothy 1:17(v27)Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
Hebrews 9:14(v27)how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience from…
Revelation 20:2-3(v27)He seized the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole inhabited earth, and bound him for a thousand…
Revelation 21:27(v28)There will in no way enter into it anything profane, or one who causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the…
Deuteronomy 7:2(v27)and when Yahweh your God delivers them up before you, and you strike them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant…
Deuteronomy 11:11(v28)but the land that you go over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of the sky,
Deuteronomy 32:13(v29)He made him ride on the high places of the earth. He ate the increase of the field. He caused him to suck honey out of the rock, oil out of…
Deuteronomy 32:15(v26)But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked. You have grown fat. You have grown thick. You have become sleek. Then he abandoned God who made him, and…
Judges 7:20(v29)The three companies blew the trumpets, broke the pitchers, and held the torches in their left hands and the trumpets in their right hands…
1 Samuel 15:29(v27)Also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.”
Psalms 18:10(v26)He rode on a cherub, and flew. Yes, he soared on the wings of the wind.
Psalms 18:44(v29)As soon as they hear of me they shall obey me. The foreigners shall submit themselves to me.
Psalms 27:5(v27)For in the day of trouble, he will keep me secretly in his pavilion. In the secret place of his tabernacle, he will hide me. He will lift…
Psalms 33:20(v29)Our soul has waited for Yahweh. He is our help and our shield.
Psalms 36:7(v27)How precious is your loving kindness, God! The children of men take refuge under the shadow of your wings.
Psalms 66:3(v29)Tell God, “How awesome are your deeds! Through the greatness of your power, your enemies submit themselves to you.
Psalms 68:26(v28)“Bless God in the congregations, even the Lord in the assembly of Israel!”
Psalms 144:15(v29)Happy are the people who are in such a situation. Happy are the people whose God is Yahweh.
Isaiah 40:18(v26)To whom then will you liken God? Or what likeness will you compare to him?
Isaiah 40:25(v26)“To whom then will you liken me? Who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
Jeremiah 33:16(v28)In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell safely. This is the name by which she will be called: Yahweh our righteousness.”
Habakkuk 3:19(v29)Yahweh, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like deer’s feet, and enables me to go in high places. For the music director, on my…
Luke 13:34(v27)“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children…
Philippians 3:9(v27)and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the…
Numbers 24:5(v29)How goodly are your tents, Jacob, and your dwellings, Israel!
Deuteronomy 9:3-5(v27)Know therefore today that Yahweh your God is he who goes over before you as a devouring fire. He will destroy them and he will bring them…
Deuteronomy 32:2(v28)My doctrine will drop as the rain. My speech will condense as the dew, as the misty rain on the tender grass, as the showers on the herb.
Deuteronomy 33:13(v28)About Joseph he said, “His land is blessed by Yahweh, for the precious things of the heavens, for the dew, for the deep that couches…
Joshua 10:24-25(v29)When they brought those kings out to Joshua, Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the chiefs of the men of war who went…
Psalms 7:12(v29)If a man doesn’t repent, he will sharpen his sword; he has bent and strung his bow.
Psalms 33:12(v29)Blessed is the nation whose God is Yahweh, the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance.
Psalms 45:3(v29)Strap your sword on your thigh, mighty one: your splendor and your majesty.
Psalms 46:7(v27)Yahweh of Armies is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge.
Psalms 48:3(v27)God has shown himself in her citadels as a refuge.
Psalms 68:4(v26)Sing to God! Sing praises to his name! Extol him who rides on the clouds: to Yah, his name! Rejoice before him!
Proverbs 5:15-18(v28)Drink water out of your own cistern, running water out of your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, streams of water in…
Isaiah 27:1(v29)In that day, Yahweh with his hard and great and strong sword will punish leviathan, the fleeing serpent, and leviathan the twisted serpent;…
Isaiah 66:8(v26)Who has heard of such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as…
Jeremiah 12:12(v29)Destroyers have come on all the bare heights in the wilderness; for the sword of Yahweh devours from the one end of the land even to the…
Romans 8:2(v27)For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
100 distinct cross-references across this passage (110 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (19 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Geneva Bible translators1599 · Public DomainOn vv25, 28, 29Thou shalt be strong, or thy country full of…
Thou shalt be strong, or thy country full of metal. It seemeth that Simeon is left out, because he was under Judah, and his portion of his inheritance, Josh. 19:9.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp1656 · Public DomainOn vv25–29Deu 33:25 Thy shoes [shall be] iron and brass;…
Deu 33:25 Thy shoes [shall be] iron and brass; and as thy days, [so shall] thy strength [be].
Ver. 25. Thy shoes.] Thou shalt have store of mines.
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And as thy days shall thy strength be,] i.e., Thou shalt {as Eliphaz speaketh, Job 5:26} come in a lusty old age to the grave. This the Greeks call ευγηρια. And the Hebrews made a feast when they were past sixty, if any whit healthy.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole1685 · Public DomainOn vv25–29Thy shoes shall be iron and brass: this may…
Thy shoes shall be iron and brass: this may note either,
1. Their great strength, by which they should be able to tread down and crush their enemies, as Christ’s feet for this very reason are said to be of brass, Rev 1:15. Or,
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2. The mines of iron and copper, which were in their portion, whence Sidon their neighbour was famous among the heathens for its plenty of brass and iron, and Sarepta is thought to have its name from the brass and iron, which were melted there in great quantity. Compare Deu 8:9. Or,
3. The strength of its situation; and so some ancients and modems render the words, thy habitation or thy enclosure shall be iron and brass, i.e. fortified as it were with walls and gates of iron and brass, being defended by the sea on one side, by their brethren on other sides, as also by mountains and rivers.
So shall thy strength be, i.e. thy strength shall not be diminished with thine age, but thou shalt have the rigour of youth even in thine old age; thy tribe shall grow stronger and stronger.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry1710 · Public DomainOn v26These are the last words of all that ever…
These are the last words of all that ever Moses, that great writer, that great dictator, either wrote himself or had written from his dictation; they are therefore very remarkable, and no doubt we shall find them very improving. Moses, the man of God (who had as much reason as ever any mere man had to know both), with his last breath magnifies both the God of Israel and the Israel of God. They are both incomparable in his eye; and we are sure that in this his judgment of both his eye did not wax dim.
I. No God like the God of Israel. None of the gods of the nations were capable of doing that for their worshippers which Jehovah did for his: There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, Deu 33:26. Note, When we are expecting that God should bless us in doing well for us we must bless him by speaking well of him: and one of the most solemn ways of praising God is by acknowledging that there is none like him. Now, 1. This was the honour of Israel. Every nation boasted of its god; but none had such a God to boast of as Israel had. 2. It was their happiness that they were taken into covenant with such a God. Two things he takes notice of as proofs of the incontestable pre-eminence of the God of Jeshurun above all other gods: (1.) His sovereign power and authority: He rides upon the heavens, and with the greatest state and magnificence on the skies. Riding on the heavens denotes his greatness and glory, in which he manifests himself to the upper world, and the use he makes of the influences of heaven, and the productions of the clouds, in bringing to pass his own counsels in this lower world: he manages and directs them as a man does the horse he rides on. When he has any thing to do for his people he rides upon the heavens to do it; for he does it swiftly and strongly: no enemy can either anticipate or obstruct the progress of him that rides on the heavens. (2.) His boundless eternity; he is the eternal God, and his arms are everlasting, Deu 33:27. The gods of the heathen were but lately invented, and would shortly perish; but the God of Jeshurun is eternal: he was before all worlds, and will be when time and days shall be no more. See Hab 1:12.
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II. No people like the Israel of God. Having pronounced each tribe happy, in the close he pronounces all together very happy, so happy in all respects that there was no nation under the sun comparable to them (Deu 33:29): Happy art thou, O Israel, a people whose God is the Lord, on that account truly happy, and none like unto thee. If Israel honour God as a non-such God, he will favour them so as to make them a non-such people, the envy of all their neighbours and the joy of all their well-wishers. Who is like unto thee, O people? Behold, thou art fair, my love, says Christ of his spouse. To which she presently returns, Behold thou art fair, my beloved. What one nation (no, not all the nations together) is like thy people Israel? Sa2 7:23. What is here said of the church of Israel and the honours and privileges of it is certainly to be applied to the church of the first-born, that are written in heaven. The Christian church is the Israel of God, as the apostle calls it (Gal 6:16), on which there shall be peace, and which is dignified above all societies in the world, as Israel was.
1. Never were people so well seated and sheltered (Deu 33:27): The eternal God is thy refuge. Or, as the word signifies, "thy habitation, or mansion-house, in which thou art safe, and easy, and at rest, as a man in his own house." Every Israelite indeed is at home in God; the soul returns to him, and reposes in him as its resting-place (Psa 116:7), its hiding-place, Psa 32:7. And those that make him their habitation shall have all the comforts and benefits of a habitation in him, Psa 91:1. Moses had an eye to God as the habitation of Israel when they were wandering in the wilderness (Psa 90:1): Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. And now that they were going to settle in Canaan they must not change their habitation; still they will need, and still they shall have, the eternal God for their dwelling-place; without him Canaan itself would be a wilderness, and a land of darkness.
2. Never were people so well supported and borne up: Underneath are the everlasting arms; that is, the almighty power of God is engaged for the protection and consolation of all that trust in him, in their greatest straits and distresses, and under the heaviest burdens. The everlasting arms shall support, (1.) The interests of the church in general, that they shall not sink, or be run down; underneath the church is that rock of ages on which it is built, and against which the gates of hell shall never prevail, Mat 16:18. (2.) The spirits or particular believers, so that, though they may be oppressed, they shall not be overwhelmed by any trouble. How low soever the people of God are at any time brought, everlasting arms are underneath them to keep the spirit from sinking, from fainting, and the faith from failing, even when they are pressed above measure. The everlasting covenant, and the everlasting consolations that flow from it, are indeed everlasting arms, with which believers have been wonderfully sustained, and kept cheerful in the worst of times; divine grace is sufficient for them, Co2 12:9.
3. Never were people so well commanded and led on to battle: "He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee by his almighty power, which will make room for thee; and by a commission which will bear thee out he shall say, Destroy them." They were now entering upon a land that was in the full possession of a strong and formidable people, and who, being its first planters, looked upon themselves as its rightful owners; how shall Israel justify, and how shall they accomplish, the expulsion of them? (1.) God will give them a commission to destroy the Canaanites, and that will justify them, and bear them out in it, against all the world. He that is sovereign Lord of all lives and all lands not only allowed and permitted, but expressly commanded and appointed the children of Israel both to take possession of the land of Canaan and to put the sword to the people of Canaan, which, being thus authorized, they might not only lawfully but honourably do, without incurring the least stain or imputation of theft by the one or murder by the other. (2.) God will give them power and ability to destroy them; nay, he will in effect do it to their hands: he will thrust out the enemy from before them; for the very fear of Israel shall put them to flight. God drive out the heathen to plant his people, Psa 44:2. Thus believers are more than conquerors over their spiritual enemies, through Christ that loved them. The captain of our salvation thrust out the enemy from before us when he overcame the world and spoiled principalities and powers on the cross; and the word of command to us is, "Destroy them; pursue the victory, and you shall divide the spoil."
4. Never were people so well secured and protected (Deu 33:28): Israel shall then dwell in safety alone. Those that dwell in God, and make his name their strong tower, dwell in safety; the place of their defence is the munitions of rocks, Isa 33:16. They shall dwell in safety alone. (1.) Though alone. Though they contract no alliances with their neighbours, nor have any reason to expect help or succour from any of them, yet they shall dwell in safety; they shall really be safe, and they shall think themselves so. (2.) Because alone. They shall dwell in safety as long as they continue pure, and unmixed with the heathen, a singular and peculiar people. Their distinction from other nations, though it made them like a speckled bird (Jer 12:9), and exposed them to the ill-will of those about them, yet was really their preservation from the mischief their neighbours wished them, as it kept them under the divine protection. All that keep close to God shall be kept safely by him. It is promised that in the kingdom of Christ Israel shall dwell safely, Jer 23:6.
5. Never were people so well provided for: The fountain of Jacob (that is, the present generation of that people, which is as the fountain to all the streams that shall hereafter descend and be derived from it) shall now presently be fixed upon a good land. The eye of Jacob (so it might be read, for the same word signifies a fountain and an eye) is upon the land of corn and wine, that is, where they now lay encamped they had Canaan in their eye, it was just before their faces, on the other side the river, and they would have it in their hands and under their feet quickly. This land upon which they had set their eye was blessed both with the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven; it was a land of corn and wine, substantial and useful productions: also his heavens (as if the heavens were particularly designed to be blessings to that land) shall drop down dew, without which, though the soil were ever so good, the corn and wine would soon fail. Every Israelite indeed has his eye, the eye of faith, upon the better country, the heavenly Canaan, which is richly replenished with better things than corn and wine.
6. Never were people so well helped. If they were in any strait, God himself rode upon the heavens for their help, Deu 33:26. And they were a people saved by the Lord, Deu 33:29. If they were in danger of any harm, or in want of any good, they had an eternal God to go to, an almighty power to trust to; nothing could hurt those whom God helped, nor was it possible that the people should perish which was saved by the Lord. Those that are added to the gospel Israel are such as shall be saved, Act 2:47.
7. Never were people so well armed. God himself was the shield of their help by whom they were armed defensively, and sufficiently guarded against all assailants: and he was the sword of their excellency, by whom they were armed offensively, and made both formidable and successful in all their wars. God is called the sword of their excellency because, in fighting for them, he made them to excel other people, or because in all he did for them he had an eye to his sanctuary among them, which is called the excellency of Jacob, Psa 47:4; Eze 24:21; Amo 6:8. Those in whose hearts is the excellency of holiness have God himself for their shield and sword - are defended by the whole armour of God; his word is their sword, and faith in it is their shield, Eph 6:16, Eph 6:17.
8. Never were people so well assured of victory over their enemies: They shall be found liars unto thee; That is, "shall be forced to submit to thee sorely against their will, so that it will be but a counterfeit submission; yet the point shall be gained, for thou shalt tread upon their necks" (so the Septuagint), which we find done, Jos 10:24. "Thou shalt tread down their strong-holds, be they ever so high, and trample upon their palaces and temples, though esteemed ever so sacred. If thy enemies be found liars to thee" (so some read it), "thou shalt tread upon their high places; if they will not be held by the bonds of leagues and treaties, they shall be broken by the force of war." Thus shall the God of peace tread Satan under the feet of all believers, and shall do it shortly, Rom 16:20.
Now lay all this together, and then you will say, Happy art thou, O Israel! Who is like unto thee, O people! Thrice happy the people whose God is the Lord.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill1763 · Public DomainOn vv25–28There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun,....…
There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun,.... Or Israel, as all the three Targums; for this is one of the names of the people of Israel; See Gill on Deu 32:15; and the Lord was their God in a special sense, having chosen, redeemed them, and made a covenant with them; and there is no God like him for the perfections of his nature, his purity and holiness, his goodness, wisdom, power, faithfulness, &c. and for the wonderful works of nature, providence, and grace, done by him; and for the blessings of goodness, temporal and spiritual, he bestows on men. The tribes being particularly blessed, the whole body of the people are pronounced happy, and whose happiness is enlarged on in Deu 33:26,
who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky; which he has the sovereign rule and disposal of, and can and does dispose of all the artillery therein, as illustrious proofs of his glory and excellency, and for the help of his people, and the destruction of their enemies; as when he sent forth hail, thunderings, and lightnings, upon the Egyptians, and frightened them; and cast down hailstones upon the Canaanites, and slew many of them; and when the stars in their course fought against Sisera; see Psa 68:4 Jdg 5:20.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley1765 · Public DomainOn vv25–29Iron and brass - The mines of iron and…
Iron and brass - The mines of iron and copper, which were in their portion, whence Sidon their neighbour was famous among the Heathens for its plenty of brass, and Sarepta is thought to have its name from the brass and iron which were melted there in great quantity. Thy strength shall be - Thy strength shall not be diminished with age, but thou shalt have the vigour of youth even in thine old age: thy tribe shalt grow stronger and stronger.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke1810 · Public DomainOn vv25–29Verse 25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass]…
Verse 25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass] Some suppose this may refer to the iron and copper mines in their territory; but it is more likely that it relates to their warlike disposition, as we know that greaves, boots, shoes, c., of iron, brass, and tin, were used by ancient warriors. Goliath had greaves of brass on his legs, 1Sa 17:6 and the brazen-booted Greeks, χαλκοκνημιδες Αχαιοι, is one of the epithets given by Homer to his heroes; see Iliad. lib. viii., ver. 41.
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.] If we take this clause as it appears here, we have at once an easy sense; and the saying, I have no doubt, has comforted the souls of multitudes. The meaning is obvious: "Whatever thy trials or difficulties may be, I shall always give thee grace to support thee under and bring thee through them." The original is only two words, the latter of which has been translated in a great variety of ways, וכימיך דבאך ucheyameycha dobecha. Of the first term there can be no doubt, it literally means, and as thy days; the second word, דבא dobe, occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible: the Septuagint have rendered it by ισχυς, strength, and most of the versions have followed them; but others have rendered it affliction, old age, fame, weakness, c., c. It would be almost endless to follow interpreters through their conjectures concerning its meaning. It is allowed among learned men, that where a word occurs not as a verb in the Hebrew Bible, its root may be legitimately sought in the Arabic. He who controverts this position knows little of the ground on which he stands. In this language the root is found [Arabic] daba signifies he rested, was quiet. This gives a very good sense, and a very appropriate one for as the borders of this tribe lay on the vicinity of the Phoenicians, it was naturally to be expected that they should be constantly exposed to irruptions, pillage, c. but God, to give them confidence in his protection, says, According to thy days - all circumstances and vicissitudes, so shall thy REST be - while faithful to thy God no evil shall touch thee; thy days shall increase, and thy quiet be lengthened out. This is an unfailing promise of God: "I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon me, because he trusteth in me;" therefore "trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength;" Isa 26:4. Some derive it from [Arabic] dabi, he abounded in riches; the interpretation then would be, As thy days increase, so shall thy riches. This makes a very good sense also. See Rosenmuller.
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Moses, having now finished what God gave him to predict concerning the twelve tribes, and what he was led in the fulness of his heart to pray for in their behalf, addresses all the tribes collectively under the names Jeshurun and Israel; and in an ode of astonishing energy and elegance describes this wondrous people, and their still more wonderful privileges. The reader will observe that, though the latter part of this chapter appears in the form of prose in our Bibles, yet it is written in hemistichs or short metrical lines in the original, which is the form in which all the Hebrew poetry is written; and as in other cases, so in this, it would contribute much to the easy understanding of the author's meaning, were the translation produced in lines corresponding to those of the original.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson1811 · Public DomainOn vv25–29Deu 33:25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass…
Deu 33:25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass — They must have had great plenty of both these metals before they could make, or rather adorn their shoes with them, as was the custom among some nations. But we may render the words, Under thy feet shall be iron and brass, namely, mines of those metals; or, thy bolts, or bars, shall be iron and brass, for so the word here rendered shoes is translated, Son 5:5; Neh 3:3; Neh 3:6; Neh 3:13-15. Sidon, which was famous among the heathen for its plenty of brass, was in the tribe of Asher; and Sarepta is thought to have had its name from the brass and iron which were melted there in great quantities. As thy days, thy strength shall be — Thy strength shall not be diminished with age, but thou shalt have the vigour of youth even in thy old age; thy tribe shall grow stronger and stronger. Or the words may mean, that, during their continuance as a tribe, they should not meet with any remarkable disasters, or be brought low, but continue in their full strength.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes1834 · Public DomainOn vv25–29The strength and firmness of Asher is as if…
The strength and firmness of Asher is as if he were shod with iron and brass (compare Rev 1:15). The territory of this tribe probably contained iron and copper. Compare the marginal reference.
