Bible Commentaries

Deuteronomy 33:3

Of Israel, as a company of the Lord's saints, Moses says that they are all in God's hand. This was true of the ancient Israel in an important sense, but it is still more fully and extensively true of the spiritual Israel. However much they may differ in many respects from each other, the children of God are all alike in respect of His gracious dealings with them. All His saints are in His hand.

I. The hand of God is a plastic or forming hand, and all His saints are under its transforming power.

II. The hand of the Lord is an upholding and preserving hand, and all His saints enjoy His assistance and protection.

III. The hand of God is a guiding and directing hand, and His saints enjoy the benefit of this in the conduct of their great spiritual interests and business.

IV. The hand of God is a chastising hand, and His saints are sometimes in His hand that they may receive needed correction.

W. Lindsay Alexander, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 324.

The text shows us how elaborately God lays out His whole being as altogether engaged for His own people,—first His heart; then His hand; then His feet; then His lips. "Yea, He loved the people; all His saints are in Thy hand, and they sat down at Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words."

I. A saint means three things. He is (1) a being whom God has set apart for Himself. In this sense David said: "I am holy." In this sense the whole Church are saints. (2) A saint is a person in whom sanctification is going on. Every one in whom the Holy Ghost is acting at this moment is a saint. (3) Those who are perfected in holiness are saints indeed.

II. Saints are in God's hands: (1) as property; (2) in order that He may deal with them as He sees fit; (3) in order that He may hold them up; (4) in order that He may keep them always near Him.

III. "And they sat down at Thy feet." The passage combines the two ideas of rest and teaching.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 6th series, p. 97.

References: Deuteronomy 33:5.—Clergyman's Magazine, vol. xiv., p. 283 Deuteronomy 33:6-17.—F. Whitfield, The Blessings of the Tribes, pp. 53, 79, 97, 213, 225.

Deuteronomy 33:12

In the Scriptures God is regarded as the dwelling-place of His people, of the holy and redeemed soul. This thought was ever before the Hebrew mind: God is the home of the soul. It is a great, an awful, an infinite thought.

I. "Of Benjamin he said." By a gifted and inspired second sight, the man whose eyes the Lord had opened beheld the arrangement of the tribes. Benjamin was one of the smallest of the tribes. It held its inland, and insulated, and secluded position, bounded by Dan, Judah, Ephraim, and Reuben. "He shall dwell between His shoulders." Some render this term "among His mountains." And, indeed, there the Temple was built—on the territory of Benjamin and Judah. There they were together—the weakest by the strongest of the tribes.

II. "Beloved." The title authenticates the blessing. It is a word of beautiful reciprocations; we look up and think of Him, and rejoice because we are "accepted in the Beloved," and we look upon the Church and see that it is the "elect of God, holy and beloved."

III. Safety. All things will serve Benjamin. Whatever happens, "the beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety." "In safety." Much of the world's position and place is only like a book of tragedies, bound in gold and crimson velvet—all fair without, all black within, leaves of gold and lines of blood. The lots of some men are like those who live in houses paved with pearl and walled with diamonds, while all the roof lies open to the wind and storms. But "the beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety." They are remembered, and they are safe.

E. Paxton Hood, Dark Sayings on a Harp, p. 274.

Reference: Deuteronomy 33:12.—Bagnall-Baker, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 121.

Deuteronomy 33:16

We have here the beginning and the ripening of an experience brought close together. Let us think of the young Christian and the old Christian, the same man in his first apprehension and in his ripened knowledge of Christ. Our subject is the nature and method of the growth of Christian character. One general and obvious law is that every healthy growth creates the conditions of new growth, and makes new growth possible. This is the method of Christian growth. There is a continued reaction between Christ and the soul; every new openness is fed with a new love that opens it still more.

I. As every Christian becomes more and more a Christian, there must be a larger and larger absorption of truth or doctrine into life.

II. There will be a growing variety in the Christian character as Christians grow older.

III. The willingness to recognise and welcome individual differences of thought, and feeling, and action increases, too, as Christians grow riper.

IV. Another characteristic of the growing spiritual experience is its ever-increasing independence.

V. Another sign of the growth of Christian character is to be found in the growing transfiguration of duty.

VI. The profoundest and most reliable sign of maturing spiritual life is the deepening personal intimacy with Him who is the Christian's Life, the Lord Jesus Christ. This growing personal intimacy will have these effects upon us: (1) It must give us a more infinite view of life in general, or, in other words, must make us more unworldly. (2) It will give us more hopefulness. (3) With the growing hopefulness comes a growing courage. (4) It gives that true and perfect poise of soul which grows more and more beautiful as we get tired one after another of the fantastic and one-sided types of character which the world admires.

Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, p. 39.

References: Deuteronomy 33:16.—G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 256; W. M. Taylor, Contrary Winds, p. 200. Deuteronomy 33:18, Deuteronomy 33:19.—F. Whitfield, The Blessings of the Tribes, p. 117. Deuteronomy 33:19.—J. Reid Howatt, The Churchette, p. 257. Deuteronomy 33:20-25.—F. Whitfield, The Blessings of the Tribes, pp. 117, 137, 161, 173, 185.

