“Invenit eum in terra deserta, in loco horroris, et vastæ solitudinis : circumduxit eum, et docuit : et custodivit quasi pupillam oculi sui.”
“He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. led: or, compassed”
“He found him in a desert land, in a barren, howling wilderness; He surrounded him, He instructed him, He guarded him as the apple of His eye.”
“He found him in a desert land, in the waste howling wilderness. He surrounded him. He cared for him. He kept him as the apple of his eye.”
“He found him in a desert land, And in the waste howling wilderness; He compassed him about, he cared for him, He kept him as the apple of his eye.”
He found. Septuagint and Chaldean, “he gave him what was sufficient, in the desert land.” God made a choice of a nation destitute of every thing, that they might confess with gratitude that they had received all from him. (Calmet) — “Taught him” both by “instructions,” and by various “chastisements.” Septuagint, epaideusen. (Haydock) — The space of forty years was necessary (Calmet) to eradicate the propensity to evil, and the corrupt manners of the Hebrews, who were therefore conducted through a wilderness, where they might not be contaminated by the company of other nations, (Haydock) but might have leisure to meditate on the law of God. (Calmet) — Eye, with the utmost care. (Menochius) — He protected those whom he had chosen out of pure mercy. (Worthington)
1. He found him in a desert land, v. 10. This refers, no doubt, to the wilderness through which God brought them to Canaan, and in which he took so much pains with them; it is called the church in the wilderness, Acts 7 38. There it was born, and nursed, and educated, that all might appear to be divine and from heaven, since they had there no communication with any part of this earth either for food or learning. But, because he is said to find them there, it seems designed also to represent both the bad state and the bad character of that people when God began first to appear for them. (1.) Their condition was forlorn. Egypt was to them a desert land, and a waste howling wilderness, for they were bond-slaves in it, and cried by reason of their oppression, and were perfectly bewildered and at a loss for relief; there God found them, and thence he fetched them. And, (2.) Their disposition was very unpromising. So ignorant were the generality of them in divine things, so stupid and unapt to receive the impressions of them, so peevish and humoursome, so froward and quarrelsome, and withal so strangely addicted to the idolatries of Egypt, that they might well be said to be found in a desert land; for one might as reasonably expect a crop of corn from a barren wilderness as any good fruit of service to God from a people of such a character. Those that are renewed and sanctified by grace should often remember what they were by nature.
Verses 7-14 Moses gives particular instances of God's kindness and concern for them. The eagle's care for her young is a beautiful emblem of Christ's love, who came between Divine justice and our guilty souls, and bare our sins in his own body on the tree. And by the preached gospel, and the influences of the Holy Spirit, He stirs up and prevails upon sinners to leave Satan's bondage. ( deuteronomy 32:13-14 ) their spiritual enemies, sin, Satan, and the world, in and through Christ. Also of their safety and triumph in him; of their happy frames of soul, when they are above the world, and the things of it. This will be the blessed case of spiritual Israel in every sense in the latter day.