As thy days, so shall thy strength be - i. e., “thy strength” (some prefer “thy rest”) “shall be continued to thee as long as thou shalt live: thou shalt never know feebleness and decay.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary1859 · Public DomainOn vv25–29Iron and brass, to denote the warlike disposition of…
Iron and brass, to denote the warlike disposition of this tribe. Goliah[Goliath], and the heroes before Troy, wore boots of brass, 1 Kings xvii. 6. (Homer) --- The greatest part of the army of Antiochus had even golden nails in their shoe soles, (Val. Max.) while the Romans contented themselves with iron. (Josephus, Jewish Wars vii. 3.) --- But this custom was not peculiar to the soldiers. People of all descriptions did the like, either for ornament, or to make their sandals last longer. Empedocles wore brass at the bottom of his sandals; (Laertius viii.) and as one of them was thrown out from the top of Mount Etna, it was discovered that he had destroyed himself in that volcano, to make people suppose (Calmet) that he was a god, and had gone up to heaven. (Haydock) --- Clement of Alexandria (Pœd. ii.) complains, that some wore such gaudy ornaments in his days. (Calmet) --- This passage is interpreted in a figurative sense by some, as if Aser would trample under his feet and despise the instruments of war, (Jansenius) and would turn those metals to the purposes of agriculture. Others render the Hebrew, "Thy bars shall be of iron and brass, and thy reputation (strength, repose, or sorrow) shall endure as long as thy life; or May they, " &c., in the form of a wish. Moses desires that Aser may be secure against his enemies, as if he had a mind to insinuate, that this tribe would be led captive among the first by Teglathphalasar, 4 Kings xv. 29. Many of the cities of this tribe were strongly fortified. (Josephus) --- If we adopt thy sorrow shall, &c., we must observe, that the neighbourhood of Phœnicians exposed the people to continual incursions, (Calmet) and the king of Assyria at last came to complete their ruin. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown1871 · Public DomainOn vv25, 26, 28shoes of iron and brass--These shoes suited his rocky…
shoes of iron and brass--These shoes suited his rocky coast from Carmel to Sidon. Country people as well as ancient warriors had their lower extremities protected by metallic greaves (Sa1 17:6; Eph 6:15) and iron-soled shoes.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon1874 · Public DomainOn vv25–2925. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass —…
25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass — Better, Thy castles shall be iron and brass; that is, his strongholds shall be impregnable.
As thy days, so shall thy strength be — All thy days let thy strength be continued to thee.
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Deu_33:26-29 contain the conclusion of the blessing, and bring out in clear light the power of God and the safety of his people.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges1878 · Public DomainOn vv25–2925. ears] Heb. melîlôth only here; N.H. melîlah =…
25. ears] Heb. melîlôth only here; N.H. melîlah = the still soft ears.
sickle] See on Deu_16:9.
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25. bars] Heb. min‘al, found only here, but the meaning is confirmed by that of the similar form man‘ul, Neh_3:3, etc., and by the Sam. The shoes of A.V. and R.V. marg. and the LXX ὑπόδημα are a false conjecture from na‘al, sandal. Thy, LXX his.
iron and brass] Or possibly basalt and bronze; see on Deu_8:9.
strength] So Sam., LXX, Targ., perhaps reading robe’ for the Heb. dobe’, which is not found elsewhere and is of unknown meaning. Some render rest after the doubtful analogy of Ar.; Vulg. old age, as if reading d’b for db’.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers1878 · Public DomainOn vv25–29(25) Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.—Perhaps we…
(25) Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.—Perhaps we should rather read, thy bars shall be iron and brass. The word here rendered “shoes” in the Authorised Version does not occur elsewhere. The nearest word to it means “locks” or “fastenings.” It is also uncertain whether the whole sentence belongs to the blessing of Asher, or to all Israel. It seems most likely that, as Asher’s territory was at the northern end of Palestine, close to the pass by which the most formidable invaders must enter in, an assurance is here given that the frontier of Israel should be safe. “Iron” and “brass” are mentioned together in connection with gates and bars in Psa_107:16; Isa_45:2. But they are not usually connected with “shoes” in the Old Testament.
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.—The word for “strength” does not occur elsewhere in the Old Testament, but the Targums and the LXX., and other authorities, seem to agree in its interpretation, and the form of the word points to this meaning, “strength,” so that there is little doubt as to its correctness. But the meaning of the clause is variously given by Jewish authorities. “Thy strength in old ago shall be as the strength of thy youth;” or, “As thou spendest thy days (in doing the will of the Holy One or not), so shall thy strength be.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary1880 · Public DomainOn vv26–29Vers. 26-29. As Moses commenced by celebrating the glorious…
Vers. 26-29. As Moses commenced by celebrating the glorious majesty of Jehovah when he appeared to establish his covenant with Israel, so he concludes with a reference to God as the eternal Refuge and the saving Help of his people.
There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun. The points and accents direct that this should be read, There is none like God, O Jeshurun; and though all the ancient versions read as does the Authorized Version, the Masoretic punctuation is vindicated here by the following thy help, which shows that Israel is here addressed.
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Vers. 26-29. The glory of Israel"s God, and the blessedness of God"s Israel.
Ere Moses quite throws up his task, he gives us his view of Israel as a whole. He has had a word of blessing for tribe by tribe, and now he takes one last look at the whole nation, and viewing it in the light of that eternal world on which he is so soon to enter, his words are richer, riper, sweeter than any we yet have read. The name he gives to the people is very significant The word is found but four times in the Scriptures, viz. in Deu_32:15 Deu_33:5, Deu_33:26; Isa_44:2. Itseems to be a kind of diminutive from rv) and in the passage before us it appears to be used as a term of admiration and endearment; some would think it equivalent to "a righteous little people" (see Gesenius). Anyway, the root-notion of the word is connected with righteousness. And the fundamental conception which Moses has of the nation is that it is a nation in covenant with Jehovah on the righteous basis of sacrifice, and that it is one, moreover, which has righteousness for the corner-stone of its constitution and polity. And he pronounces them blessed in two senses: they have a God who is infinitely greater than all gods; they have privileges which make them greater than all other peoples. Hence we have a double theme to meditate upon, from the evangelic standpoint.
I NONE IS SO GLORIOUS AS ISRAEL"S GOD. It is one mark of Divine condescension that our God lets his people speak of him in language they can best understand; e.g. "None like unto the God of Jeshurun" is a phrase which would seem to imply that there may be some other gods, but none equal to the one God (cf. Mic_7:18; 1Sa_2:2) whereas in fact there is no other. Still, men of other nations worshipped other beings whom they deemed to be gods; and Israel"s God, in his infinite condescension, suffers himself to be put in contrast from them, although he is God alone.
1. He is "the eternal God." The word rendered "eternal" here is one which refers to God"s having existed from the eternal past. "From everlasting" he is God he is Jehovah. He changes not.
2. He is one who "rideth above the heaven," etc.; he is over all. In the glory of his transcendent majesty, all things are under his feet. "He maketh the clouds his chariot; he walketh upon the wings of the wind.
3. He is one who bears up Israel and all things in his arms. "Underneath are the everlasting arms arms spread out, expanded with the intent of bearing all. Everlasting arms," that will remain thus spread out and bearing all to eternity, without weariness, though they have borne the weight of all things from eternity.
4. He is one whose active energies are ever going before his people, to "thrust out" their enemies. Whatever would obstruct them shall be taken out of the way.
5. He himself is and will be the Dwelling-place in which his people can abide. Thy Refuge". (see Psa_90:1 Psa_91:2, Psa_91:9; Isa_4:6) It is not at all unlikely that the figure of God as a permanent Home to his people suggested itself to Moses by way of contrast, as the people had lived such a wandering life, and abode in tabernacles (so Keil). Let these five features which mark Israel"s God be put together. May we not well say, "Who is like to the God of Jeshurun?
II NONE CAN BE SO BLESSED AS GOD"S ISRAEL. This is seen whether we consider what God is to them, or what they have and are in, through, and from God.
1. Their blessedness arises from what God is to them; it is an incomparable blessedness. For:
(1) Who else has an eternal God?
(2) Who else has one so great in majesty?
(3) Who else has one so strong to bear?
(4) Who else has one so mighty to defend?
(5) Who else has one in whom is such a home?
Each of these five points, the correlatives of those under the first head, requires expansion.
2. It arises also from what they have and are in and through God.
(1) They have security. "Israel shall dwell in safety.
(2) Plenty shall be theirs. "The fountain Of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine." "They that fear the Lord shall not want any good thing.
(3) They shall have refreshment. "His heavens shall drop down dew." God will be "as the dew unto Israel.
(4) Victory shall be theirs.
(a) "Thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee: i.e. they threatened to destroy, and they are proved false.
(b) "Thou shalt tread upon their high places;" i.e. the high and fortified places in which they gloried shall be as ramparts over which you shall walk.
Who can desire to be more blessed than this? Yea, who can conceive of a greater blessedness? Is it not enough to set the heart a-longing? May not the remark be appropriately made in closing, that
It behooves each one of us to make sure that we are of the Israel of God, so that we may know this blessedness is ours!
Vers. 26-29. Israel"s happiness.
A noble climax! The round of blessing has been completed, and the dying lawgiver revels in the thought of the greatness and felicity thence resulting to favored Israel. One by one the tribes have passed before his eye, and he has sketched in outline, not indeed their actual future, but what might have been, what would have been their future, had they remained faithful to their God. The picture is largely an ideal one, though in the after-history of the tribes, in the lots assigned to them in Canaan, in the types of character exhibited by them, in the variety of their callings and destinies as in the ruins of a temple we may trace something of its original design we discern the fulfillment of many features of the prophecy. Moses" blessing on the tribes is at once a wish, a prayer, and a prediction: a wish that certain blessings may be theirs; a prayer that the blessings may be given; and a prediction of what, conditionally on obedience, would actually be realized. Reading the blessings, we think, as in the parable, of servants entrusted with certain talents to be used in their Lord"s service, but capable of making a bad as well as a good use of them. (Mat_25:14-31) The tribes, speaking generally, used theirs badly, and the blessings were not fulfilled. What applies to the blessing as a whole applies especially to this magnificent concluding passage. It is the ideal, not the actual Israel which stands here before the great lawgiver"s eye, and the language applies to the actual, only in so far as it was also the ideal, people of Jehovah. Its full application is to the Church of Christ the Church catholic and invisible.
I THE BASIS OF ISRAEL"S HAPPINESS, viz. the relation which the tribes sustained to the eternal God. He was the God of Jeshurun of the righteous people. He was a God bound to them by covenant. They had been saved by him. He was their changeless Dwelling-place, Defender, and Support. All power in heaven and earth was at their service, and engaged for their defense. They had nothing to fear with a Protector so almighty; they had everything to hope for from one so able to save and bless. Precisely similar is the relation of God in Christ to the Church of believers.
II THE GREATNESS OF IT.
1. Complete as regards its elements. No element of good a-wanting. Rising from natural blessings, and safety and protection against enemies, they had also, in the favor of God and communion with him, every pledge of spiritual blessing.
2. Permanent. Enduring as the eternal God.
3. Exalting and ennobling to the soul of its possessor. Such a relation to God as Israel sustained should have wrought in the people, did in part work in them, a surpassing elevation of consciousness; was fitted to raise thought and feeling to the pitch of sublimity; should have made of them a great nation, in the best sense of the words, a nation great in thought, aspiration, and endeavor heroically great. A like elevation of spirit should characterize the people of Christ. J.O.
Vers. 26-29. The incomparable Savior.
In finishing the blessing of the people, Moses cannot refrain from bursting into a tribute of admiration for him who had brought them thus far. He speaks of God"s incomparable excellency, and how happy Israel was in relying upon his power. We shall notice the two thoughts in this order as cause and effect.
I THE INCOMPARABLE EXCELLENCY OF GOD. This is brought out in several particulars. And:
1. God is incomparably excellent in himself. He "rideth upon the heaven in his help, and in his excellency on the sky." The reference is believed to be to the Shechinah cloud, which passed in calm majesty along the upper heavens to indicate to Israel, or "Jeshurun," as Israel is here called, the way they should take. In no more beautiful way could God"s essential sovereignty be brought out. He moves in calm majesty among the spheres, the Ruler because Maker of them all. No one can for a moment be compared with him.
2. God is incomparably excellent as the Savior of his people. Israel experienced his help in the deliverance from Egypt, in the pilgrimage to Palestine, and they were about to experience still further favor in the success of the invasion. The language is most beautiful by which all this is conveyed. "The eternal God is thy Refuge;" to him who dwells in the eternities and who orders their processions, the difficulties of time must be as nothing. "Underneath are the everlasting arms," no weariness ever overtaking arms which are full of everlasting strength. "He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them." Now, in all this we have a figure of the salvation which God extends still to men.
1. He delivers us from the bondage of sin;
2. he justifies us freely from all things;
3. he sanctifies us by his Spirit;
4. he protects and delivers us from all our enemies.
II THE CONSEQUENT HAPPINESS OF ISRAEL. What distinguishes Israel and renders them a happy people is the possession of such an incomparable Savior. It is not in Israel themselves, but in their God, that the cause of their happiness dwells. And is is well to remember this.
1. Frames and feelings are no proper foundation for our spiritual confidence. Anxious souls prolong their anxiety and postpone their peace by excessive introspection. Instead of occupying themselves with the incomparable excellency of their Savior, they occupy themselves with the incomparable vileness of their own hearts. No peace and joy can come from within.
2. The changeless Savior is a true Foundation for our confidence and hope. It is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever," in whom we are asked to confide. He has every excellency which our necessities demand. He has the atonement and the sympathy and the intercessory powers we need to free us from deserved penalties and fit us for undeserved blessing.
3. We stand in consequence as an expectant people awaiting our entrance to the land of promise. For it is to be noticed that Israel were not only happy in their experience, but happy also in their hopes. They were about to enter the Promised Land. There they were to dwell safely alone, like the heavenly state where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." They are to have plenty of corn and wine, as the redeemed have in heaven, where they eat angels" food and drink the new wine of the kingdom. They are to dwell under the fertilizing dews of heaven, as the redeemed shall under the benedictions of God. In hope, then, Israel was happy: and we too may "rejoice in hope of the glory of God. R.M.E.
Vers. 26-29. God, the crown of Israel"s glory.
As soon as Moses touches upon ills theme, language seems too poor to express the greatness of his thought too cold to convey the glowing ardor of his love. Here all metaphors fail; all comparisons are vain. God is above all imagery, or metaphor, or illustration. As there is none like him, so nothing can fitly express his deeds towards his chosen, tits conduct is, like himself, ineffable. As heaven is loftier than earth, so do God"s thoughts and ways transcend human conception.
I OBSERVE ISRAEL"S SOURCE OF GREATNESS. Without question, Israel"s source of greatness is God. Inconceivable as it is to mortal minds, the eternal Sovereign of the universe has come into intimate alliance with his chosen people. He is not simply God the abstract Deity he is the "God of Jeshurun." His eternity is brought into human use is available for human needs. In the eternal and unchangeable God we may dwell. He is our Refuge, our Dwelling-place, our Sanctuary. All the resources of his omnipotence are for us: beneath us "are the everlasting arms." But hath God arms? Hath he human members and organs? "He that formed the eye, shall he not see?" He that fashioned our arms and hands, hath he no instruments with which to support our sinking frame? Yea, "in him we live.
All the activities of his providential government are for us. "He rideth upon the heavens," like a king in his chariot, for our help. This is true, both for Israel collectively, and for every individual believer. In every decree that issues from his throne, he has us in view. All the machinery of his extended providence works with one design, viz. our advantage. He thinks, and plans, and executes, and overturns for one main end the final redemption of his people. God and we are one.
II ISRAEL"S SAFETY. "Thou shalt dwell in safety alone." From the foregoing premise, this is a sound and certain conclusion. "If God be for us," who can assail us successfully? What can prevail against omnipotence? What can penetrate the thick bosses of Jehovah"s shield? Fear in suck a case is unreasonable disloyalty. This globe must be shivered into a thousand atoms, all the forces in God"s universe must be rendered powerless and ineffective, the scepter of Jehovah must be broken, before any danger can touch the elect of God. Safe, beyond the specter of a fear, are hose whom God defends.
III ISRAEL"S ABUNDANCE. "The fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine." Jacob is represented as the fount or source of many people, all of whom shall find an abode in the land of corn and wine. Every want shall be met. In this "mountain, shall the Lord of hosts prepare a feast of fat things." In the paradise of God there flourishes on both sides of the stream, the tree of life, which bears twelve manner of fruits, and yieldeth her fruit every month. Here is a perennial supply and satisfying variety. And though this is expressed by material images, it sets forth substantial and eternal truth the very truth of God. In the kingdom of God there is provided whatever can please the eye, delight the ear, regale the appetite, relieve a need, gratify a sense. For perpetually does the voice of the King ring out a hearty welcome, "Eat, O friends; yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
IV ISRAEL"S TRIUMPH. God"s triumph is Israel"s triumph also. God will not dissociate himself from his people. "His covenant is an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure." Yea, God"s conquests are not separate and distinct from ours. He conquers through us yea, by means of us. If we belong to the true Israel, God"s foes are our foes, God"s weapons are our weapons, God"s interests are our interests. Our excellent Sword in this warfare is God; he himself is" the Shield of our help." The contest may be protracted, severe, wavering; success may seem to hang in suspense; but beyond the smoke and dust and uncertainty of battle, faith clearly sees the final triumph, and hears the immortal pen, "Thou shalt tread upon their high places.
V ISRAEL"S TRANSCESDEST HAPPINESS. "Happy art thou, O Israel; who is like unto thee?" Surely, their happiness is complete, and impossible of enlargement, who repose themselves in the very heart of God, and dwell perpetually in his love! The utmost capacity of human speech is impotent to express their deep and satisfying joy. It is a thing to be experienced, not expressed. Such joy hath no vocabulary, no tongue. It is "joy unspeakable, and full of glory." What the noonday sun is to a glowworm"s spark, so is the joy of the righteous compared with the joys of earth. God"s own joy is conveyed to godly hearts. D.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator1887 · Public DomainOn vv25, 26, 27, 29Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.
Deu_33:25
Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.
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Shoes of iron, and strength sufficient: a new years promise
I. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass. The passage has several translations, which may serve as divisions in opening up the meaning. The Lords promises are true in every sense they will fairly bear. A generous man will allow the widest interpretation of his words, and so will the infinitely gracious God.
1. That Asher should have treasures under his feet--mines of iron and copper.
(1) The Word of God has mines in it. There are treasures upon the surface of the Word which we may pick up very readily: even the casual reader will find himself able to understand the simplicities and elements of the Gospel; but the Word of God yields most to the digger. We waste too much time upon the pretentious, poverty-stricken literature of the age; and some, even Christians, are more taken up with works of fiction than they are with this great Book of everlasting fact. Remember that God has given to us to have treasures under our feet; but do not so despise His gifts as to leave the mines of revelation unexplored.
(2) You will find these treasures not only in the Word of God, but everywhere in the providence of God, if you will consider the ways of the Lord, and ,believe that God is everywhere at work.
2. R.V. Thy bars shall be iron and brass--there shall be protection around him. Peace from all assaults, safety under all alarms, shutting in from all attacks--this is a priceless boon.
3. He shall have protection for his feet. It is no objection that shoes of iron and brass would be unusual, for the protection which God gives His people is unusual. Theirs are no common equipments, for they are no common people. You have peculiar difficulties, you are a peculiar people, you traverse a peculiar road, you have a peculiar God to trust in, and you may therefore find a peculiar consolation in a peculiar promise. We want to have shoes of iron and brass--
(1) To travel with. We are pilgrims, journeying along a road which has not been smoothed by a steamroller, but remains rough and rugged as the path to an Alpine summit.
(2) To fight with. These shoes are meant for trampling upon enemies.
(3) For climbing. We ought not to be satisfied till we reach the highest places of knowledge, experience, and practice.
(4) For perseverance. Since the Lord has shod you in this fashion, it is a warning to you that the way is long and weary, and the end not by-and-by.
II. As thy day, so shall thy strength be. The words carry a tacit hint, that we have no strength of our own, but have need of strength from above. Come down from your self-esteem: stoop from the notion of your own natural ability: divest yourself of the foolish idea that you can do anything in and of yourself, and come now to the Strong for strength, and ask your Lord to fulfil this promise in your experience.
1. Strength to abide through days. Not for today only, but for tomorrow, and for every day as every day, shall come.
2. Strength to be given daily. A days burden and a days help, a days sorrow and a days comfort. A storage of grace would turn into self-sufficiency.
3. It will be given to us proportionately. A day of little service, little strength; a day of little suffering, little strength; but in a tremendous day--a day that needs thee to play the Samson--thou shalt have Samsons strength.