Deuteronomy 33:25

There are times when Christian men and women will distress themselves with depressing speculations as to the various situations and predicaments in which God's providence may possibly place them, and will suffer doubts to cloud their minds as to whether their faith would stand the test of any severe trial. They are apprehensive whether they shall not grow impatient in mind, faint and weary in faith, utterly overborne in body and spirit. All these misgivings are met by the promise, "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." In ordinary trials, ordinary supplies of strength and support will be apportioned to prayer and honest endeavour; in extraordinary circumstances, extraordinary concessions of the sustaining spirit will be made. Distrust of ourselves, which causes us to lean more appealingly and confidingly upon the strength of God, by no means misbecomes us. But if these fears are traceable to any misgiving as to the paternal purposes of God towards all such as turn to Him in faith and love, then they are unreasonable, and do not become a child of God. We need not ask for help against future and contingent trials; we ask for the day's supply, and the promise extends no further than this. "As thy days, so shall thy strength be."

W. H. Brookfield, Sermons, p. 196.

I. God does not say that in every day He will secure us, but for "thy day" the provision shall be made. God gives us no warrant to expect that every day or any day shall bring with it joy, or pleasantness, or comfort; what He says is very practical; He assures us of sufficient strength for duty and trial: "As thy days, so shall thy strength be."

II. There is an evident intention in the use of the plural number: "days." From this we gather that the promise does not relate to those few, more prominent days of sorrow and of difficulty which stand out larger than the rest, but equally to the more ordinary days which bring with them nothing but the common routine of everyday duty.

III. The very fact of the increase of our days as life goes on increases our responsibility. Every new year and every new day a man lives is more accountable because more capable, and more solemn because more critical, than the last. And as the days accumulate, so do the mercies. "As thy days, so shall thy strength be." Never was the most exquisite machine so perfectly adjusted, never was any mathematical proportion so accurate, as each day's grace is set to the margin of each day's work.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 1874, p. 256 (see also Sermons, 9th series, p. 13).

The portion of Asher, in whose blessing the words of the text occur, was partly the rocky northern coast and partly the fertile lands stretching to the base of Lebanon. In the inland part of their land they cultivated large olive groves, and the clause before the text is a benediction on that industry: "Let him dip his foot in oil." And then the metaphor 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.

I. We have first the thought that God gives us an equipment of strength proportioned to our work—shoes for the road. From this we gather that the road will be rocky and flinty; the rough work will not be far behind the stout shoes.

II. The text assures us of a strength which is not worn out by use. 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 on God.

III. The second clause of the verse promises even more than this. It tells us that the two sums of "thy days" and "thy strength" keep growing side by side, and that as the days increase the strength increases too.

A. Maclaren, Weekday Evening Addresses, p. 132.

I. These words are only a line out of an old Hebrew poem, but they are as English and as human as if we had met them in yesterday's newspaper, or had heard them in the swift and confiding interchange of friendship. Said in a moment, they tell the result of our whole life. "The Lord hath been mindful of His own. He hath not forgotten to be gracious to His people."

II. God, in the plenitude of His power, lay at the back of this promise to the tribal descendants of Asher. It is a threefold benediction: (1) The land of Asher will have abundant harvests. (2) This material opulence will not excite envy among the tribes, or be attacked by marauding invaders. Thy fortresses of defence shall be as invincible as if built of iron and brass. And (3) in complete security, the security of fulness of strength, shall all this prosperity be enjoyed throughout the days of thy tribal life.

III. Although this law came by Moses, it is uttered with more penetrating reality and gracious persuasiveness by Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The strength here spoken of is a rest-giving strength.

IV. (1) Remember that our days do not come to us in a multitude, but in regulated succession, and with a largely educating variety. (2) Do not fetch your to-morrows into your to-days. (3) Though our days come in succession, they make a unity, and they will make a beautiful and well-ordered unity if we live them all with God and for men. (4) God is our Home, and from that Home in God what can our outlook be, even in the saddest days, but one of restful hope, quiet expectation, calm dependence on the exhaustless love of our Father in heaven, who has promised that "as our days, so shall our strength be"?

J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 1.

References: Deuteronomy 33:25.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iv., No. 210; H. W. Beecher, Forty-eight Sermons, vol. i., p. 1; A. Raleigh, From Dawn to Perfect Day, p. 337; W. Harris, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 368; G. Calthrop, The Temptation of Christ, p. 244; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xiii., p. 13. Deuteronomy 33:26-28.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xiv., No. 803. Deuteronomy 33:27.—A. M. Fairbairn, The City of God, p. 190; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, pp. 315, 316; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi., No. 624, and vol. xxiv., No. 1413; Old Testament Outlines, p. 52; Congregationalist, vol. vi.,p. 729. Deuteronomy 33:29.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii., No. 1359; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 271; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 549; R. M. McCheyne, Additional Remains, p. 257. Deut 33—Parker, vol. iv., p. 390. Deut 33, Deut 34—J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 345.