The Jewish orthodox sages and Rabbis understood the literalness of all of the Old Testament prophecies. Premillennialists and dispensationalists are in good company in seeing the Bible interpreted in a normal, literal hermeneutic. Someday, the eyes of the Jews will be open in seeing the Lord Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah. Meanwhile, their interpretative notes and commentaries on great prophetic passages continue to support the “rightness” of looking for future prophecy being fulfilled actually, and literally!
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Deuteronomy 29:16-29
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Sources:
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs.
Society and Religion in the Second Temple Period, Michael Avi-Yonah and Zvi Baras (Jerusalem: Massada Publishing, 1977).
The Messiah Texts, Raphael Patai (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1979).
Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period, William Green, ed. (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1999).
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Deuteronomy 29:16-29
Further Prophecies of Dispersion (The Diaspora)
29:16 For you know. For you have
experienced the idolatry in both Egypt and among the other nations
bordering on Canaan; and you can judge consequently their sins.
You came through the midst of the nations
through which you passed. You experienced trying times and endured
their sinfulness, when you contacted the people of Edom, Ammon, Moab and
Mdian.
29:17 Their abominations and their
idols. Or, “detestable things.” A contemptuous reference for idols,
with an implied reference to the immoral rites that went hand in hand
with idol-worship. Their idols were “inanimate blocks,” fetishes of
silver and gold. The costly ornaments with which their worshippers
beautified themselves. (Talmud)
29:18 Lest there be a man or woman …
whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God. An elliptical
phrase with the full sense: “I adjure you to enter into this oath and
covenant, for fear lest there should be among you someone who falls away
and goes the way of the pagans.
A root bearing poisonous fruit. “Rosh,”
a poisonous herb—gall. “Wormwood,” Poison and bitterness—the
consequences of idolatry. The sinner is here pictured as a bitter root
bearing deadly fruit, destroying the life of the nation—the theocracy
over which God rules!
29:19 When he hears the words of this
curse. The sinner will rebel against the curse that God says will
come when he walks away from the Lord. He will congratulate himself or
delude his own heart. Because of God’s oath to Israel, this one flatters
himself that he is secure, no matter how recklessly he indulges in evil.
“In the stubbornness of my heart.”
“Though I persist in the strong wayward impulses of my heart.” See
Jeremiah 23:17. People know when they are sinning but they delight in
the experience and in the expression of evil. Somehow it feeds the
sinful soul!
“[My stubbornness] will destroy the watered
land with the dry.” Or, “to sweep away the well-watered soil with
the dry. A proverbial phrase, denoting a hurricane of destruction that
would annihilate the community through the sinfulness of individual
members here and there. The consequences of idolatry.
29:20 The Lord’s jealousy will burn
against that man. God’s anger will break forth in a destructive
fire. See Psalm 18:9. “Every curse that is written in this book will
rest on him.” The Hebrew word “will rest” denotes the crouching of a
wild animal at the moment of pouncing upon its prey. So here,
retribution will pounce upon the evil-doer unawares.
29:21 The Lord will single him out for
adversity. Or, “shall separate him for trouble.” Sin has a
consequence and a repercussion, a result, a residual effect. If the
sinners be a whole tribe, then shall it be cut off from the other tribes
and its members carried away into exile. (Ibn Ezra) This is a fate which
later came upon the Ten Tribes when they were taken into exile into
Assyria (2 Kings 17:6).
29:22 When the generation comes and sees
the plagues of the land with which the Lord has afflicted it, it will
say … The Jews will turn from God, as here prophesied. They will
depart from God and the land will suffer. The “foreigner” (or stranger)
will come also and see what God has done to Israel for their sins. The
entire land and its people will suffer for apostasy, and future
generations and the most distant nations will learn with horror God’s
judgment upon the depopulated land.
29:23 All the land is like the overthrow
of Sodom and Gomorrah. The land will become like a great big desert
or swamp. This is exactly what happened over the last 2,000 years when
the Jews were dispersed and scattered around the world. Touring
Palestine, Mark Twin said it was a cursed land and nothing but ruin and
sand. This curse was literal; the Jews’ return and their restored
blessing will be literal. Only the foolish amillennialist and allegorist
denies the prophecy of the literal return of Christ, as Israel’s
Messiah, to reign and rule for 1,000 years in the Holy Land!
Brimstone and burning waste. The imagery
is drawn from the desolate surroundings of the Dead Sea. See Genesis
19:24-29.
29:24-28 The world will ponder the reason
Israel was devastated by the Lord. They will understand that they
forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers; they
departed from both the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic law covenant.
They served other gods whom they had not known. Therefore, the Lord
uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath,
and cast them into another land—the land of the pagan. God put upon them
every curse that is written in the books of Moses (the Torah). The Jews
had it all! They had protection and prosperity in the land. But most of
all they had the Lord but they departed from Him in every way—body,
soul, and spirit!
29:29 The secret things belong to the
Lord our God. God has things that are unknowable to finite human
beings, but the things revealed to us and our sons should be observed
forever, i.e. “all the words of this law.”
There are limits as to what mortal beings can know. Certain things are
in the hands of God alone, and must be left with Him. But there are
other things which are “revealed”—the words and ordinances of the
Torah—and to these we and all successive generations must render willing
obedience.
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Sources:
The Pentateuch and Haftorahs.
Society and Religion in the Second Temple Period, Michael Avi-Yonah and Zvi Baras (Jerusalem: Massada Publishing, 1977).
The Messiah Texts, Raphael Patai (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1979).
Dictionary of Judaism in the Biblical Period, William Green, ed. (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson, 1999).