4. Our strength continuing as our days continue. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Iron shoes for rough roads
Turning this old-time word into a promise for ourselves as we set out on a new years journey, it suggests to us that we may have some rugged pieces of road before we get to the end. If not, what need would there be for iron shoes? If the way is to be flower strewn, velvet slippers would do. No one can live nobly and worthily without struggle, battle, self-denial. Then we may have special trials or sorrows this year. We shall need our iron shoes. It is said there was a compensation in Ashers rough portion; his rugged hills had iron in them. This law of compensation runs through all Gods distribution of gifts. One mans farm is hilly and hard to till, but deep down beneath its ruggedness, buried away in its rocks, are rich minerals. One persons lot in life is hard, with peculiar obstacles, difficulties, and trials, but hidden in it there are compensations of some kind. One young man is reared in affluence and luxury. He never experiences want or self-denial, never has to struggle with obstacles or adverse circumstances. Another is reared in poverty, and has to toil and suffer privation. The latter seems to have scarcely an equal chance in life. But we all know where the compensation lies in this case. It is in such circumstances that grand manhood is grown, while, too often, the petted, pampered sons of luxury come to nothing. In the rugged hills of toil and hardship lifes finest gold is found. Shoes of iron are promised only to those who are to have rugged roads. There is a comforting suggestion here for all who find peculiar hardness in their life. God will provide for the ruggedness. There is a most delicate connection between earth and heavens grace. There is yet another suggestion in this old-time promise. The Divine blessing for every experience is folded up in the experience itself, and will not be received in advance. The iron shoes would not be given until the rough roads were reached. There was no need for them until then, and besides, the iron to make them was in the rugged hills themselves, and could not be gotten until the hills were reached. Some people are forever unwisely testing themselves by questions like these: Could I endure sore bereavement? Have I grace enough to bow in submission to God if He were to take away my dearest treasure? Or could I meet death without fear? Such questions are unwise, because there is no promise of grace to meet trial when there is no trial to be met. Grace for dying is nowhere promised while death is yet far off and while ones duty is to live. There is a story of a shipwreck which yields an illustration that comes in just here. Crew and passengers had to leave the broken vessel and take to the boats. The sea was rough, and great care in rowing and steering was necessary, in order to guard the heavy-laden boats, not from the ordinary waves, which they rode over easily, but from the great cross seas. Night was approaching, and the hearts of all sank as they asked what they should do in the darkness when they would no longer be able to see these terrible waves. To their great joy, however, when it grew dark, they discovered that they were in phosphorescent waters, and that each dangerous wave rolled up crested with light which made it as clearly visible as if it were midday. So it is that lifes dreaded experiences when we meet them carry in themselves the light which takes away the peril and the terror. The night of sorrow comes with its own lamp of comfort. The hour of weakness brings its secret of strength. When we come to the hard, rough, steep path we find iron for shoes. How can I get shoes, and where? one asks. Do you remember about Christs feet, that they were pierced with nails? Why was it? That we might have shoes to wear on our feet, and that they might not be cut and torn on the way. Dropping all figure, we cannot get along on this years pilgrimage without Christ; but having Christ, we shall be ready for anything that the year may bring to us. (J. R. Miller, D. D.)
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
Strength according to the days
1. It is not the design of these words to suppress forelooking and foreplanning in secular things.
2. It is not designed to teach men that God will maintain a providence of miracles in their behalf.
3. We cannot know beforehand what help will spring up from our circumstances.
4. Anxiety for the future is labour lost.
5. Application--
(1) To those who follow conscience against their worldly interests.
(2) To those who wish to reform from evil habits, but fear they will not be able to hold out.
(3) To those who look wistfully on a Christian life, but doubt if they would be able to maintain it.
(4) To those who are troubled exceedingly in regard to expected events.
(5) To those who are troubled about relative afflictions.
(6) To those who are troubled about their own death. (H. W. Beecher.)
Thy strength as thy days
What a picture of boundless variety is called up by thy days--even the days of a single life! Who shall delineate the manifold, chequered, ever-changing lights and shadows of the days of man? Yet amidst all the varieties, there is a general unity. There are great interests that are common to all lives, and which bind up in unity all the days of each individual life, weaving all its parts into one texture. This opens to us a plain distinction among the days. Thy days may be viewed collectively, as the sum of thy life--all the days of thy life,--or they may be viewed distributively, as special days, distinctive days.
I. Thy days are all the days of thy life, having great relations, purposes, or interests, to which the strength is adjusted.
1. Thy days are for salvation, and thy strength shall be proportioned to thy days task. The days of life are the steps of the ladder by which we are to ascend the skies.
2. Thy days are for spiritual progress, and thy strength shall be proportioned to the task. Days are given to us on earth to educate us for heaven, for the acquisition of suitable excellence. Let us therefore go on to larger acquisitions. We shall never have cause, like the worlds conqueror, to sit down and weep that there are no more worlds to conquer.
3. Thy days are for service and duty, and thy strength shall be proportioned to thy service.
II. Thy days are special, distinctive days, demanding special strength. Thy days maybe special, as affected by events which can only be met by strength from the Fountain of strength, and the strength shall be proportioned to the emergency. That is not an assurance which man of himself could give. For life is so full of startling events, that we dare not, from all we see and experience, promise ourselves strength to cope with all possible events. No doubt some lives, in comparison of others, are tranquil to outward appearance, without almost any change, like some mountain tam, now bright, now clouded, but showing the same features through all the seasons; and others are like the ocean, never resting, often tossed by terrible tempests; but to all the promise applies--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
1. There are days dark with care, not merely selfish, but generous care. Cast thy burden on the Lord, etc.
2. Then there are days dark with sorrow, when a man must sit alone under Gods hand. And the strength is not mere endurance. There is a kind of dogged endurance of all the trials and ills of life, to which a man can accustom himself. He may not die under them, but he comes out of them with no increased capacity for action, for comfort, for hope. But we cannot suppose the Divine promise fulfilled in such a case. The strength promised will not only turn off the edge of calamities, but will make us more than conquerors over them, and turn their power into a tributary to our own enlargement.
3. Last of all, there is the day of our death. Not only in stormy seas or devouring fires does it need strength to master ones self, but on the most ordinary commonplace deathbed. Ah! it needs God-given strength to enable the father or mother dying to leave their little helpless children in a cold and wicked world. (J. Riddell.)
Strength proportioned to the day
I. To whom is this promise made? Some of the promises in Gods Word are of universal application (Gen_3:15; Gen_8:21-22; Gen_22:17-18). But there are promises which are special, and have regard to separate and distinct classes of persons: e.g., to the wicked (Isa_55:7); to the poor (Isa_41:17); to the penitent (Psa_51:17); to the young (Pro_8:17); to the aged (Isa_46:4). In the text, Asher is the person to whom the promise is made; and if your character is similar to that of Asher, the promise is to you.
1. Asher received Christ, and believed the oracles of God. Do you answer to this description?
2. Asher attended the Divine ordinances. God will strengthen us in His sanctuary. It is in the Lords house, on the Lords day, that we receive light, instruction, and vigour.
3. Asher must have been diligent in his proper vocation; else he would not have dipped his foot in oil. We are to be diligent in business, fervent in spirit, actively serving our generation, according to the will of God.
4. Asher desired the lot of the inheritance. He looked for his place in the promised Canaan. So we are to look for our place in the inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. There is eternal life in the promise.
II. What is the meaning of this promise? There are ordinary days, which have in them no signal event, no remarkable calamity or disaster, no striking prosperity or success. They roll round in the even tenor of their course. Perhaps the great majority of our days are of this character. But in all the ordinary days, have we not found corresponding resources of help, and strength, and mercy, and supplies according to our need? There are days of prosperity, and seasons when everything goes well with us. Then, too often, our goodness is like the morning cloud and the early dew. But if even then a man is kept humble and conscious of his responsibility; if he wishes to do good, and is concerned to be a blessing; where all this is accomplished, moral and spiritual resources are supplied according to our day. You may think the difficulty to be deeper in adversity; when the tide ebbs; when there are changes, overturnings, bereavements, desolation, etc. To pass through the rivers, and say, I am not overflown; to pass through the furnace, and say, I am not burned; this is by the secret sustaining hand of the Almighty. If we are humble and patient when He seems severe, it is by the grace of God. There may be days of personal temptation, when the adversary cometh in like a flood. The dark and evil day may arrive, when we have to stand in the firmness of opposition. If we triumph, it is by the grace of God. There are days of duty, which seem to be beyond our strength; as when the scholar has to pass through his examination; or when the minister ascends the pulpit and asks, Who is sufficient for these things?
III. Where is our security?
1. It is in the power and faithfulness of God. Remember that one of His titles is, The Strength of Israel; then it follows, He will not lie; here is power and faithfulness in its loftiest form. God is able to keep us from falling; and He has sworn by two immutable things, that we might have strong consolation. No conjuncture shall arise, in which the strength of heaven shall not make us victorious.
2. We are also assured by the word and sympathy of Jesus. The promises are yea and amen in Christ Jesus; that is, they are ratified in His blood, and established in His mediation; and He is a High Priest touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
3. There is our own experience in the past. Hitherto the Lord hath helped us.
IV. If we receive the promise of our text, what should be the effect upon our lives? We answer, Dismiss all anxieties and fears. (J. Stratten.)
Strength as the days
I. What this promise is not.
1. It has no direct relation to the past--no power of retrieval and recovery. Negligence is negligence, and no spiritual alchemy can change it into diligence. This only may be done: precious lessons may be drawn out of that which has been; and thus the moral continuity of the results of what was evil may be in a measure interrupted, and good drawn out of the evil.
2. It does not bring us into any immediate connection with the future. No doubt there is what may be called grace in stock; in capital if you will, in the existence and operation of gracious principles and dispositions. You may reckon with certainty on getting large interest from these. But even that is on condition of continued faithfulness, and in order to secure that God gives by the day. It is only in the day itself--in the dispensation--in the duty--in the melting of the heart grief; in the bitterness of the disappointment, or in the fierceness of the temptation, that you can fully know what strength you will require--and only then, in the nature of things, can you receive it.
II. What this promise is. You are going some distance to a banquet. It will, of course, be pleasant if the sun shines by the way, and all the world looks fair. But if the clouds hang heavy, and the air is cold, you will go to the banquet just the same. You are going across the sea to claim a property, and you are to sail in a ship that cannot sink. It will be pleasant if there is only the ripple of quiet waters from the prow of the ship, and the flashing of the sunlight from the scarcely crested waves. But if even there should come the roar and burly of the storm, and the dash of the angry waves against the sides of the vessel, until the very masts are white with spray, you will none the less, and probably even none the later, see and claim your good estate. If a man lives well each day--die well he must, whatever his feeling be. Death will be to him a very chariot of fire to take him to the banquet of heaven; or a ship that turns back for no weather, nor ever strikes sail till she enters the harbour. Lessons--
1. Do not be managing and masterful over circumstances and providence; hammering and hewing at the days to compel them into a certain shape. Take them as they come; for they come as they are sent, arrayed darkly or brightly by the hand of God, and filled with such elements as His wisdom and goodness have put into them.
2. Do not be timorous and fearful and full of anxious care; you see how little need there is for it, how well you are provided for!
3. Such a subject, and such a promise is surely a call to diligence. For here you see is an unlimited promise of strength--strength to match the days--that is Gods side of it. Our part is to try to raise the days to match the strength. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)
As thy days, so shall thy strength be
When we have seen the hills clad with verdure to their summit, and the seas laving their base with a silver glory; when we have stretched our eye far away, and have seen the widening prospect full of loveliness and beauty, we have felt sad that the sunlight should ever set upon such a scene, and that so much beauty should be shrouded in the oblivion of darkness. But how much reason have we to bless God for nights! for if it were not for nights how much of beauty never would be discovered. Night seems to be the great friend of the stars: they must be all unseen by eyes of men, were they not set in the full of darkness. It is even so with winter. Much of Gods marvellous miracles of hoar frost must have been hidden from us, if it had not been for the cold chill of winter, which, when it robs us of one beauty, gives us another,--when it takes away the emerald of verdure, it gives us the diamond of ice--when it casts from us the bright rubies of the flowers, it gives us the fair, white ermine of snow. Well now, translate those two ideas, and you will see why it is that even our sin, our lost and ruined estate, has been made the means, in the hand of God, of manifesting to us the excellencies of His character. If you and I had been without trouble, we never could have had such a promise as this given to us--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
I. The self-weakness hinted at in the text. To keep to my figure, if this promise be like a star, you know there is no seeing the stars in the daytime when we stand here upon the upper land; we must go down a deep well, and then we shall be able to discover them. Now, as this is daytime with our hearts, it will be necessary for us to go down the deep well of old recollections of our past trials. We must first get a good fair idea of the great depth of our own weakness, before we shall be able to behold the brightness of this rich and exceeding precious promise.
1. Ye children of God, have ye not proved your own weakness in the day of duty? The Lord has spoken to you, and He has said, Son of man, run, and do such and such a thing which I bid thee; and you have gone to do it, but as you have been upon your way, a sense of great responsibility has bowed you down, and you have been ready to turn back even at the outset, and to cry, Send by whomsoever Thou wilt send, but not by me. Reinforced by strength, you have gone to the duty, but while performing it, you have at times felt your hands hanging exceeding heavy, and you have had to look up many a time and cry, O Lord, give me more strength, for without Thy strength this work must be unaccomplished; I cannot perform it myself. And when the work has been done, and you have looked back upon it, you have either been filled with amazement that it should have been done at all by so poor and weak a worm as yourself, or else you have been overcome with horror because you have been afraid the work was marred, like the vessel on the potters wheel, by reason of your own want of skilfulness.
2. We prove our weakness, perhaps more visibly, when we come into the day of suffering. There it is that we are weak indeed. Ah! people of God, it is one thing to talk about the furnace; it is another thing to be in it. It is one thing to look at the doctors knife, but quite another thing to feel it. That man has never been sick who does not know his weakness, his want of patience, and of endurance.
3. Again, there is another thing which will very soon prove our weakness, if neither duty nor suffering will do it--namely, progress. Let any of you try to grow in grace, and seek to run the heavenly race, and make a little progress, and you will soon find, in such a slippery road as that which we have to travel, that it is very hard to go one step forward, though remarkably easy to go a great many steps backward.
4. See what thou art in temptation. I have seen a tree in the forest that seemed to stand fast like a rock; I have stood beneath its wide-spreading branches, and have sought to shake its trunk, to see if I could, but it stood immovable. The sun shone upon it, and the rain descended, and many a winters frost sprinkled its boughs with snow, but it still stood fast and firm. But one night there came a howling wind which swept through the forest, and the tree that seemed to stand so fast lay stretched along the ground, its gaunt arms which once were lifted up to heaven lying hopelessly broken, and the trunk snapped in twain. And so have I seen many a professor strong and mighty, and nothing seemed to move him; but I have seen the wind of persecution and temptation come against him, and I have heard him creak with murmuring, and at last have seen him break in apostasy and he has lain along the ground a mournful specimen of what every man must become who maketh not the Lord his strength, and who relieth not upon the Most High. We have all our tender points. When Thetis dipped Achilles in the Styx, you remember she held him by the heel; he was made invulnerable wherever the water touched him, but his heel not being covered with the water, was vulnerable, and there Paris shot his arrow, and be died. It is even so with us. We may think that we are covered with virtue till we are totally invulnerable, but we have a heel somewhere; there is a place where the arrow of the devil can make way: hence the absolute necessity of taking to ourselves the whole armour of God, so that there may not be a solitary joint in the harness that shall be unprotected against the arrows of the devil.
II. The great promise--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
1. This is a well-guaranteed promise. There is enough bullion in the vaults of Omnipotence to pay off every bill that ever shall be drawn by the faith of man or the promises of God. Now look at this one As thy days, so shall thy strength be. God has a strong reserve with which to pay off this promise; for is He not Himself omnipotent, able to do all things? Remember what He did in the days of old, in the former generations. Remember how He spake, and it was done; how He commanded, and it stood fast. He hangeth the world upon nothing; He fixed the pillars of heaven in silver sockets of light, and thereon He hung the golden lamps, the sun and the moon; and shall He that did all this be unable to support His children? Shall He be unfaithful to His word for want of power in His arm or strength in His will? Remember again, thy God, who has promised to be thy strength, is the Cod who upholdeth all things by the word of His hand. Who feedeth the ravens? Who supplies the lions? Doth not He do it? And how? He openeth His hand and supplieth the want of every living thing. He has to do nothing more than simply to open His band. Who is it that restrains the tempest? Doth not He say that He rides upon the wings of the wiled, that He maketh the clouds His chariots, and holds the water in the hollow of His hand? Shall He fail thee?
2. It is a limited promise. What! says one, limited! Why it says, As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Ay, it is limited. I know it is unlimited in our troubles, but still it is limited. First, it says our strength is to be as our days are; it does not say our strength is to be as our desires are. Oh! how often have we thought, How I wish I were as strong as So-and-so--one who had a great deal of faith. Ah! but then you would have rather more faith than you wanted; and what would be the good of that? Still, says one, if I had faith like So-and-so, I think I should do wonders. Yes, but you would get the glory of them. God does not want you to do wonders. That is reserved for God, not for you,--He only doeth wondrous things. Once more, it does not say, our strength shall be as our fears God often leaves us to shift alone with our fears,--never with our troubles. The promise is As thy days, so shall thy strength be. When your vessel gets empty then will I fill it; I will not give you any extra, over and above. When you are weak then I will make you strong; but I will not give you any extra strength to lay by: strength enough to bear your sufferings, and to do your duty; but no strength to play at matches with your brethren and sisters in order to get the glory to yourselves. Then, again, there is another limit. It says, As thy days, so shall thy strength be. It does not say, as thy weeks, or months but as thy days. You are not going to have Mondays grace given you on a Sunday, nor Tuesdays grace on a Monday. No; as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
3. What an extensive promise this is! As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Some days are very little things; in our pocket book we have very little to put down, for there was nothing done of any importance. But some days are very big days. Ah! I have known a big day--a day of great duties, when great things had to be done for God--too great, it seemed, for one man to do; and when great duty was but half done there came great trouble, such as my poor heart had never felt before. Oh! what a great day it was! there was a night of lamentation in this place, and the cry of weeping, and of mourning, and of death. Ah! but blessed be Gods name, though the day was big with tempest, and though it swelled with horror, yet as that day was, so was Gods strength.
4. What a varying promise it is! I do not mean that the promise varies, but adapts itself to all our changes. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Here is a fine sunshiny morning; all the world is laughing; everything looks glad; the birds are singing, the trees seem to be all alive with music. My strength shall be as my day is, says the pilgrim. Ah! pilgrim, there is a little black cloud gathering. Soon it increases; the flash of lightning wounds the heaven, and it begins to bleed in showers. Pilgrim, As thy days, so shall thy strength be. The birds have done singing, and the world has done laughing; but as thy days, so shall thy strength be. Now the dark night comes on, and another day approaches--a day of tempest, and whirlwind, and storm. Dost thou tremble, pilgrim?--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
5. What a long promise this is! You may live till you are never so old, but this promise will outlive you. When thou comest into the depths of the river Jordan, as thy days, so shall thy strength be; thou shalt have confidence to face the last grim tyrant, and grace to smile even in the jaws of the grave. And when thou shalt rise again in the terrible morning of the resurrection, as thy days so shall thy strength be; though the earth be reeling with dismay thou shalt know no fear; though the heavens are tottering with confusion thou shalt know no trouble. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. And when thou shalt see God face to face, though thy weakness were enough to make thee die, thou shalt have strength to bear the beatific vision: thou shalt see Him face to face, and thou shalt live; thou shalt lie in the bosom of thy God; immortalised and made full of strength, thou shalt be able to bear even the brightness of the Most High.
III. What inference shall I draw except this? Children of the living God, be rid of your doubts, be rid of your trouble and your fear. Young Christians, do not be afraid to set forward on the heavenly race. You bashful Christians, that, like Nicodemus, are ashamed to come out and make an open profession, dont be afraid: As your day is, so shall your strength be. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Kept of God
1. If God prosper His people He will still keep them humble. He ever plants some thorn in the flesh, sends some messenger of Satan to buffet them, that thus they may be kept mindful that the present life is not their home, nor the present enjoyments their heaven. An unpolished partner, or a vicious son, or a sickly constitution, or some other unpropitious circumstance, has ever preyed upon the spirits of the prosperous believer. And these mixtures of bitter ingredients in his cup of blessings, have kept him from selling his birthright for the perishing and contemptible objects of sense.
2. If God afflict His people, He will bestow those comforts which will keep them happy, and make them thankful. Hope is a grace which God is as much resolved to cherish in His people as humility. Hence, if He pain them, He is sure to preserve them from despair. While there is the deep conviction that His strokes are fewer than their crimes, and lighter than their guilt, there, too, is clear discovery of a parental hand which wields the rod, and a parental eye which smiles through every cloud that covers them.
Remarks--
1. How safe and happy are the Lords people. They are not exempt from trials, but are permitted to know that their strength shall be proportioned to their burdens.
2. Their present strength and courage do not decide how they shall appear in the hour of conflict, or what shall be their future condition. It is absurd that the believer should yield his hope because he does not find himself prepared for trials which have not yet come. He expects, in this case, a mercy never promised. God will prepare him when He tries him, will give him strength when He calls him to the onset. Our strength is not to be greater than our day, but equal. Should it be greater, we should become proud; should it be less, we should be discouraged. If, then, we find our strength equal to our present conflicts, we have nothing to fear. Our courage will kindle as the battle thickens, and our strength increase as we march on to the more desperate onset. If our present strength is sufficient for our present purpose, this is all that God has promised, and is enough. Here is the test by which we are to try our character. Do we submit cheerfully to present disappointments, and exhibit a right temper under all the present little corroding incidents of this conflicting world? (D. A. Clark.)
Seasonable strength
Dr. Doddridge was one day walking, much depressed, his very heart desolate within him. But, says he, passing a cottage door open, I happened at that moment to hear a child reading, As thy days, so shall thy strength be. The effect on my mind was indescribable. It was like life from the dead. And what does this word say to us? As thy days, so shall thy strength be. There is strength bodily. The continuance of this is a mercy. How easily can it be crushed, so that we may be made to possess months of vanity; and endure wearisome nights; and feel every exertion a difficulty, and every duty a burden! But there is strength spiritual. This is very distinguishable from the former, and often found separate from it. The Lord does not always give His people a giants arm, or an iron sinew; but His strength is made perfect in weakness. This is the strength here spoken of. For two purposes His people will find it necessary: service and suffering. Every Christian has a course of duty common to him as a man; which is, to provide for his outward wants, and the support of his family. And this is done by labour, in which he is required not to be slothful. But there is a series of duties pertaining more immediately to him in his religious character; to believe, to pray, to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present evil world. Suffering is commonly connected with service in the Divine life. It was so invariably in the beginning of the Gospel. Then it was deemed impossible for anyone to live godly in Christ Jesus and not suffer persecution. Therefore, no sooner was Paul converted, than he was told how great things he had to suffer. As real religion is always the same, some degree of the same opposition may be always looked for; and the hatred of the world will be shown as far as they have liberty to express it, and are not restrained by law, or the usages of civilised life. But when the Christian has rest from such trials as these, God can subserve their purpose, by personal and relative afflictions, which are often severer than even the endurings of a martyr. They are called chastenings and rebukes which he is neither to despise, nor faint under. Now the prospect of all this, when he looks forward into life, is enough to awaken the Christians anxiety; and nothing can effectually encourage him but the discovery of strength equal to his exigencies. And this he finds not in himself. The natural man has no sensibility of his weakness, because he is not earnestly engaged in those applications which require spiritual strength. The Christian is. He knows that he is as destitute of strength as he is of righteousness. He feels himself entirely insufficient for all the duties and trials of the Divine life. And the consciousness, instead of diminishing, grows with the experience of every day. And he need not be afraid of this. Rather, let him cherish it; for when he is weak, then is he strong. What he wants is provided and ensured by the promise of a God who cannot lie. (W. Jay.)
Strength growing with days
We generally hear these words misquoted, and put into the shape, As thy day, so shall thy strength be, as if the substance of the promise was strength proportioned to the special exigencies of each movement. That is very beautiful, and may well be deduced from the words, but it fails to take into account that little s at the end of the word day, which obliges us to understand the promise as meaning: As thy days (increase) thy strength shall (increase). The older a Christian is, the stronger Christian he Ought to be. Then there is another thing to be noted, and that is that in their original connection the words are a promise, not to an individual, but to a community. It is the last of the series of promises to the various tribes of Israel which occupy this chapter of Deuteronomy.
I. Increase of strength with increase of age. In its application to the individual life. Here is a promise dead in the teeth of nature, because all living things that belong to the material universe come under the law of growth, which ultimately passes into decay. The same sea of Time that flings up its spoils on some shores, and increases the land, when you get round the promontory is eating away the coast. And so, the years, which at first bring us strength, very soon begin to reverse their action. Nor is it only the physical life which dwindles as the days increase, but also much of the inner life is modified by the external, so that the old mans memory becomes less retentive, and the old mans impulses less strong. But as thy days, so shall thy strength be, and when the eyes become dim, it is possible that they may be longer sighted, and see the things that are, just in proportion as they begin to fail to see the things that do appear. They may be able to discern more clearly what is above them, as they see less clearly the things on their own level. It is possible that as the days increase, and the strength drawn from externals decreases, the power of the Spirit, the maturity of the soul, the insight into the Eternal, the Christ-likeness and assimilation to that which we more clearly behold, as the clouds thin themselves away, may all increase. And so, in all that makes the Christian life, it is possible that there shall be increase with the increase of our days. Why so? Just because the Christian life is a supernatural life that has nothing to do with dependence on physical conditions. If it were not so, if my Christian vitality stood exactly on the same plane as my vigour of intellect, my retentiveness of memory, my energy of purpose, or other capacities, which make up the non-material part of my being--the soul, as people call it--then it, too, would share in the decrepitude and decay. We sometimes see people, in the measure in which their physical strength decays, drawing into themselves more and more of that supernatural and Divine strength which has nothing to do with the material or the external. Is that not a reason for believing that that life which thus obeys a law, as I said, dead in the teeth of nature, is a life altogether independent of this bodily existence, and our connection with this material universe? There is no better proof of immortality, if you except the fact of the resurrection, than the way in which, right up to the edge of the grave, and even when a mans foot is on its threshold, there burns in his soul, brighter and brightening as the darkness falls, all that makes the Christian life. But if this contradiction of nature by a supernatural life is to be ours, as it may be, let us not forget that this promise, like all Gods promises, is a promise with conditions. They are not stated here, but we know them. The youths shall faint and be weary; the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength--they, and only they. God does not give gifts to men who He sees are wasting them, and the gift of growing strength that is promised to us is strength that is to be used for His service. Has my strength grown with years? Let me say one word, and it shall be but a word, about the other application of this great thought. As I said, it is a tribal benediction, and all the benedictions of all the tribes have passed over to the great community of New Testament believers. The Church is heir to the Divine promise that as its days increase its strength increases. And though, of course, there have been fearful instances to the contrary, and churches, like other institutions, are apt to stiffen and decay in their old age, yet the only institution in the world that has lasted so long, and kept up so much vitality through centuries, is the Christian Church. Why? If there were not a supernatural life in it, it would have been dead long ago. As the Churchs days increase, so will her strength grow. But the promise of our text is susceptible of another application, though that is not its true signification, and may be taken as meaning the necessities of the days shall determine the nature of the strength given. And that adaptation of supply to need will be true in many directions. It will be true if we consider the tasks imposed by each succeeding day. For God never sets His servants to work or warfare beyond the limits of the strength which they have or may have, if they will. Again, this adaptation will shape the days strength according to the days wants. The matter of a day in its day will be given. There will be daily bread for daily hunger. God makes no mistakes, sending furs for June or muslin for December. His gifts are never belated, nor arrive after the need for them is past. That adaptation takes effect for us on the same condition as the increase does, of which we have been speaking, namely, on condition of our waiting on God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Equipped
I. Mans emergency.
1. Mans journey is along a rough and thorny road.
2. Conscious experience of wear and tear: As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Fresh obligations of unfolding life, and hence increasing pressure. At first we only dream of bliss and peace from religion; at length we realise in it fidelity, obligations, responsibilities, sacrifices, conflicts. How real to every true man is the wear and tear of a religious life, the necessary exhaustion from duty. When the business and the bustle of life come in conflict with religion and pious reflection. When the conflict for principle leaves us consciously weaker, even if making us truer at heart. No conflict, however its success and triumph, without reaction. Such mans emergency.
II. Gods provision.
1. For the rough journey, the shoes of iron and brass. Equipment proportionate to need. Thus in illustrations of the Christian life: Conflict--armour (Eph_6:12-17). Duty--conviction (2Co_1:12). Journey--shoes of iron and brass (Deu_8:2-4). With the same and yet higher provision men make against emergency does God provide for His people: The Arctic whaler is built for her voyage, no pleasure yacht for a summers day. The soldier is equipped for service, not decorated for a holiday parade. Thus with God for us. Against every rough pebble there is a nail in the shoes of grace.
2. For the wear and tear--the supply: As thy day, so, etc. Note--Gods communications of grace never anticipative but always sufficient. Men paralyse their energies in the anticipation of possible emergencies. What shall I do, says a man, if so-and-so should happen? and he forgets how he does new--the once future of anticipated forebodings. God gives not to the heart, unembarrassed by worldly cares and anxieties, and rejoicing in its gladsomeness, the strength for the hour of care and worry that may or may never come to it. Gods provisions are economic. Waste has no part in the laws of Gods moral government. As thy days, so, etc. But Gods provision is in the presence of mans emergency. God gives us our desires as fully in giving us strength for the rough journey, as in smoothing the way for us and strewing the path with flowers. And more. For the effort of manhood, assisted by grace, results in a bettering of manhood for ourselves; while the interpositions of grace merely--kindly, gracious though they be--leave us as we were before, afraid of that which is high, and faltering in the presence of difficulties. How a man that has overcome gains confidence. I have met a trouble before, says he, when trouble lies ahead, and by Gods grace I can meet this one. Results are more from efforts than helps. It is from the swing of the heavy sledge, week in, week out, from morn to night, that the muscles of the brawny arm are strong as iron bands. And God assures us that the effort of our manhood will have His support. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. (W. Henderson.)
Help for the hard places
1. Consider the width of the promise--thy days, that is, all thy days.
2. Consider the specificalness of the promise--each one of thy days,
3. Consider the adaptedness of the promise--for every sort of day. For the day of dull routine. For the day of weariness. For the day of disappointment. For the day of sorrow. For the day of difficult duty. For the day of death.
4. Consider the maker of the promise. He makes the promise who knows all our days (Psa_139:1-6). He makes the promise who measures our days (Psa_31:15). He makes the promise who is with us through all the days (Mat_28:20).
Therefore
1. Be sure of a specific and caring Providence.
2. Do not fear.
3. Make alliance with God. (Homiletic Review.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren1905 · Public DomainOn v25
Deuteronomy
SHOD FOR THE ROAD
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Deu 33:25.
There is a general correspondence between those blessings wherewith Moses blessed the tribes of Israel before his death, and the circumstances and territory of each tribe in the promised land. The portion of Asher, in whose blessing the words of our text occurs, was partly the rocky northern coast and partly the fertile lands stretching to the base of the Lebanon. In the inland part of their territory they cultivated large olive groves, the produce of which was trodden out in great rock-hewn cisterns. So the clause before my text is a benediction upon that industry-’let him dip his foot in oil.’ And then the metaphor naturally suggested by the mention of the foot is carried on into the next words, ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,’ the tribe being located upon rocky sea-coast, having rough roads to travel, and so needing to be well shod. The substance, then, of that promise seems to be-strength adequate to, and unworn by, exercise; while the second clause, though not altogether plain, seems to put a somewhat similar idea in unmetaphorical shape. ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ probably means the promise of power that grows with growing years.
So, then, we have first that thought that God gives us an equipment of strength proportioned to our work,-shoes fit for our road. God does not turn people out to scramble over rough mountains with thin-soled boots on; that is the plain English of the words. When an Alpine climber is preparing to go away into Switzerland for rock work, the first thing he does is to get a pair of strong shoes, with plenty of iron nails in the soles of them. So Asher had to be shod for his rough roads, and so each of us may be sure that if God sends us on stony paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and will not send us out on any journey for which He does not equip us well.
There are no difficulties to be found in any path of duty, for which he that is called to tread it is not prepared by Him that sent him. Whatsoever may be the road, our equipment is calculated for it, and is given to us from Him that has appointed it.
Is there not a suggestion here, too, as to the sort of travelling we may expect to have? An old saying tells us that we do not go to heaven in silver slippers, and the reason is because the road is rough. The ‘primrose way’ leads somewhere else, and it may be walked on ‘delicately.’ But if we need shoes of iron and brass, we may pretty well guess the kind of road we have before us. If a man is equipped with such coverings on his feet, depend upon it that there will be use for them before he gets to the end of his day’s journey. The thickest sole will make the easiest travelling over rocky roads. So be quite sure of this, that if God gives to us certain endowments and equipments which are only calculated for very toilsome paths, the roughness of the road will match the stoutness of the shoes.
And see what He does give. See the provision which is made for patience and strength, for endurance and courage, in all the messages of His mercy, in all the words of His love, in all the powers of His Gospel, and then say whether that looks as if we should have an easy life of it on our way home. Those two ships that went away a while ago upon the brave, and, as some people thought, desperate task of finding the North Pole-any one that looked upon them as they lay in Portsmouth Roads, might know that it was no holiday cruise they were meant for. The thickness of the sides, the strength of the cordage, the massiveness of the equipment, did not look like pleasure-sailing.
And so, dear brethren, if we think of all that is given to us in God’s Gospel in the way of stimulus and encouragement, and exhortation, and actual communication of powers, we may calculate, from the abundance of the resources, how great will be the strain upon us before we come to the end, and our ‘feet stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.’ Go into some of the great fortresses in continental countries, and you will find the store-rooms full of ammunition and provisions; bread enough and biscuits enough, as it seems, for half the country, laid up there, and a deep well somewhere or other in the courtyard. What does that mean? It means fighting, that is what it means. So if we are brought into this strong pavilion, so well provisioned, so massively fortified and defended, that means that we shall need all the strength that is to be found in those thick walls, and all the sustenance that is to be found in those gorged magazines, and all the refreshment that is to be drawn from that free, and full, and inexhaustible fountain, before the battle is over and the victory won. Depend upon it, the promise ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.’ means, ‘Thy road shall be rocky and flinty’; and so it is.
And yet, thank God! whilst it is true that it is very hard and very difficult for many of us, and hard and difficult-even if without the ‘very’-for us all, it is also true that we have the adequate provision sufficient for all our necessities-and far more than sufficient! It is a poor compliment to the strength that He gives to us to say that it is enough to carry us through. God does not deal out His gifts to people with such an economical correspondence to necessities as that. There is always a wide margin. More than we can ask, more than we can think, more than we can need is given us.
If He were to deal with us as men often deal with one another, asking us, ‘Well, how much do you want? cannot you do with a little less? there is the exact quantity that you need for your support’-if you got your bread by weight and your water by measure, it would be a very poor affair. See how He actually does-He says, ‘Child, there is Mine own strength for you’; and we think that we honour Him when we say, ‘God has given us enough for our necessities!’ Rather the old word is always true: ‘So they did eat and were filled; and they took up of the fragments that remained seven baskets-full,’ and after they were satisfied and replete with the provision, there was more at the end than when they began.
That suggests another possible thought to be drawn from this promise, namely, that it assures not only of strength adequate to the difficulties and perils of the journey, but also of a strength which is not worn out by use.
The ‘portion’ of Asher was the rocky sea-coast. The sharp, jagged rocks would cut to pieces anything made of leather long before the day’s march was over; but the travellers have their feet shod with metal, and the rocks which they have to stumble over will only strike fire from their shoes. They need not step timidly for fear of wearing them out; but, wherever they have to march, may go with full confidence that their shoeing will not fail them. A wise general looks after that part of his soldiers’ outfit with special care, knowing that if it gives out, all the rest is of no use. So our Captain provides us with an inexhaustible strength, to which we may fully trust. We shall not exhaust it by any demands that we can make upon it. We shall only brighten it up, like the nails in a well-used shoe, the heads of which are polished by stumbling and scrambling over rocky roads.
So we may be bold in the march, and draw upon our stock of strength to the utmost. There is no fear that it will fail us. We may put all our force into our work, we shall not weaken the power which ‘by reason of use is exercised,’ not exhausted. For the grace which Christ gives us to serve Him, being divine, is subject to no weariness, and neither faints nor fails. The bush that burned unconsumed is a type of that Infinite Being who works unexhausted, and lives undying, after all expenditure is rich, after all pouring forth is full. And of His strength we partake.
Whensoever a man puts forth an effort of any kind whatever-when I speak, when I lift my hand, when I run, when I think-there is waste of muscular tissue. Some of my strength goes in the act, and thus every effort means expenditure and diminution of force. Hence weariness that needs sleep, waste that needs food, languor that needs rest. We belong to an order of being in which work is death, in regard to our physical nature; but our spirits may lay hold of God, and enter into an order of things in which work is not death, nor effort exhaustion, nor is there loss of power in the expenditure of power.
That sounds strange, and yet it is not strange. Think of that electric light which is made by directing a strong stream upon two small pieces of carbon. As the electricity strikes upon these and turns their blackness into a fiery blaze, it eats away their substance while it changes them into light. But there is an arrangement in the lamp by which a fresh surface is continually being brought into the path of the beam, and so the light continues without wavering and blazes on. The carbon is our human nature, black and dull in itself; the electric beam is the swift energy of God, which makes us ‘light in the Lord.’ For the one, decay is the end of effort; for the other, there is none. ‘Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.’ Though we belong to the perishing order of nature by our bodily frame, we belong to the undecaying realm of grace by the spirit that lays hold upon God. And if our work weary us, as it must do so long as we continue here, yet in the deepest sanctuary of our being, our strength is greatened by exercise. ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.’ ‘Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.’ ‘Stand, therefore, having your feet shod with the preparedness of the Gospel of peace.’
But this is not all. There is an advance even upon these great promises in the closing words. That second clause of our text says more than the first one. ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,’ that promises us powers and provision adapted to, and unexhausted by, the weary pilgrimage and rough road of life. But ‘as thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ says even more than that. The meaning of the word rendered ‘strength’ in our version is very doubtful, and most modern translators are inclined to render it ‘rest.’ But if we adhere to the translation of our version, we get a forcible and relevant promise, which fits on well to the previous clause, understood as it has been in my previous remarks. The usual understanding of the words is ‘strength proportioned to thy day,’ an idea which we have found already suggested by the previous clause. But that explanation rests on, or at any rate derives support from, the common misquotation of the words. They are not, as we generally hear them quoted, ‘As thy day, so shall thy strength be,’-but ‘day’ is in the plural, and that makes a great difference. ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ that is to say: the two sums-of ‘thy days’ and of ‘thy strength’-keep growing side by side, the one as fast as the other and no faster. The days increase. Well, what then? The strength increases too. As I said, we are allied to two worlds. According to the law of one of them, the outer world of physical life, we soon reach the summit of human strength. For a little while it is true, even in the life of nature, that our power grows with our days. But we soon reach the watershed, and then the opposite comes to be true. Down, steadily down, we go. With diminishing power, with diminishing vitality, with a dimmer eye, with an obtuser ear, with a slower-beating heart, with a feebler frame, we march on and on to our grave. ‘As thy days, so shall thy weakness be,’ is the law for all of us mature men and women in regard to our outward life.
But, dear brethren, we may be emancipated from that dreary law in regard to the true life of our spirits, and instead of growing weaker as we grow older, we may and we should grow stronger. We may be and we should be moving on a course that has no limit to its advance. We may be travelling on a shining path through the heavens, that has no noon-tide height from which it must slowly and sadly decline, but tends steadily and for ever upwards, nearer and nearer to the very fountain itself of heavenly radiance. ‘The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more till the noon-tide of the day.’ But the reality surpasses even that grand thought, for it discloses to us an endless approximation to an infinite beauty, and an ever-growing possession of never exhausted fulness, as the law for the progress of all Christ’s servants. The life of each of us may and should be continual accession and increase of power through all the days here, through all the ages beyond. Why? Because ‘the life which I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.’ Christ liveth in me. It is not my strength that grows, so much as God’s strength in me which is given more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I shall be becoming purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will, gentler, liker Christ, every way fitter for His service, and for larger service, as the days increase.
Those of us who have reached middle life, or perhaps gone a little over the watershed, ought to have this experience as our own in a very distinct degree. The years that are past ought to have drawn us somewhat away from our hot pursuing after earthly and perishable things. They should have added something to the clearness and completeness of our perception of the deep simplicity of God’s gospel. They should have tightened our hold and increased our possession of Christ, and unfolded more and more of His all-sufficiency. They should have enriched us with memories of God’s loving care, and lighted all the sky behind with a glow which is reflected on the path before us, and kindles calm confidence in His unfailing goodness. They should have given us power and skill for the conflicts that yet remain, as the Red Indians believe that the strength of every defeated and scalped enemy passes into his conqueror’s arm. They should have given force to our better nature, and weakening, progressive weakening, to our worse. They should have rooted us more firmly and abidingly in Him from whom all our power comes, and so have given us more and fuller supplies of His exhaustless and ever-flowing might.
So it may be with us if we abide in Him, without whom we are nothing, but partaking of whose strength ‘the weakest shall be as David, and David as an angel of God.’
If for us, drawing nearer to the end is drawing nearer to the light, our faces will be brightened more and more with that light which we approach, and our path will be ‘as the shining light which shines more and more unto the noon-tide of the day,’ because we are closer to the very fountain of heavenly radiance, and growingly bathed and flooded with the outgoings of His glory. ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be.’
The promise ought to be true for us all. It is true for all who use the things that are freely given to them of God. And whilst thus it is the law for the devout life here, its most glorious fulfilment remains for the life beyond. There each new moment shall bring new strength, and growing millenniums but add fresh vigour to our immortal life. Here the unresting beat of the waves of the sea of time gnaws away the bank and shoal whereon we stand, but there each roll of the great ocean of eternity shall but spread new treasures at our feet and add new acres to our immortal heritage. ‘The oldest angels,’ says Swedenborg, ‘look the youngest.’ When life is immortal, the longer it lasts the stronger it becomes, and so the spirits that have stood for countless days before His throne, when they appear to human eyes, appear as-’young men clothed in long white garments,’-full of unaging youth and energy that cannot wane. So, whilst in the flesh we must obey the law of decay, the spirit may be subject to this better law of life, and ‘while the outward man perisheth, the inward man be renewed day by day.’ ‘Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv26–29This is another name for the people of Israel.…
Jeshurun
This is another name for the people of Israel. It means "upright one." See how you translated this in Deuteronomy 32:15. (See: How to Translate Names)
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rides through the heavens ... on the clouds
This is an image of Yahweh riding on clouds through the sky like a king on his chariot riding through a battlefield. AT: "rides through the heavens like a king rides through a battlefield ... on the clouds like a king on his chariot" (See: Metaphor)
to your help
"to help you." Moses speaks to the Israelites as if they were one man, so the word "you" here is singular. (See: Forms of You)
Tyndale Open Study Notes2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0On vv26, 27, 2933:26 He rides across the heavens: Moses’ blessing of…
33:26 He rides across the heavens: Moses’ blessing of the tribes climaxes with praise to the Lord. Like a mighty warrior, God rides triumphantly through the skies on chariots of cloud (see 1:30).
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv25, 28, 29 Thou shalt be strong, or thy country full of…
Thou shalt be strong, or thy country full of metal. It seemeth that Simeon is left out, because he was under Judah, and his portion of his inheritance, Josh. 19:9.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv25–29 Deu 33:25 Thy shoes [shall be] iron and brass;…
Deu 33:25 Thy shoes [shall be] iron and brass; and as thy days, [so shall] thy strength [be].
Ver. 25. Thy shoes.] Thou shalt have store of mines.
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And as thy days shall thy strength be,] i.e., Thou shalt {as Eliphaz speaketh, Job 5:26} come in a lusty old age to the grave. This the Greeks call ευγηρια. And the Hebrews made a feast when they were past sixty, if any whit healthy.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv25–29 Thy shoes shall be iron and brass: this may…
Thy shoes shall be iron and brass: this may note either,
1. Their great strength, by which they should be able to tread down and crush their enemies, as Christ’s feet for this very reason are said to be of brass, Rev 1:15. Or,
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2. The mines of iron and copper, which were in their portion, whence Sidon their neighbour was famous among the heathens for its plenty of brass and iron, and Sarepta is thought to have its name from the brass and iron, which were melted there in great quantity. Compare Deu 8:9. Or,
3. The strength of its situation; and so some ancients and modems render the words, thy habitation or thy enclosure shall be iron and brass, i.e. fortified as it were with walls and gates of iron and brass, being defended by the sea on one side, by their brethren on other sides, as also by mountains and rivers.
So shall thy strength be, i.e. thy strength shall not be diminished with thine age, but thou shalt have the rigour of youth even in thine old age; thy tribe shall grow stronger and stronger.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v26 These are the last words of all that ever…
These are the last words of all that ever Moses, that great writer, that great dictator, either wrote himself or had written from his dictation; they are therefore very remarkable, and no doubt we shall find them very improving. Moses, the man of God (who had as much reason as ever any mere man had to know both), with his last breath magnifies both the God of Israel and the Israel of God. They are both incomparable in his eye; and we are sure that in this his judgment of both his eye did not wax dim.
I. No God like the God of Israel. None of the gods of the nations were capable of doing that for their worshippers which Jehovah did for his: There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, Deu 33:26. Note, When we are expecting that God should bless us in doing well for us we must bless him by speaking well of him: and one of the most solemn ways of praising God is by acknowledging that there is none like him. Now, 1. This was the honour of Israel. Every nation boasted of its god; but none had such a God to boast of as Israel had. 2. It was their happiness that they were taken into covenant with such a God. Two things he takes notice of as proofs of the incontestable pre-eminence of the God of Jeshurun above all other gods: (1.) His sovereign power and authority: He rides upon the heavens, and with the greatest state and magnificence on the skies. Riding on the heavens denotes his greatness and glory, in which he manifests himself to the upper world, and the use he makes of the influences of heaven, and the productions of the clouds, in bringing to pass his own counsels in this lower world: he manages and directs them as a man does the horse he rides on. When he has any thing to do for his people he rides upon the heavens to do it; for he does it swiftly and strongly: no enemy can either anticipate or obstruct the progress of him that rides on the heavens. (2.) His boundless eternity; he is the eternal God, and his arms are everlasting, Deu 33:27. The gods of the heathen were but lately invented, and would shortly perish; but the God of Jeshurun is eternal: he was before all worlds, and will be when time and days shall be no more. See Hab 1:12.
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II. No people like the Israel of God. Having pronounced each tribe happy, in the close he pronounces all together very happy, so happy in all respects that there was no nation under the sun comparable to them (Deu 33:29): Happy art thou, O Israel, a people whose God is the Lord, on that account truly happy, and none like unto thee. If Israel honour God as a non-such God, he will favour them so as to make them a non-such people, the envy of all their neighbours and the joy of all their well-wishers. Who is like unto thee, O people? Behold, thou art fair, my love, says Christ of his spouse. To which she presently returns, Behold thou art fair, my beloved. What one nation (no, not all the nations together) is like thy people Israel? Sa2 7:23. What is here said of the church of Israel and the honours and privileges of it is certainly to be applied to the church of the first-born, that are written in heaven. The Christian church is the Israel of God, as the apostle calls it (Gal 6:16), on which there shall be peace, and which is dignified above all societies in the world, as Israel was.
1. Never were people so well seated and sheltered (Deu 33:27): The eternal God is thy refuge. Or, as the word signifies, "thy habitation, or mansion-house, in which thou art safe, and easy, and at rest, as a man in his own house." Every Israelite indeed is at home in God; the soul returns to him, and reposes in him as its resting-place (Psa 116:7), its hiding-place, Psa 32:7. And those that make him their habitation shall have all the comforts and benefits of a habitation in him, Psa 91:1. Moses had an eye to God as the habitation of Israel when they were wandering in the wilderness (Psa 90:1): Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. And now that they were going to settle in Canaan they must not change their habitation; still they will need, and still they shall have, the eternal God for their dwelling-place; without him Canaan itself would be a wilderness, and a land of darkness.
2. Never were people so well supported and borne up: Underneath are the everlasting arms; that is, the almighty power of God is engaged for the protection and consolation of all that trust in him, in their greatest straits and distresses, and under the heaviest burdens. The everlasting arms shall support, (1.) The interests of the church in general, that they shall not sink, or be run down; underneath the church is that rock of ages on which it is built, and against which the gates of hell shall never prevail, Mat 16:18. (2.) The spirits or particular believers, so that, though they may be oppressed, they shall not be overwhelmed by any trouble. How low soever the people of God are at any time brought, everlasting arms are underneath them to keep the spirit from sinking, from fainting, and the faith from failing, even when they are pressed above measure. The everlasting covenant, and the everlasting consolations that flow from it, are indeed everlasting arms, with which believers have been wonderfully sustained, and kept cheerful in the worst of times; divine grace is sufficient for them, Co2 12:9.
3. Never were people so well commanded and led on to battle: "He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee by his almighty power, which will make room for thee; and by a commission which will bear thee out he shall say, Destroy them." They were now entering upon a land that was in the full possession of a strong and formidable people, and who, being its first planters, looked upon themselves as its rightful owners; how shall Israel justify, and how shall they accomplish, the expulsion of them? (1.) God will give them a commission to destroy the Canaanites, and that will justify them, and bear them out in it, against all the world. He that is sovereign Lord of all lives and all lands not only allowed and permitted, but expressly commanded and appointed the children of Israel both to take possession of the land of Canaan and to put the sword to the people of Canaan, which, being thus authorized, they might not only lawfully but honourably do, without incurring the least stain or imputation of theft by the one or murder by the other. (2.) God will give them power and ability to destroy them; nay, he will in effect do it to their hands: he will thrust out the enemy from before them; for the very fear of Israel shall put them to flight. God drive out the heathen to plant his people, Psa 44:2. Thus believers are more than conquerors over their spiritual enemies, through Christ that loved them. The captain of our salvation thrust out the enemy from before us when he overcame the world and spoiled principalities and powers on the cross; and the word of command to us is, "Destroy them; pursue the victory, and you shall divide the spoil."
4. Never were people so well secured and protected (Deu 33:28): Israel shall then dwell in safety alone. Those that dwell in God, and make his name their strong tower, dwell in safety; the place of their defence is the munitions of rocks, Isa 33:16. They shall dwell in safety alone. (1.) Though alone. Though they contract no alliances with their neighbours, nor have any reason to expect help or succour from any of them, yet they shall dwell in safety; they shall really be safe, and they shall think themselves so. (2.) Because alone. They shall dwell in safety as long as they continue pure, and unmixed with the heathen, a singular and peculiar people. Their distinction from other nations, though it made them like a speckled bird (Jer 12:9), and exposed them to the ill-will of those about them, yet was really their preservation from the mischief their neighbours wished them, as it kept them under the divine protection. All that keep close to God shall be kept safely by him. It is promised that in the kingdom of Christ Israel shall dwell safely, Jer 23:6.
5. Never were people so well provided for: The fountain of Jacob (that is, the present generation of that people, which is as the fountain to all the streams that shall hereafter descend and be derived from it) shall now presently be fixed upon a good land. The eye of Jacob (so it might be read, for the same word signifies a fountain and an eye) is upon the land of corn and wine, that is, where they now lay encamped they had Canaan in their eye, it was just before their faces, on the other side the river, and they would have it in their hands and under their feet quickly. This land upon which they had set their eye was blessed both with the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven; it was a land of corn and wine, substantial and useful productions: also his heavens (as if the heavens were particularly designed to be blessings to that land) shall drop down dew, without which, though the soil were ever so good, the corn and wine would soon fail. Every Israelite indeed has his eye, the eye of faith, upon the better country, the heavenly Canaan, which is richly replenished with better things than corn and wine.
6. Never were people so well helped. If they were in any strait, God himself rode upon the heavens for their help, Deu 33:26. And they were a people saved by the Lord, Deu 33:29. If they were in danger of any harm, or in want of any good, they had an eternal God to go to, an almighty power to trust to; nothing could hurt those whom God helped, nor was it possible that the people should perish which was saved by the Lord. Those that are added to the gospel Israel are such as shall be saved, Act 2:47.
7. Never were people so well armed. God himself was the shield of their help by whom they were armed defensively, and sufficiently guarded against all assailants: and he was the sword of their excellency, by whom they were armed offensively, and made both formidable and successful in all their wars. God is called the sword of their excellency because, in fighting for them, he made them to excel other people, or because in all he did for them he had an eye to his sanctuary among them, which is called the excellency of Jacob, Psa 47:4; Eze 24:21; Amo 6:8. Those in whose hearts is the excellency of holiness have God himself for their shield and sword - are defended by the whole armour of God; his word is their sword, and faith in it is their shield, Eph 6:16, Eph 6:17.
8. Never were people so well assured of victory over their enemies: They shall be found liars unto thee; That is, "shall be forced to submit to thee sorely against their will, so that it will be but a counterfeit submission; yet the point shall be gained, for thou shalt tread upon their necks" (so the Septuagint), which we find done, Jos 10:24. "Thou shalt tread down their strong-holds, be they ever so high, and trample upon their palaces and temples, though esteemed ever so sacred. If thy enemies be found liars to thee" (so some read it), "thou shalt tread upon their high places; if they will not be held by the bonds of leagues and treaties, they shall be broken by the force of war." Thus shall the God of peace tread Satan under the feet of all believers, and shall do it shortly, Rom 16:20.
Now lay all this together, and then you will say, Happy art thou, O Israel! Who is like unto thee, O people! Thrice happy the people whose God is the Lord.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv25–28 There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun,....…
There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun,.... Or Israel, as all the three Targums; for this is one of the names of the people of Israel; See Gill on Deu 32:15; and the Lord was their God in a special sense, having chosen, redeemed them, and made a covenant with them; and there is no God like him for the perfections of his nature, his purity and holiness, his goodness, wisdom, power, faithfulness, &c. and for the wonderful works of nature, providence, and grace, done by him; and for the blessings of goodness, temporal and spiritual, he bestows on men. The tribes being particularly blessed, the whole body of the people are pronounced happy, and whose happiness is enlarged on in Deu 33:26,
who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky; which he has the sovereign rule and disposal of, and can and does dispose of all the artillery therein, as illustrious proofs of his glory and excellency, and for the help of his people, and the destruction of their enemies; as when he sent forth hail, thunderings, and lightnings, upon the Egyptians, and frightened them; and cast down hailstones upon the Canaanites, and slew many of them; and when the stars in their course fought against Sisera; see Psa 68:4 Jdg 5:20.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv25–29 Iron and brass - The mines of iron and…
Iron and brass - The mines of iron and copper, which were in their portion, whence Sidon their neighbour was famous among the Heathens for its plenty of brass, and Sarepta is thought to have its name from the brass and iron which were melted there in great quantity. Thy strength shall be - Thy strength shall not be diminished with age, but thou shalt have the vigour of youth even in thine old age: thy tribe shalt grow stronger and stronger.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv25–29 Verse 25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass]…
Verse 25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass] Some suppose this may refer to the iron and copper mines in their territory; but it is more likely that it relates to their warlike disposition, as we know that greaves, boots, shoes, c., of iron, brass, and tin, were used by ancient warriors. Goliath had greaves of brass on his legs, 1Sa 17:6 and the brazen-booted Greeks, χαλκοκνημιδες Αχαιοι, is one of the epithets given by Homer to his heroes; see Iliad. lib. viii., ver. 41.
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.] If we take this clause as it appears here, we have at once an easy sense; and the saying, I have no doubt, has comforted the souls of multitudes. The meaning is obvious: "Whatever thy trials or difficulties may be, I shall always give thee grace to support thee under and bring thee through them." The original is only two words, the latter of which has been translated in a great variety of ways, וכימיך דבאך ucheyameycha dobecha. Of the first term there can be no doubt, it literally means, and as thy days; the second word, דבא dobe, occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible: the Septuagint have rendered it by ισχυς, strength, and most of the versions have followed them; but others have rendered it affliction, old age, fame, weakness, c., c. It would be almost endless to follow interpreters through their conjectures concerning its meaning. It is allowed among learned men, that where a word occurs not as a verb in the Hebrew Bible, its root may be legitimately sought in the Arabic. He who controverts this position knows little of the ground on which he stands. In this language the root is found [Arabic] daba signifies he rested, was quiet. This gives a very good sense, and a very appropriate one for as the borders of this tribe lay on the vicinity of the Phoenicians, it was naturally to be expected that they should be constantly exposed to irruptions, pillage, c. but God, to give them confidence in his protection, says, According to thy days - all circumstances and vicissitudes, so shall thy REST be - while faithful to thy God no evil shall touch thee; thy days shall increase, and thy quiet be lengthened out. This is an unfailing promise of God: "I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon me, because he trusteth in me;" therefore "trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength;" Isa 26:4. Some derive it from [Arabic] dabi, he abounded in riches; the interpretation then would be, As thy days increase, so shall thy riches. This makes a very good sense also. See Rosenmuller.
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Moses, having now finished what God gave him to predict concerning the twelve tribes, and what he was led in the fulness of his heart to pray for in their behalf, addresses all the tribes collectively under the names Jeshurun and Israel; and in an ode of astonishing energy and elegance describes this wondrous people, and their still more wonderful privileges. The reader will observe that, though the latter part of this chapter appears in the form of prose in our Bibles, yet it is written in hemistichs or short metrical lines in the original, which is the form in which all the Hebrew poetry is written; and as in other cases, so in this, it would contribute much to the easy understanding of the author's meaning, were the translation produced in lines corresponding to those of the original.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv25–29 Deu 33:25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass…
Deu 33:25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass — They must have had great plenty of both these metals before they could make, or rather adorn their shoes with them, as was the custom among some nations. But we may render the words, Under thy feet shall be iron and brass, namely, mines of those metals; or, thy bolts, or bars, shall be iron and brass, for so the word here rendered shoes is translated, Son 5:5; Neh 3:3; Neh 3:6; Neh 3:13-15. Sidon, which was famous among the heathen for its plenty of brass, was in the tribe of Asher; and Sarepta is thought to have had its name from the brass and iron which were melted there in great quantities. As thy days, thy strength shall be — Thy strength shall not be diminished with age, but thou shalt have the vigour of youth even in thy old age; thy tribe shall grow stronger and stronger. Or the words may mean, that, during their continuance as a tribe, they should not meet with any remarkable disasters, or be brought low, but continue in their full strength.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv25–29 The strength and firmness of Asher is as if…
The strength and firmness of Asher is as if he were shod with iron and brass (compare Rev 1:15). The territory of this tribe probably contained iron and copper. Compare the marginal reference.
As thy days, so shall thy strength be - i. e., “thy strength” (some prefer “thy rest”) “shall be continued to thee as long as thou shalt live: thou shalt never know feebleness and decay.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv25–29 Iron and brass, to denote the warlike disposition of…
Iron and brass, to denote the warlike disposition of this tribe. Goliah[Goliath], and the heroes before Troy, wore boots of brass, 1 Kings xvii. 6. (Homer) --- The greatest part of the army of Antiochus had even golden nails in their shoe soles, (Val. Max.) while the Romans contented themselves with iron. (Josephus, Jewish Wars vii. 3.) --- But this custom was not peculiar to the soldiers. People of all descriptions did the like, either for ornament, or to make their sandals last longer. Empedocles wore brass at the bottom of his sandals; (Laertius viii.) and as one of them was thrown out from the top of Mount Etna, it was discovered that he had destroyed himself in that volcano, to make people suppose (Calmet) that he was a god, and had gone up to heaven. (Haydock) --- Clement of Alexandria (Pœd. ii.) complains, that some wore such gaudy ornaments in his days. (Calmet) --- This passage is interpreted in a figurative sense by some, as if Aser would trample under his feet and despise the instruments of war, (Jansenius) and would turn those metals to the purposes of agriculture. Others render the Hebrew, "Thy bars shall be of iron and brass, and thy reputation (strength, repose, or sorrow) shall endure as long as thy life; or May they, " &c., in the form of a wish. Moses desires that Aser may be secure against his enemies, as if he had a mind to insinuate, that this tribe would be led captive among the first by Teglathphalasar, 4 Kings xv. 29. Many of the cities of this tribe were strongly fortified. (Josephus) --- If we adopt thy sorrow shall, &c., we must observe, that the neighbourhood of Phœnicians exposed the people to continual incursions, (Calmet) and the king of Assyria at last came to complete their ruin. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv25, 26, 28 shoes of iron and brass--These shoes suited his rocky…
shoes of iron and brass--These shoes suited his rocky coast from Carmel to Sidon. Country people as well as ancient warriors had their lower extremities protected by metallic greaves (Sa1 17:6; Eph 6:15) and iron-soled shoes.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv25–29 25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass —…
25. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass — Better, Thy castles shall be iron and brass; that is, his strongholds shall be impregnable.
As thy days, so shall thy strength be — All thy days let thy strength be continued to thee.
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Deu_33:26-29 contain the conclusion of the blessing, and bring out in clear light the power of God and the safety of his people.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv25–29 25. ears] Heb. melîlôth only here; N.H. melîlah =…
25. ears] Heb. melîlôth only here; N.H. melîlah = the still soft ears.
sickle] See on Deu_16:9.
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25. bars] Heb. min‘al, found only here, but the meaning is confirmed by that of the similar form man‘ul, Neh_3:3, etc., and by the Sam. The shoes of A.V. and R.V. marg. and the LXX ὑπόδημα are a false conjecture from na‘al, sandal. Thy, LXX his.
iron and brass] Or possibly basalt and bronze; see on Deu_8:9.
strength] So Sam., LXX, Targ., perhaps reading robe’ for the Heb. dobe’, which is not found elsewhere and is of unknown meaning. Some render rest after the doubtful analogy of Ar.; Vulg. old age, as if reading d’b for db’.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv25–29 (25) Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.—Perhaps we…
(25) Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.—Perhaps we should rather read, thy bars shall be iron and brass. The word here rendered “shoes” in the Authorised Version does not occur elsewhere. The nearest word to it means “locks” or “fastenings.” It is also uncertain whether the whole sentence belongs to the blessing of Asher, or to all Israel. It seems most likely that, as Asher’s territory was at the northern end of Palestine, close to the pass by which the most formidable invaders must enter in, an assurance is here given that the frontier of Israel should be safe. “Iron” and “brass” are mentioned together in connection with gates and bars in Psa_107:16; Isa_45:2. But they are not usually connected with “shoes” in the Old Testament.
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.—The word for “strength” does not occur elsewhere in the Old Testament, but the Targums and the LXX., and other authorities, seem to agree in its interpretation, and the form of the word points to this meaning, “strength,” so that there is little doubt as to its correctness. But the meaning of the clause is variously given by Jewish authorities. “Thy strength in old ago shall be as the strength of thy youth;” or, “As thou spendest thy days (in doing the will of the Holy One or not), so shall thy strength be.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv26–29 Vers. 26-29. As Moses commenced by celebrating the glorious…
Vers. 26-29. As Moses commenced by celebrating the glorious majesty of Jehovah when he appeared to establish his covenant with Israel, so he concludes with a reference to God as the eternal Refuge and the saving Help of his people.
There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun. The points and accents direct that this should be read, There is none like God, O Jeshurun; and though all the ancient versions read as does the Authorized Version, the Masoretic punctuation is vindicated here by the following thy help, which shows that Israel is here addressed.
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Vers. 26-29. The glory of Israel"s God, and the blessedness of God"s Israel.
Ere Moses quite throws up his task, he gives us his view of Israel as a whole. He has had a word of blessing for tribe by tribe, and now he takes one last look at the whole nation, and viewing it in the light of that eternal world on which he is so soon to enter, his words are richer, riper, sweeter than any we yet have read. The name he gives to the people is very significant The word is found but four times in the Scriptures, viz. in Deu_32:15 Deu_33:5, Deu_33:26; Isa_44:2. Itseems to be a kind of diminutive from rv) and in the passage before us it appears to be used as a term of admiration and endearment; some would think it equivalent to "a righteous little people" (see Gesenius). Anyway, the root-notion of the word is connected with righteousness. And the fundamental conception which Moses has of the nation is that it is a nation in covenant with Jehovah on the righteous basis of sacrifice, and that it is one, moreover, which has righteousness for the corner-stone of its constitution and polity. And he pronounces them blessed in two senses: they have a God who is infinitely greater than all gods; they have privileges which make them greater than all other peoples. Hence we have a double theme to meditate upon, from the evangelic standpoint.
I NONE IS SO GLORIOUS AS ISRAEL"S GOD. It is one mark of Divine condescension that our God lets his people speak of him in language they can best understand; e.g. "None like unto the God of Jeshurun" is a phrase which would seem to imply that there may be some other gods, but none equal to the one God (cf. Mic_7:18; 1Sa_2:2) whereas in fact there is no other. Still, men of other nations worshipped other beings whom they deemed to be gods; and Israel"s God, in his infinite condescension, suffers himself to be put in contrast from them, although he is God alone.
1. He is "the eternal God." The word rendered "eternal" here is one which refers to God"s having existed from the eternal past. "From everlasting" he is God he is Jehovah. He changes not.
2. He is one who "rideth above the heaven," etc.; he is over all. In the glory of his transcendent majesty, all things are under his feet. "He maketh the clouds his chariot; he walketh upon the wings of the wind.
3. He is one who bears up Israel and all things in his arms. "Underneath are the everlasting arms arms spread out, expanded with the intent of bearing all. Everlasting arms," that will remain thus spread out and bearing all to eternity, without weariness, though they have borne the weight of all things from eternity.
4. He is one whose active energies are ever going before his people, to "thrust out" their enemies. Whatever would obstruct them shall be taken out of the way.
5. He himself is and will be the Dwelling-place in which his people can abide. Thy Refuge". (see Psa_90:1 Psa_91:2, Psa_91:9; Isa_4:6) It is not at all unlikely that the figure of God as a permanent Home to his people suggested itself to Moses by way of contrast, as the people had lived such a wandering life, and abode in tabernacles (so Keil). Let these five features which mark Israel"s God be put together. May we not well say, "Who is like to the God of Jeshurun?
II NONE CAN BE SO BLESSED AS GOD"S ISRAEL. This is seen whether we consider what God is to them, or what they have and are in, through, and from God.
1. Their blessedness arises from what God is to them; it is an incomparable blessedness. For:
(1) Who else has an eternal God?
(2) Who else has one so great in majesty?
(3) Who else has one so strong to bear?
(4) Who else has one so mighty to defend?
(5) Who else has one in whom is such a home?
Each of these five points, the correlatives of those under the first head, requires expansion.
2. It arises also from what they have and are in and through God.
(1) They have security. "Israel shall dwell in safety.
(2) Plenty shall be theirs. "The fountain Of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine." "They that fear the Lord shall not want any good thing.
(3) They shall have refreshment. "His heavens shall drop down dew." God will be "as the dew unto Israel.
(4) Victory shall be theirs.
(a) "Thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee: i.e. they threatened to destroy, and they are proved false.
(b) "Thou shalt tread upon their high places;" i.e. the high and fortified places in which they gloried shall be as ramparts over which you shall walk.
Who can desire to be more blessed than this? Yea, who can conceive of a greater blessedness? Is it not enough to set the heart a-longing? May not the remark be appropriately made in closing, that
It behooves each one of us to make sure that we are of the Israel of God, so that we may know this blessedness is ours!
Vers. 26-29. Israel"s happiness.
A noble climax! The round of blessing has been completed, and the dying lawgiver revels in the thought of the greatness and felicity thence resulting to favored Israel. One by one the tribes have passed before his eye, and he has sketched in outline, not indeed their actual future, but what might have been, what would have been their future, had they remained faithful to their God. The picture is largely an ideal one, though in the after-history of the tribes, in the lots assigned to them in Canaan, in the types of character exhibited by them, in the variety of their callings and destinies as in the ruins of a temple we may trace something of its original design we discern the fulfillment of many features of the prophecy. Moses" blessing on the tribes is at once a wish, a prayer, and a prediction: a wish that certain blessings may be theirs; a prayer that the blessings may be given; and a prediction of what, conditionally on obedience, would actually be realized. Reading the blessings, we think, as in the parable, of servants entrusted with certain talents to be used in their Lord"s service, but capable of making a bad as well as a good use of them. (Mat_25:14-31) The tribes, speaking generally, used theirs badly, and the blessings were not fulfilled. What applies to the blessing as a whole applies especially to this magnificent concluding passage. It is the ideal, not the actual Israel which stands here before the great lawgiver"s eye, and the language applies to the actual, only in so far as it was also the ideal, people of Jehovah. Its full application is to the Church of Christ the Church catholic and invisible.
I THE BASIS OF ISRAEL"S HAPPINESS, viz. the relation which the tribes sustained to the eternal God. He was the God of Jeshurun of the righteous people. He was a God bound to them by covenant. They had been saved by him. He was their changeless Dwelling-place, Defender, and Support. All power in heaven and earth was at their service, and engaged for their defense. They had nothing to fear with a Protector so almighty; they had everything to hope for from one so able to save and bless. Precisely similar is the relation of God in Christ to the Church of believers.
II THE GREATNESS OF IT.
1. Complete as regards its elements. No element of good a-wanting. Rising from natural blessings, and safety and protection against enemies, they had also, in the favor of God and communion with him, every pledge of spiritual blessing.
2. Permanent. Enduring as the eternal God.
3. Exalting and ennobling to the soul of its possessor. Such a relation to God as Israel sustained should have wrought in the people, did in part work in them, a surpassing elevation of consciousness; was fitted to raise thought and feeling to the pitch of sublimity; should have made of them a great nation, in the best sense of the words, a nation great in thought, aspiration, and endeavor heroically great. A like elevation of spirit should characterize the people of Christ. J.O.
Vers. 26-29. The incomparable Savior.
In finishing the blessing of the people, Moses cannot refrain from bursting into a tribute of admiration for him who had brought them thus far. He speaks of God"s incomparable excellency, and how happy Israel was in relying upon his power. We shall notice the two thoughts in this order as cause and effect.
I THE INCOMPARABLE EXCELLENCY OF GOD. This is brought out in several particulars. And:
1. God is incomparably excellent in himself. He "rideth upon the heaven in his help, and in his excellency on the sky." The reference is believed to be to the Shechinah cloud, which passed in calm majesty along the upper heavens to indicate to Israel, or "Jeshurun," as Israel is here called, the way they should take. In no more beautiful way could God"s essential sovereignty be brought out. He moves in calm majesty among the spheres, the Ruler because Maker of them all. No one can for a moment be compared with him.
2. God is incomparably excellent as the Savior of his people. Israel experienced his help in the deliverance from Egypt, in the pilgrimage to Palestine, and they were about to experience still further favor in the success of the invasion. The language is most beautiful by which all this is conveyed. "The eternal God is thy Refuge;" to him who dwells in the eternities and who orders their processions, the difficulties of time must be as nothing. "Underneath are the everlasting arms," no weariness ever overtaking arms which are full of everlasting strength. "He shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them." Now, in all this we have a figure of the salvation which God extends still to men.
1. He delivers us from the bondage of sin;
2. he justifies us freely from all things;
3. he sanctifies us by his Spirit;
4. he protects and delivers us from all our enemies.
II THE CONSEQUENT HAPPINESS OF ISRAEL. What distinguishes Israel and renders them a happy people is the possession of such an incomparable Savior. It is not in Israel themselves, but in their God, that the cause of their happiness dwells. And is is well to remember this.
1. Frames and feelings are no proper foundation for our spiritual confidence. Anxious souls prolong their anxiety and postpone their peace by excessive introspection. Instead of occupying themselves with the incomparable excellency of their Savior, they occupy themselves with the incomparable vileness of their own hearts. No peace and joy can come from within.
2. The changeless Savior is a true Foundation for our confidence and hope. It is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever," in whom we are asked to confide. He has every excellency which our necessities demand. He has the atonement and the sympathy and the intercessory powers we need to free us from deserved penalties and fit us for undeserved blessing.
3. We stand in consequence as an expectant people awaiting our entrance to the land of promise. For it is to be noticed that Israel were not only happy in their experience, but happy also in their hopes. They were about to enter the Promised Land. There they were to dwell safely alone, like the heavenly state where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." They are to have plenty of corn and wine, as the redeemed have in heaven, where they eat angels" food and drink the new wine of the kingdom. They are to dwell under the fertilizing dews of heaven, as the redeemed shall under the benedictions of God. In hope, then, Israel was happy: and we too may "rejoice in hope of the glory of God. R.M.E.
Vers. 26-29. God, the crown of Israel"s glory.
As soon as Moses touches upon ills theme, language seems too poor to express the greatness of his thought too cold to convey the glowing ardor of his love. Here all metaphors fail; all comparisons are vain. God is above all imagery, or metaphor, or illustration. As there is none like him, so nothing can fitly express his deeds towards his chosen, tits conduct is, like himself, ineffable. As heaven is loftier than earth, so do God"s thoughts and ways transcend human conception.
I OBSERVE ISRAEL"S SOURCE OF GREATNESS. Without question, Israel"s source of greatness is God. Inconceivable as it is to mortal minds, the eternal Sovereign of the universe has come into intimate alliance with his chosen people. He is not simply God the abstract Deity he is the "God of Jeshurun." His eternity is brought into human use is available for human needs. In the eternal and unchangeable God we may dwell. He is our Refuge, our Dwelling-place, our Sanctuary. All the resources of his omnipotence are for us: beneath us "are the everlasting arms." But hath God arms? Hath he human members and organs? "He that formed the eye, shall he not see?" He that fashioned our arms and hands, hath he no instruments with which to support our sinking frame? Yea, "in him we live.
All the activities of his providential government are for us. "He rideth upon the heavens," like a king in his chariot, for our help. This is true, both for Israel collectively, and for every individual believer. In every decree that issues from his throne, he has us in view. All the machinery of his extended providence works with one design, viz. our advantage. He thinks, and plans, and executes, and overturns for one main end the final redemption of his people. God and we are one.
II ISRAEL"S SAFETY. "Thou shalt dwell in safety alone." From the foregoing premise, this is a sound and certain conclusion. "If God be for us," who can assail us successfully? What can prevail against omnipotence? What can penetrate the thick bosses of Jehovah"s shield? Fear in suck a case is unreasonable disloyalty. This globe must be shivered into a thousand atoms, all the forces in God"s universe must be rendered powerless and ineffective, the scepter of Jehovah must be broken, before any danger can touch the elect of God. Safe, beyond the specter of a fear, are hose whom God defends.
III ISRAEL"S ABUNDANCE. "The fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine." Jacob is represented as the fount or source of many people, all of whom shall find an abode in the land of corn and wine. Every want shall be met. In this "mountain, shall the Lord of hosts prepare a feast of fat things." In the paradise of God there flourishes on both sides of the stream, the tree of life, which bears twelve manner of fruits, and yieldeth her fruit every month. Here is a perennial supply and satisfying variety. And though this is expressed by material images, it sets forth substantial and eternal truth the very truth of God. In the kingdom of God there is provided whatever can please the eye, delight the ear, regale the appetite, relieve a need, gratify a sense. For perpetually does the voice of the King ring out a hearty welcome, "Eat, O friends; yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.
IV ISRAEL"S TRIUMPH. God"s triumph is Israel"s triumph also. God will not dissociate himself from his people. "His covenant is an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure." Yea, God"s conquests are not separate and distinct from ours. He conquers through us yea, by means of us. If we belong to the true Israel, God"s foes are our foes, God"s weapons are our weapons, God"s interests are our interests. Our excellent Sword in this warfare is God; he himself is" the Shield of our help." The contest may be protracted, severe, wavering; success may seem to hang in suspense; but beyond the smoke and dust and uncertainty of battle, faith clearly sees the final triumph, and hears the immortal pen, "Thou shalt tread upon their high places.
V ISRAEL"S TRANSCESDEST HAPPINESS. "Happy art thou, O Israel; who is like unto thee?" Surely, their happiness is complete, and impossible of enlargement, who repose themselves in the very heart of God, and dwell perpetually in his love! The utmost capacity of human speech is impotent to express their deep and satisfying joy. It is a thing to be experienced, not expressed. Such joy hath no vocabulary, no tongue. It is "joy unspeakable, and full of glory." What the noonday sun is to a glowworm"s spark, so is the joy of the righteous compared with the joys of earth. God"s own joy is conveyed to godly hearts. D.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv25, 26, 27, 29 Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.
Deu_33:25
Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.
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Shoes of iron, and strength sufficient: a new years promise
I. Thy shoes shall be iron and brass. The passage has several translations, which may serve as divisions in opening up the meaning. The Lords promises are true in every sense they will fairly bear. A generous man will allow the widest interpretation of his words, and so will the infinitely gracious God.
1. That Asher should have treasures under his feet--mines of iron and copper.
(1) The Word of God has mines in it. There are treasures upon the surface of the Word which we may pick up very readily: even the casual reader will find himself able to understand the simplicities and elements of the Gospel; but the Word of God yields most to the digger. We waste too much time upon the pretentious, poverty-stricken literature of the age; and some, even Christians, are more taken up with works of fiction than they are with this great Book of everlasting fact. Remember that God has given to us to have treasures under our feet; but do not so despise His gifts as to leave the mines of revelation unexplored.
(2) You will find these treasures not only in the Word of God, but everywhere in the providence of God, if you will consider the ways of the Lord, and ,believe that God is everywhere at work.
2. R.V. Thy bars shall be iron and brass--there shall be protection around him. Peace from all assaults, safety under all alarms, shutting in from all attacks--this is a priceless boon.
3. He shall have protection for his feet. It is no objection that shoes of iron and brass would be unusual, for the protection which God gives His people is unusual. Theirs are no common equipments, for they are no common people. You have peculiar difficulties, you are a peculiar people, you traverse a peculiar road, you have a peculiar God to trust in, and you may therefore find a peculiar consolation in a peculiar promise. We want to have shoes of iron and brass--
(1) To travel with. We are pilgrims, journeying along a road which has not been smoothed by a steamroller, but remains rough and rugged as the path to an Alpine summit.
(2) To fight with. These shoes are meant for trampling upon enemies.
(3) For climbing. We ought not to be satisfied till we reach the highest places of knowledge, experience, and practice.
(4) For perseverance. Since the Lord has shod you in this fashion, it is a warning to you that the way is long and weary, and the end not by-and-by.
II. As thy day, so shall thy strength be. The words carry a tacit hint, that we have no strength of our own, but have need of strength from above. Come down from your self-esteem: stoop from the notion of your own natural ability: divest yourself of the foolish idea that you can do anything in and of yourself, and come now to the Strong for strength, and ask your Lord to fulfil this promise in your experience.
1. Strength to abide through days. Not for today only, but for tomorrow, and for every day as every day, shall come.
2. Strength to be given daily. A days burden and a days help, a days sorrow and a days comfort. A storage of grace would turn into self-sufficiency.
3. It will be given to us proportionately. A day of little service, little strength; a day of little suffering, little strength; but in a tremendous day--a day that needs thee to play the Samson--thou shalt have Samsons strength.
4. Our strength continuing as our days continue. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Iron shoes for rough roads
Turning this old-time word into a promise for ourselves as we set out on a new years journey, it suggests to us that we may have some rugged pieces of road before we get to the end. If not, what need would there be for iron shoes? If the way is to be flower strewn, velvet slippers would do. No one can live nobly and worthily without struggle, battle, self-denial. Then we may have special trials or sorrows this year. We shall need our iron shoes. It is said there was a compensation in Ashers rough portion; his rugged hills had iron in them. This law of compensation runs through all Gods distribution of gifts. One mans farm is hilly and hard to till, but deep down beneath its ruggedness, buried away in its rocks, are rich minerals. One persons lot in life is hard, with peculiar obstacles, difficulties, and trials, but hidden in it there are compensations of some kind. One young man is reared in affluence and luxury. He never experiences want or self-denial, never has to struggle with obstacles or adverse circumstances. Another is reared in poverty, and has to toil and suffer privation. The latter seems to have scarcely an equal chance in life. But we all know where the compensation lies in this case. It is in such circumstances that grand manhood is grown, while, too often, the petted, pampered sons of luxury come to nothing. In the rugged hills of toil and hardship lifes finest gold is found. Shoes of iron are promised only to those who are to have rugged roads. There is a comforting suggestion here for all who find peculiar hardness in their life. God will provide for the ruggedness. There is a most delicate connection between earth and heavens grace. There is yet another suggestion in this old-time promise. The Divine blessing for every experience is folded up in the experience itself, and will not be received in advance. The iron shoes would not be given until the rough roads were reached. There was no need for them until then, and besides, the iron to make them was in the rugged hills themselves, and could not be gotten until the hills were reached. Some people are forever unwisely testing themselves by questions like these: Could I endure sore bereavement? Have I grace enough to bow in submission to God if He were to take away my dearest treasure? Or could I meet death without fear? Such questions are unwise, because there is no promise of grace to meet trial when there is no trial to be met. Grace for dying is nowhere promised while death is yet far off and while ones duty is to live. There is a story of a shipwreck which yields an illustration that comes in just here. Crew and passengers had to leave the broken vessel and take to the boats. The sea was rough, and great care in rowing and steering was necessary, in order to guard the heavy-laden boats, not from the ordinary waves, which they rode over easily, but from the great cross seas. Night was approaching, and the hearts of all sank as they asked what they should do in the darkness when they would no longer be able to see these terrible waves. To their great joy, however, when it grew dark, they discovered that they were in phosphorescent waters, and that each dangerous wave rolled up crested with light which made it as clearly visible as if it were midday. So it is that lifes dreaded experiences when we meet them carry in themselves the light which takes away the peril and the terror. The night of sorrow comes with its own lamp of comfort. The hour of weakness brings its secret of strength. When we come to the hard, rough, steep path we find iron for shoes. How can I get shoes, and where? one asks. Do you remember about Christs feet, that they were pierced with nails? Why was it? That we might have shoes to wear on our feet, and that they might not be cut and torn on the way. Dropping all figure, we cannot get along on this years pilgrimage without Christ; but having Christ, we shall be ready for anything that the year may bring to us. (J. R. Miller, D. D.)
And as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
Strength according to the days
1. It is not the design of these words to suppress forelooking and foreplanning in secular things.
2. It is not designed to teach men that God will maintain a providence of miracles in their behalf.
3. We cannot know beforehand what help will spring up from our circumstances.
4. Anxiety for the future is labour lost.
5. Application--
(1) To those who follow conscience against their worldly interests.
(2) To those who wish to reform from evil habits, but fear they will not be able to hold out.
(3) To those who look wistfully on a Christian life, but doubt if they would be able to maintain it.
(4) To those who are troubled exceedingly in regard to expected events.
(5) To those who are troubled about relative afflictions.
(6) To those who are troubled about their own death. (H. W. Beecher.)
Thy strength as thy days
What a picture of boundless variety is called up by thy days--even the days of a single life! Who shall delineate the manifold, chequered, ever-changing lights and shadows of the days of man? Yet amidst all the varieties, there is a general unity. There are great interests that are common to all lives, and which bind up in unity all the days of each individual life, weaving all its parts into one texture. This opens to us a plain distinction among the days. Thy days may be viewed collectively, as the sum of thy life--all the days of thy life,--or they may be viewed distributively, as special days, distinctive days.
I. Thy days are all the days of thy life, having great relations, purposes, or interests, to which the strength is adjusted.
1. Thy days are for salvation, and thy strength shall be proportioned to thy days task. The days of life are the steps of the ladder by which we are to ascend the skies.
2. Thy days are for spiritual progress, and thy strength shall be proportioned to the task. Days are given to us on earth to educate us for heaven, for the acquisition of suitable excellence. Let us therefore go on to larger acquisitions. We shall never have cause, like the worlds conqueror, to sit down and weep that there are no more worlds to conquer.
3. Thy days are for service and duty, and thy strength shall be proportioned to thy service.
II. Thy days are special, distinctive days, demanding special strength. Thy days maybe special, as affected by events which can only be met by strength from the Fountain of strength, and the strength shall be proportioned to the emergency. That is not an assurance which man of himself could give. For life is so full of startling events, that we dare not, from all we see and experience, promise ourselves strength to cope with all possible events. No doubt some lives, in comparison of others, are tranquil to outward appearance, without almost any change, like some mountain tam, now bright, now clouded, but showing the same features through all the seasons; and others are like the ocean, never resting, often tossed by terrible tempests; but to all the promise applies--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
1. There are days dark with care, not merely selfish, but generous care. Cast thy burden on the Lord, etc.
2. Then there are days dark with sorrow, when a man must sit alone under Gods hand. And the strength is not mere endurance. There is a kind of dogged endurance of all the trials and ills of life, to which a man can accustom himself. He may not die under them, but he comes out of them with no increased capacity for action, for comfort, for hope. But we cannot suppose the Divine promise fulfilled in such a case. The strength promised will not only turn off the edge of calamities, but will make us more than conquerors over them, and turn their power into a tributary to our own enlargement.
3. Last of all, there is the day of our death. Not only in stormy seas or devouring fires does it need strength to master ones self, but on the most ordinary commonplace deathbed. Ah! it needs God-given strength to enable the father or mother dying to leave their little helpless children in a cold and wicked world. (J. Riddell.)
Strength proportioned to the day
I. To whom is this promise made? Some of the promises in Gods Word are of universal application (Gen_3:15; Gen_8:21-22; Gen_22:17-18). But there are promises which are special, and have regard to separate and distinct classes of persons: e.g., to the wicked (Isa_55:7); to the poor (Isa_41:17); to the penitent (Psa_51:17); to the young (Pro_8:17); to the aged (Isa_46:4). In the text, Asher is the person to whom the promise is made; and if your character is similar to that of Asher, the promise is to you.
1. Asher received Christ, and believed the oracles of God. Do you answer to this description?
2. Asher attended the Divine ordinances. God will strengthen us in His sanctuary. It is in the Lords house, on the Lords day, that we receive light, instruction, and vigour.
3. Asher must have been diligent in his proper vocation; else he would not have dipped his foot in oil. We are to be diligent in business, fervent in spirit, actively serving our generation, according to the will of God.
4. Asher desired the lot of the inheritance. He looked for his place in the promised Canaan. So we are to look for our place in the inheritance which is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away. There is eternal life in the promise.
II. What is the meaning of this promise? There are ordinary days, which have in them no signal event, no remarkable calamity or disaster, no striking prosperity or success. They roll round in the even tenor of their course. Perhaps the great majority of our days are of this character. But in all the ordinary days, have we not found corresponding resources of help, and strength, and mercy, and supplies according to our need? There are days of prosperity, and seasons when everything goes well with us. Then, too often, our goodness is like the morning cloud and the early dew. But if even then a man is kept humble and conscious of his responsibility; if he wishes to do good, and is concerned to be a blessing; where all this is accomplished, moral and spiritual resources are supplied according to our day. You may think the difficulty to be deeper in adversity; when the tide ebbs; when there are changes, overturnings, bereavements, desolation, etc. To pass through the rivers, and say, I am not overflown; to pass through the furnace, and say, I am not burned; this is by the secret sustaining hand of the Almighty. If we are humble and patient when He seems severe, it is by the grace of God. There may be days of personal temptation, when the adversary cometh in like a flood. The dark and evil day may arrive, when we have to stand in the firmness of opposition. If we triumph, it is by the grace of God. There are days of duty, which seem to be beyond our strength; as when the scholar has to pass through his examination; or when the minister ascends the pulpit and asks, Who is sufficient for these things?
III. Where is our security?
1. It is in the power and faithfulness of God. Remember that one of His titles is, The Strength of Israel; then it follows, He will not lie; here is power and faithfulness in its loftiest form. God is able to keep us from falling; and He has sworn by two immutable things, that we might have strong consolation. No conjuncture shall arise, in which the strength of heaven shall not make us victorious.
2. We are also assured by the word and sympathy of Jesus. The promises are yea and amen in Christ Jesus; that is, they are ratified in His blood, and established in His mediation; and He is a High Priest touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
3. There is our own experience in the past. Hitherto the Lord hath helped us.
IV. If we receive the promise of our text, what should be the effect upon our lives? We answer, Dismiss all anxieties and fears. (J. Stratten.)
Strength as the days
I. What this promise is not.
1. It has no direct relation to the past--no power of retrieval and recovery. Negligence is negligence, and no spiritual alchemy can change it into diligence. This only may be done: precious lessons may be drawn out of that which has been; and thus the moral continuity of the results of what was evil may be in a measure interrupted, and good drawn out of the evil.
2. It does not bring us into any immediate connection with the future. No doubt there is what may be called grace in stock; in capital if you will, in the existence and operation of gracious principles and dispositions. You may reckon with certainty on getting large interest from these. But even that is on condition of continued faithfulness, and in order to secure that God gives by the day. It is only in the day itself--in the dispensation--in the duty--in the melting of the heart grief; in the bitterness of the disappointment, or in the fierceness of the temptation, that you can fully know what strength you will require--and only then, in the nature of things, can you receive it.
II. What this promise is. You are going some distance to a banquet. It will, of course, be pleasant if the sun shines by the way, and all the world looks fair. But if the clouds hang heavy, and the air is cold, you will go to the banquet just the same. You are going across the sea to claim a property, and you are to sail in a ship that cannot sink. It will be pleasant if there is only the ripple of quiet waters from the prow of the ship, and the flashing of the sunlight from the scarcely crested waves. But if even there should come the roar and burly of the storm, and the dash of the angry waves against the sides of the vessel, until the very masts are white with spray, you will none the less, and probably even none the later, see and claim your good estate. If a man lives well each day--die well he must, whatever his feeling be. Death will be to him a very chariot of fire to take him to the banquet of heaven; or a ship that turns back for no weather, nor ever strikes sail till she enters the harbour. Lessons--
1. Do not be managing and masterful over circumstances and providence; hammering and hewing at the days to compel them into a certain shape. Take them as they come; for they come as they are sent, arrayed darkly or brightly by the hand of God, and filled with such elements as His wisdom and goodness have put into them.
2. Do not be timorous and fearful and full of anxious care; you see how little need there is for it, how well you are provided for!
3. Such a subject, and such a promise is surely a call to diligence. For here you see is an unlimited promise of strength--strength to match the days--that is Gods side of it. Our part is to try to raise the days to match the strength. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)
As thy days, so shall thy strength be
When we have seen the hills clad with verdure to their summit, and the seas laving their base with a silver glory; when we have stretched our eye far away, and have seen the widening prospect full of loveliness and beauty, we have felt sad that the sunlight should ever set upon such a scene, and that so much beauty should be shrouded in the oblivion of darkness. But how much reason have we to bless God for nights! for if it were not for nights how much of beauty never would be discovered. Night seems to be the great friend of the stars: they must be all unseen by eyes of men, were they not set in the full of darkness. It is even so with winter. Much of Gods marvellous miracles of hoar frost must have been hidden from us, if it had not been for the cold chill of winter, which, when it robs us of one beauty, gives us another,--when it takes away the emerald of verdure, it gives us the diamond of ice--when it casts from us the bright rubies of the flowers, it gives us the fair, white ermine of snow. Well now, translate those two ideas, and you will see why it is that even our sin, our lost and ruined estate, has been made the means, in the hand of God, of manifesting to us the excellencies of His character. If you and I had been without trouble, we never could have had such a promise as this given to us--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
I. The self-weakness hinted at in the text. To keep to my figure, if this promise be like a star, you know there is no seeing the stars in the daytime when we stand here upon the upper land; we must go down a deep well, and then we shall be able to discover them. Now, as this is daytime with our hearts, it will be necessary for us to go down the deep well of old recollections of our past trials. We must first get a good fair idea of the great depth of our own weakness, before we shall be able to behold the brightness of this rich and exceeding precious promise.
1. Ye children of God, have ye not proved your own weakness in the day of duty? The Lord has spoken to you, and He has said, Son of man, run, and do such and such a thing which I bid thee; and you have gone to do it, but as you have been upon your way, a sense of great responsibility has bowed you down, and you have been ready to turn back even at the outset, and to cry, Send by whomsoever Thou wilt send, but not by me. Reinforced by strength, you have gone to the duty, but while performing it, you have at times felt your hands hanging exceeding heavy, and you have had to look up many a time and cry, O Lord, give me more strength, for without Thy strength this work must be unaccomplished; I cannot perform it myself. And when the work has been done, and you have looked back upon it, you have either been filled with amazement that it should have been done at all by so poor and weak a worm as yourself, or else you have been overcome with horror because you have been afraid the work was marred, like the vessel on the potters wheel, by reason of your own want of skilfulness.
2. We prove our weakness, perhaps more visibly, when we come into the day of suffering. There it is that we are weak indeed. Ah! people of God, it is one thing to talk about the furnace; it is another thing to be in it. It is one thing to look at the doctors knife, but quite another thing to feel it. That man has never been sick who does not know his weakness, his want of patience, and of endurance.
3. Again, there is another thing which will very soon prove our weakness, if neither duty nor suffering will do it--namely, progress. Let any of you try to grow in grace, and seek to run the heavenly race, and make a little progress, and you will soon find, in such a slippery road as that which we have to travel, that it is very hard to go one step forward, though remarkably easy to go a great many steps backward.
4. See what thou art in temptation. I have seen a tree in the forest that seemed to stand fast like a rock; I have stood beneath its wide-spreading branches, and have sought to shake its trunk, to see if I could, but it stood immovable. The sun shone upon it, and the rain descended, and many a winters frost sprinkled its boughs with snow, but it still stood fast and firm. But one night there came a howling wind which swept through the forest, and the tree that seemed to stand so fast lay stretched along the ground, its gaunt arms which once were lifted up to heaven lying hopelessly broken, and the trunk snapped in twain. And so have I seen many a professor strong and mighty, and nothing seemed to move him; but I have seen the wind of persecution and temptation come against him, and I have heard him creak with murmuring, and at last have seen him break in apostasy and he has lain along the ground a mournful specimen of what every man must become who maketh not the Lord his strength, and who relieth not upon the Most High. We have all our tender points. When Thetis dipped Achilles in the Styx, you remember she held him by the heel; he was made invulnerable wherever the water touched him, but his heel not being covered with the water, was vulnerable, and there Paris shot his arrow, and be died. It is even so with us. We may think that we are covered with virtue till we are totally invulnerable, but we have a heel somewhere; there is a place where the arrow of the devil can make way: hence the absolute necessity of taking to ourselves the whole armour of God, so that there may not be a solitary joint in the harness that shall be unprotected against the arrows of the devil.
II. The great promise--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
1. This is a well-guaranteed promise. There is enough bullion in the vaults of Omnipotence to pay off every bill that ever shall be drawn by the faith of man or the promises of God. Now look at this one As thy days, so shall thy strength be. God has a strong reserve with which to pay off this promise; for is He not Himself omnipotent, able to do all things? Remember what He did in the days of old, in the former generations. Remember how He spake, and it was done; how He commanded, and it stood fast. He hangeth the world upon nothing; He fixed the pillars of heaven in silver sockets of light, and thereon He hung the golden lamps, the sun and the moon; and shall He that did all this be unable to support His children? Shall He be unfaithful to His word for want of power in His arm or strength in His will? Remember again, thy God, who has promised to be thy strength, is the Cod who upholdeth all things by the word of His hand. Who feedeth the ravens? Who supplies the lions? Doth not He do it? And how? He openeth His hand and supplieth the want of every living thing. He has to do nothing more than simply to open His band. Who is it that restrains the tempest? Doth not He say that He rides upon the wings of the wiled, that He maketh the clouds His chariots, and holds the water in the hollow of His hand? Shall He fail thee?
2. It is a limited promise. What! says one, limited! Why it says, As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Ay, it is limited. I know it is unlimited in our troubles, but still it is limited. First, it says our strength is to be as our days are; it does not say our strength is to be as our desires are. Oh! how often have we thought, How I wish I were as strong as So-and-so--one who had a great deal of faith. Ah! but then you would have rather more faith than you wanted; and what would be the good of that? Still, says one, if I had faith like So-and-so, I think I should do wonders. Yes, but you would get the glory of them. God does not want you to do wonders. That is reserved for God, not for you,--He only doeth wondrous things. Once more, it does not say, our strength shall be as our fears God often leaves us to shift alone with our fears,--never with our troubles. The promise is As thy days, so shall thy strength be. When your vessel gets empty then will I fill it; I will not give you any extra, over and above. When you are weak then I will make you strong; but I will not give you any extra strength to lay by: strength enough to bear your sufferings, and to do your duty; but no strength to play at matches with your brethren and sisters in order to get the glory to yourselves. Then, again, there is another limit. It says, As thy days, so shall thy strength be. It does not say, as thy weeks, or months but as thy days. You are not going to have Mondays grace given you on a Sunday, nor Tuesdays grace on a Monday. No; as thy days, so shall thy strength be.
3. What an extensive promise this is! As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Some days are very little things; in our pocket book we have very little to put down, for there was nothing done of any importance. But some days are very big days. Ah! I have known a big day--a day of great duties, when great things had to be done for God--too great, it seemed, for one man to do; and when great duty was but half done there came great trouble, such as my poor heart had never felt before. Oh! what a great day it was! there was a night of lamentation in this place, and the cry of weeping, and of mourning, and of death. Ah! but blessed be Gods name, though the day was big with tempest, and though it swelled with horror, yet as that day was, so was Gods strength.
4. What a varying promise it is! I do not mean that the promise varies, but adapts itself to all our changes. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Here is a fine sunshiny morning; all the world is laughing; everything looks glad; the birds are singing, the trees seem to be all alive with music. My strength shall be as my day is, says the pilgrim. Ah! pilgrim, there is a little black cloud gathering. Soon it increases; the flash of lightning wounds the heaven, and it begins to bleed in showers. Pilgrim, As thy days, so shall thy strength be. The birds have done singing, and the world has done laughing; but as thy days, so shall thy strength be. Now the dark night comes on, and another day approaches--a day of tempest, and whirlwind, and storm. Dost thou tremble, pilgrim?--As thy days, so shall thy strength be.
5. What a long promise this is! You may live till you are never so old, but this promise will outlive you. When thou comest into the depths of the river Jordan, as thy days, so shall thy strength be; thou shalt have confidence to face the last grim tyrant, and grace to smile even in the jaws of the grave. And when thou shalt rise again in the terrible morning of the resurrection, as thy days so shall thy strength be; though the earth be reeling with dismay thou shalt know no fear; though the heavens are tottering with confusion thou shalt know no trouble. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. And when thou shalt see God face to face, though thy weakness were enough to make thee die, thou shalt have strength to bear the beatific vision: thou shalt see Him face to face, and thou shalt live; thou shalt lie in the bosom of thy God; immortalised and made full of strength, thou shalt be able to bear even the brightness of the Most High.
III. What inference shall I draw except this? Children of the living God, be rid of your doubts, be rid of your trouble and your fear. Young Christians, do not be afraid to set forward on the heavenly race. You bashful Christians, that, like Nicodemus, are ashamed to come out and make an open profession, dont be afraid: As your day is, so shall your strength be. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Kept of God
1. If God prosper His people He will still keep them humble. He ever plants some thorn in the flesh, sends some messenger of Satan to buffet them, that thus they may be kept mindful that the present life is not their home, nor the present enjoyments their heaven. An unpolished partner, or a vicious son, or a sickly constitution, or some other unpropitious circumstance, has ever preyed upon the spirits of the prosperous believer. And these mixtures of bitter ingredients in his cup of blessings, have kept him from selling his birthright for the perishing and contemptible objects of sense.
2. If God afflict His people, He will bestow those comforts which will keep them happy, and make them thankful. Hope is a grace which God is as much resolved to cherish in His people as humility. Hence, if He pain them, He is sure to preserve them from despair. While there is the deep conviction that His strokes are fewer than their crimes, and lighter than their guilt, there, too, is clear discovery of a parental hand which wields the rod, and a parental eye which smiles through every cloud that covers them.
Remarks--
1. How safe and happy are the Lords people. They are not exempt from trials, but are permitted to know that their strength shall be proportioned to their burdens.
2. Their present strength and courage do not decide how they shall appear in the hour of conflict, or what shall be their future condition. It is absurd that the believer should yield his hope because he does not find himself prepared for trials which have not yet come. He expects, in this case, a mercy never promised. God will prepare him when He tries him, will give him strength when He calls him to the onset. Our strength is not to be greater than our day, but equal. Should it be greater, we should become proud; should it be less, we should be discouraged. If, then, we find our strength equal to our present conflicts, we have nothing to fear. Our courage will kindle as the battle thickens, and our strength increase as we march on to the more desperate onset. If our present strength is sufficient for our present purpose, this is all that God has promised, and is enough. Here is the test by which we are to try our character. Do we submit cheerfully to present disappointments, and exhibit a right temper under all the present little corroding incidents of this conflicting world? (D. A. Clark.)
Seasonable strength
Dr. Doddridge was one day walking, much depressed, his very heart desolate within him. But, says he, passing a cottage door open, I happened at that moment to hear a child reading, As thy days, so shall thy strength be. The effect on my mind was indescribable. It was like life from the dead. And what does this word say to us? As thy days, so shall thy strength be. There is strength bodily. The continuance of this is a mercy. How easily can it be crushed, so that we may be made to possess months of vanity; and endure wearisome nights; and feel every exertion a difficulty, and every duty a burden! But there is strength spiritual. This is very distinguishable from the former, and often found separate from it. The Lord does not always give His people a giants arm, or an iron sinew; but His strength is made perfect in weakness. This is the strength here spoken of. For two purposes His people will find it necessary: service and suffering. Every Christian has a course of duty common to him as a man; which is, to provide for his outward wants, and the support of his family. And this is done by labour, in which he is required not to be slothful. But there is a series of duties pertaining more immediately to him in his religious character; to believe, to pray, to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present evil world. Suffering is commonly connected with service in the Divine life. It was so invariably in the beginning of the Gospel. Then it was deemed impossible for anyone to live godly in Christ Jesus and not suffer persecution. Therefore, no sooner was Paul converted, than he was told how great things he had to suffer. As real religion is always the same, some degree of the same opposition may be always looked for; and the hatred of the world will be shown as far as they have liberty to express it, and are not restrained by law, or the usages of civilised life. But when the Christian has rest from such trials as these, God can subserve their purpose, by personal and relative afflictions, which are often severer than even the endurings of a martyr. They are called chastenings and rebukes which he is neither to despise, nor faint under. Now the prospect of all this, when he looks forward into life, is enough to awaken the Christians anxiety; and nothing can effectually encourage him but the discovery of strength equal to his exigencies. And this he finds not in himself. The natural man has no sensibility of his weakness, because he is not earnestly engaged in those applications which require spiritual strength. The Christian is. He knows that he is as destitute of strength as he is of righteousness. He feels himself entirely insufficient for all the duties and trials of the Divine life. And the consciousness, instead of diminishing, grows with the experience of every day. And he need not be afraid of this. Rather, let him cherish it; for when he is weak, then is he strong. What he wants is provided and ensured by the promise of a God who cannot lie. (W. Jay.)
Strength growing with days
We generally hear these words misquoted, and put into the shape, As thy day, so shall thy strength be, as if the substance of the promise was strength proportioned to the special exigencies of each movement. That is very beautiful, and may well be deduced from the words, but it fails to take into account that little s at the end of the word day, which obliges us to understand the promise as meaning: As thy days (increase) thy strength shall (increase). The older a Christian is, the stronger Christian he Ought to be. Then there is another thing to be noted, and that is that in their original connection the words are a promise, not to an individual, but to a community. It is the last of the series of promises to the various tribes of Israel which occupy this chapter of Deuteronomy.
I. Increase of strength with increase of age. In its application to the individual life. Here is a promise dead in the teeth of nature, because all living things that belong to the material universe come under the law of growth, which ultimately passes into decay. The same sea of Time that flings up its spoils on some shores, and increases the land, when you get round the promontory is eating away the coast. And so, the years, which at first bring us strength, very soon begin to reverse their action. Nor is it only the physical life which dwindles as the days increase, but also much of the inner life is modified by the external, so that the old mans memory becomes less retentive, and the old mans impulses less strong. But as thy days, so shall thy strength be, and when the eyes become dim, it is possible that they may be longer sighted, and see the things that are, just in proportion as they begin to fail to see the things that do appear. They may be able to discern more clearly what is above them, as they see less clearly the things on their own level. It is possible that as the days increase, and the strength drawn from externals decreases, the power of the Spirit, the maturity of the soul, the insight into the Eternal, the Christ-likeness and assimilation to that which we more clearly behold, as the clouds thin themselves away, may all increase. And so, in all that makes the Christian life, it is possible that there shall be increase with the increase of our days. Why so? Just because the Christian life is a supernatural life that has nothing to do with dependence on physical conditions. If it were not so, if my Christian vitality stood exactly on the same plane as my vigour of intellect, my retentiveness of memory, my energy of purpose, or other capacities, which make up the non-material part of my being--the soul, as people call it--then it, too, would share in the decrepitude and decay. We sometimes see people, in the measure in which their physical strength decays, drawing into themselves more and more of that supernatural and Divine strength which has nothing to do with the material or the external. Is that not a reason for believing that that life which thus obeys a law, as I said, dead in the teeth of nature, is a life altogether independent of this bodily existence, and our connection with this material universe? There is no better proof of immortality, if you except the fact of the resurrection, than the way in which, right up to the edge of the grave, and even when a mans foot is on its threshold, there burns in his soul, brighter and brightening as the darkness falls, all that makes the Christian life. But if this contradiction of nature by a supernatural life is to be ours, as it may be, let us not forget that this promise, like all Gods promises, is a promise with conditions. They are not stated here, but we know them. The youths shall faint and be weary; the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength--they, and only they. God does not give gifts to men who He sees are wasting them, and the gift of growing strength that is promised to us is strength that is to be used for His service. Has my strength grown with years? Let me say one word, and it shall be but a word, about the other application of this great thought. As I said, it is a tribal benediction, and all the benedictions of all the tribes have passed over to the great community of New Testament believers. The Church is heir to the Divine promise that as its days increase its strength increases. And though, of course, there have been fearful instances to the contrary, and churches, like other institutions, are apt to stiffen and decay in their old age, yet the only institution in the world that has lasted so long, and kept up so much vitality through centuries, is the Christian Church. Why? If there were not a supernatural life in it, it would have been dead long ago. As the Churchs days increase, so will her strength grow. But the promise of our text is susceptible of another application, though that is not its true signification, and may be taken as meaning the necessities of the days shall determine the nature of the strength given. And that adaptation of supply to need will be true in many directions. It will be true if we consider the tasks imposed by each succeeding day. For God never sets His servants to work or warfare beyond the limits of the strength which they have or may have, if they will. Again, this adaptation will shape the days strength according to the days wants. The matter of a day in its day will be given. There will be daily bread for daily hunger. God makes no mistakes, sending furs for June or muslin for December. His gifts are never belated, nor arrive after the need for them is past. That adaptation takes effect for us on the same condition as the increase does, of which we have been speaking, namely, on condition of our waiting on God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Equipped
I. Mans emergency.
1. Mans journey is along a rough and thorny road.
2. Conscious experience of wear and tear: As thy days, so shall thy strength be. Fresh obligations of unfolding life, and hence increasing pressure. At first we only dream of bliss and peace from religion; at length we realise in it fidelity, obligations, responsibilities, sacrifices, conflicts. How real to every true man is the wear and tear of a religious life, the necessary exhaustion from duty. When the business and the bustle of life come in conflict with religion and pious reflection. When the conflict for principle leaves us consciously weaker, even if making us truer at heart. No conflict, however its success and triumph, without reaction. Such mans emergency.
II. Gods provision.
1. For the rough journey, the shoes of iron and brass. Equipment proportionate to need. Thus in illustrations of the Christian life: Conflict--armour (Eph_6:12-17). Duty--conviction (2Co_1:12). Journey--shoes of iron and brass (Deu_8:2-4). With the same and yet higher provision men make against emergency does God provide for His people: The Arctic whaler is built for her voyage, no pleasure yacht for a summers day. The soldier is equipped for service, not decorated for a holiday parade. Thus with God for us. Against every rough pebble there is a nail in the shoes of grace.
2. For the wear and tear--the supply: As thy day, so, etc. Note--Gods communications of grace never anticipative but always sufficient. Men paralyse their energies in the anticipation of possible emergencies. What shall I do, says a man, if so-and-so should happen? and he forgets how he does new--the once future of anticipated forebodings. God gives not to the heart, unembarrassed by worldly cares and anxieties, and rejoicing in its gladsomeness, the strength for the hour of care and worry that may or may never come to it. Gods provisions are economic. Waste has no part in the laws of Gods moral government. As thy days, so, etc. But Gods provision is in the presence of mans emergency. God gives us our desires as fully in giving us strength for the rough journey, as in smoothing the way for us and strewing the path with flowers. And more. For the effort of manhood, assisted by grace, results in a bettering of manhood for ourselves; while the interpositions of grace merely--kindly, gracious though they be--leave us as we were before, afraid of that which is high, and faltering in the presence of difficulties. How a man that has overcome gains confidence. I have met a trouble before, says he, when trouble lies ahead, and by Gods grace I can meet this one. Results are more from efforts than helps. It is from the swing of the heavy sledge, week in, week out, from morn to night, that the muscles of the brawny arm are strong as iron bands. And God assures us that the effort of our manhood will have His support. As thy days, so shall thy strength be. (W. Henderson.)
Help for the hard places
1. Consider the width of the promise--thy days, that is, all thy days.
2. Consider the specificalness of the promise--each one of thy days,
3. Consider the adaptedness of the promise--for every sort of day. For the day of dull routine. For the day of weariness. For the day of disappointment. For the day of sorrow. For the day of difficult duty. For the day of death.
4. Consider the maker of the promise. He makes the promise who knows all our days (Psa_139:1-6). He makes the promise who measures our days (Psa_31:15). He makes the promise who is with us through all the days (Mat_28:20).
Therefore
1. Be sure of a specific and caring Providence.
2. Do not fear.
3. Make alliance with God. (Homiletic Review.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v25
Deuteronomy
SHOD FOR THE ROAD
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Deu 33:25.
There is a general correspondence between those blessings wherewith Moses blessed the tribes of Israel before his death, and the circumstances and territory of each tribe in the promised land. The portion of Asher, in whose blessing the words of our text occurs, was partly the rocky northern coast and partly the fertile lands stretching to the base of the Lebanon. In the inland part of their territory they cultivated large olive groves, the produce of which was trodden out in great rock-hewn cisterns. So the clause before my text is a benediction upon that industry-’let him dip his foot in oil.’ And then the metaphor naturally suggested by the mention of the foot is carried on into the next words, ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,’ the tribe being located upon rocky sea-coast, having rough roads to travel, and so needing to be well shod. The substance, then, of that promise seems to be-strength adequate to, and unworn by, exercise; while the second clause, though not altogether plain, seems to put a somewhat similar idea in unmetaphorical shape. ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ probably means the promise of power that grows with growing years.
So, then, we have first that thought that God gives us an equipment of strength proportioned to our work,-shoes fit for our road. God does not turn people out to scramble over rough mountains with thin-soled boots on; that is the plain English of the words. When an Alpine climber is preparing to go away into Switzerland for rock work, the first thing he does is to get a pair of strong shoes, with plenty of iron nails in the soles of them. So Asher had to be shod for his rough roads, and so each of us may be sure that if God sends us on stony paths He will provide us with strong shoes, and will not send us out on any journey for which He does not equip us well.
There are no difficulties to be found in any path of duty, for which he that is called to tread it is not prepared by Him that sent him. Whatsoever may be the road, our equipment is calculated for it, and is given to us from Him that has appointed it.
Is there not a suggestion here, too, as to the sort of travelling we may expect to have? An old saying tells us that we do not go to heaven in silver slippers, and the reason is because the road is rough. The ‘primrose way’ leads somewhere else, and it may be walked on ‘delicately.’ But if we need shoes of iron and brass, we may pretty well guess the kind of road we have before us. If a man is equipped with such coverings on his feet, depend upon it that there will be use for them before he gets to the end of his day’s journey. The thickest sole will make the easiest travelling over rocky roads. So be quite sure of this, that if God gives to us certain endowments and equipments which are only calculated for very toilsome paths, the roughness of the road will match the stoutness of the shoes.
And see what He does give. See the provision which is made for patience and strength, for endurance and courage, in all the messages of His mercy, in all the words of His love, in all the powers of His Gospel, and then say whether that looks as if we should have an easy life of it on our way home. Those two ships that went away a while ago upon the brave, and, as some people thought, desperate task of finding the North Pole-any one that looked upon them as they lay in Portsmouth Roads, might know that it was no holiday cruise they were meant for. The thickness of the sides, the strength of the cordage, the massiveness of the equipment, did not look like pleasure-sailing.
And so, dear brethren, if we think of all that is given to us in God’s Gospel in the way of stimulus and encouragement, and exhortation, and actual communication of powers, we may calculate, from the abundance of the resources, how great will be the strain upon us before we come to the end, and our ‘feet stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem.’ Go into some of the great fortresses in continental countries, and you will find the store-rooms full of ammunition and provisions; bread enough and biscuits enough, as it seems, for half the country, laid up there, and a deep well somewhere or other in the courtyard. What does that mean? It means fighting, that is what it means. So if we are brought into this strong pavilion, so well provisioned, so massively fortified and defended, that means that we shall need all the strength that is to be found in those thick walls, and all the sustenance that is to be found in those gorged magazines, and all the refreshment that is to be drawn from that free, and full, and inexhaustible fountain, before the battle is over and the victory won. Depend upon it, the promise ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.’ means, ‘Thy road shall be rocky and flinty’; and so it is.
And yet, thank God! whilst it is true that it is very hard and very difficult for many of us, and hard and difficult-even if without the ‘very’-for us all, it is also true that we have the adequate provision sufficient for all our necessities-and far more than sufficient! It is a poor compliment to the strength that He gives to us to say that it is enough to carry us through. God does not deal out His gifts to people with such an economical correspondence to necessities as that. There is always a wide margin. More than we can ask, more than we can think, more than we can need is given us.
If He were to deal with us as men often deal with one another, asking us, ‘Well, how much do you want? cannot you do with a little less? there is the exact quantity that you need for your support’-if you got your bread by weight and your water by measure, it would be a very poor affair. See how He actually does-He says, ‘Child, there is Mine own strength for you’; and we think that we honour Him when we say, ‘God has given us enough for our necessities!’ Rather the old word is always true: ‘So they did eat and were filled; and they took up of the fragments that remained seven baskets-full,’ and after they were satisfied and replete with the provision, there was more at the end than when they began.
That suggests another possible thought to be drawn from this promise, namely, that it assures not only of strength adequate to the difficulties and perils of the journey, but also of a strength which is not worn out by use.
The ‘portion’ of Asher was the rocky sea-coast. The sharp, jagged rocks would cut to pieces anything made of leather long before the day’s march was over; but the travellers have their feet shod with metal, and the rocks which they have to stumble over will only strike fire from their shoes. They need not step timidly for fear of wearing them out; but, wherever they have to march, may go with full confidence that their shoeing will not fail them. A wise general looks after that part of his soldiers’ outfit with special care, knowing that if it gives out, all the rest is of no use. So our Captain provides us with an inexhaustible strength, to which we may fully trust. We shall not exhaust it by any demands that we can make upon it. We shall only brighten it up, like the nails in a well-used shoe, the heads of which are polished by stumbling and scrambling over rocky roads.
So we may be bold in the march, and draw upon our stock of strength to the utmost. There is no fear that it will fail us. We may put all our force into our work, we shall not weaken the power which ‘by reason of use is exercised,’ not exhausted. For the grace which Christ gives us to serve Him, being divine, is subject to no weariness, and neither faints nor fails. The bush that burned unconsumed is a type of that Infinite Being who works unexhausted, and lives undying, after all expenditure is rich, after all pouring forth is full. And of His strength we partake.
Whensoever a man puts forth an effort of any kind whatever-when I speak, when I lift my hand, when I run, when I think-there is waste of muscular tissue. Some of my strength goes in the act, and thus every effort means expenditure and diminution of force. Hence weariness that needs sleep, waste that needs food, languor that needs rest. We belong to an order of being in which work is death, in regard to our physical nature; but our spirits may lay hold of God, and enter into an order of things in which work is not death, nor effort exhaustion, nor is there loss of power in the expenditure of power.
That sounds strange, and yet it is not strange. Think of that electric light which is made by directing a strong stream upon two small pieces of carbon. As the electricity strikes upon these and turns their blackness into a fiery blaze, it eats away their substance while it changes them into light. But there is an arrangement in the lamp by which a fresh surface is continually being brought into the path of the beam, and so the light continues without wavering and blazes on. The carbon is our human nature, black and dull in itself; the electric beam is the swift energy of God, which makes us ‘light in the Lord.’ For the one, decay is the end of effort; for the other, there is none. ‘Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.’ Though we belong to the perishing order of nature by our bodily frame, we belong to the undecaying realm of grace by the spirit that lays hold upon God. And if our work weary us, as it must do so long as we continue here, yet in the deepest sanctuary of our being, our strength is greatened by exercise. ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.’ ‘Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.’ ‘Stand, therefore, having your feet shod with the preparedness of the Gospel of peace.’
But this is not all. There is an advance even upon these great promises in the closing words. That second clause of our text says more than the first one. ‘Thy shoes shall be iron and brass,’ that promises us powers and provision adapted to, and unexhausted by, the weary pilgrimage and rough road of life. But ‘as thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ says even more than that. The meaning of the word rendered ‘strength’ in our version is very doubtful, and most modern translators are inclined to render it ‘rest.’ But if we adhere to the translation of our version, we get a forcible and relevant promise, which fits on well to the previous clause, understood as it has been in my previous remarks. The usual understanding of the words is ‘strength proportioned to thy day,’ an idea which we have found already suggested by the previous clause. But that explanation rests on, or at any rate derives support from, the common misquotation of the words. They are not, as we generally hear them quoted, ‘As thy day, so shall thy strength be,’-but ‘day’ is in the plural, and that makes a great difference. ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be,’ that is to say: the two sums-of ‘thy days’ and of ‘thy strength’-keep growing side by side, the one as fast as the other and no faster. The days increase. Well, what then? The strength increases too. As I said, we are allied to two worlds. According to the law of one of them, the outer world of physical life, we soon reach the summit of human strength. For a little while it is true, even in the life of nature, that our power grows with our days. But we soon reach the watershed, and then the opposite comes to be true. Down, steadily down, we go. With diminishing power, with diminishing vitality, with a dimmer eye, with an obtuser ear, with a slower-beating heart, with a feebler frame, we march on and on to our grave. ‘As thy days, so shall thy weakness be,’ is the law for all of us mature men and women in regard to our outward life.
But, dear brethren, we may be emancipated from that dreary law in regard to the true life of our spirits, and instead of growing weaker as we grow older, we may and we should grow stronger. We may be and we should be moving on a course that has no limit to its advance. We may be travelling on a shining path through the heavens, that has no noon-tide height from which it must slowly and sadly decline, but tends steadily and for ever upwards, nearer and nearer to the very fountain itself of heavenly radiance. ‘The path of the just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more till the noon-tide of the day.’ But the reality surpasses even that grand thought, for it discloses to us an endless approximation to an infinite beauty, and an ever-growing possession of never exhausted fulness, as the law for the progress of all Christ’s servants. The life of each of us may and should be continual accession and increase of power through all the days here, through all the ages beyond. Why? Because ‘the life which I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.’ Christ liveth in me. It is not my strength that grows, so much as God’s strength in me which is given more abundantly as the days roll. It is so given on one condition. If my faith has laid hold of the infinite, the exhaustless, the immortal energy of God, unless there is something fearfully wrong about me, I shall be becoming purer, nobler, wiser, more observant of His will, gentler, liker Christ, every way fitter for His service, and for larger service, as the days increase.
Those of us who have reached middle life, or perhaps gone a little over the watershed, ought to have this experience as our own in a very distinct degree. The years that are past ought to have drawn us somewhat away from our hot pursuing after earthly and perishable things. They should have added something to the clearness and completeness of our perception of the deep simplicity of God’s gospel. They should have tightened our hold and increased our possession of Christ, and unfolded more and more of His all-sufficiency. They should have enriched us with memories of God’s loving care, and lighted all the sky behind with a glow which is reflected on the path before us, and kindles calm confidence in His unfailing goodness. They should have given us power and skill for the conflicts that yet remain, as the Red Indians believe that the strength of every defeated and scalped enemy passes into his conqueror’s arm. They should have given force to our better nature, and weakening, progressive weakening, to our worse. They should have rooted us more firmly and abidingly in Him from whom all our power comes, and so have given us more and fuller supplies of His exhaustless and ever-flowing might.
So it may be with us if we abide in Him, without whom we are nothing, but partaking of whose strength ‘the weakest shall be as David, and David as an angel of God.’
If for us, drawing nearer to the end is drawing nearer to the light, our faces will be brightened more and more with that light which we approach, and our path will be ‘as the shining light which shines more and more unto the noon-tide of the day,’ because we are closer to the very fountain of heavenly radiance, and growingly bathed and flooded with the outgoings of His glory. ‘As thy days, so shall thy strength be.’
The promise ought to be true for us all. It is true for all who use the things that are freely given to them of God. And whilst thus it is the law for the devout life here, its most glorious fulfilment remains for the life beyond. There each new moment shall bring new strength, and growing millenniums but add fresh vigour to our immortal life. Here the unresting beat of the waves of the sea of time gnaws away the bank and shoal whereon we stand, but there each roll of the great ocean of eternity shall but spread new treasures at our feet and add new acres to our immortal heritage. ‘The oldest angels,’ says Swedenborg, ‘look the youngest.’ When life is immortal, the longer it lasts the stronger it becomes, and so the spirits that have stood for countless days before His throne, when they appear to human eyes, appear as-’young men clothed in long white garments,’-full of unaging youth and energy that cannot wane. So, whilst in the flesh we must obey the law of decay, the spirit may be subject to this better law of life, and ‘while the outward man perisheth, the inward man be renewed day by day.’ ‘Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv26–29 This is another name for the people of Israel.…
Jeshurun
This is another name for the people of Israel. It means "upright one." See how you translated this in Deuteronomy 32:15. (See: How to Translate Names)
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rides through the heavens ... on the clouds
This is an image of Yahweh riding on clouds through the sky like a king on his chariot riding through a battlefield. AT: "rides through the heavens like a king rides through a battlefield ... on the clouds like a king on his chariot" (See: Metaphor)
to your help
"to help you." Moses speaks to the Israelites as if they were one man, so the word "you" here is singular. (See: Forms of You)
translationWords
God
heaven
majesty
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv26, 27, 29 33:26 He rides across the heavens: Moses’ blessing of…
33:26 He rides across the heavens: Moses’ blessing of the tribes climaxes with praise to the Lord. Like a mighty warrior, God rides triumphantly through the skies on chariots of cloud (see 1:30).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.