Deuteronomy 28:65

Deu 28:65 And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the LORD shall give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind:

Ver. 65. A trembling heart.] Juvenal by a jeer calls them Iudaeos trementes, trembling Jews (Sat. vi.). It seems they had Cain’s curse upon them.

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.

Deu 28:65. Among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall thy foot have rest — They have been so far from finding rest, that they have been banished from city to city, from country to country. In many places they have been banished and recalled, and banished again. Several remarkable instances of this kind are mentioned by Bishop Newton here, to whom the reader is referred. In some of them the Jews must have suffered much, particularly when, in the latter end of the fifteenth century, they were banished from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella. At that time, according to Mariana, there were one hundred and seventy thousand families, or, as some say, eight hundred thousand persons, who left the kingdom. Abarbinel, a Jewish writer, gives the following account of this their last expulsion from Spain. He says, “Three hundred thousand of them, old and young, men and women, (among whom he was one,) went away on foot, upon one day, not knowing whither to go. Some went into Portugal, others into Navarre, where they conflicted with many calamities: for some became a prey or perished by famine and pestilence; and therefore others committed themselves to sea, hoping to find a quiet seat in some other countries. But on the sea they met with new disasters; for many were sold for slaves when they came on any coast, many were drowned, many burned in the ships, which were set on fire. In short, all suffered the punishment of God the avenger: for, after all this, a plague came and swept away the rest of the miserable wretches, who were hated by all mankind; so all that vast number perished by some calamity or other, except a very few.” Some who sought for rest in the kingdom of Fez, lived there a long time upon grass, and ate its very roots, and then died, and their bodies lay exposed, none being so charitable as to bury them.

The Jewish writer just quoted mentions some taking refuge in Portugal. They paid dearly for this liberty to John II., but within a few years were expelled from thence also by his successor. And in the beginning of the next century a dreadful massacre was made of them at Lisbon, for three days together, where they were not suffered to die of their deadly wounds, but were dragged by their mangled limbs into the market-place, where the bodies of the living and the slain, with others half alive, half dead, were burned together in heaps. Two thousand of them perished in this barbarous manner. Parents durst not mourn for their children, nor children sigh for their parents, when they saw them haled to the place of torment. Fear so dispirited them, as an historian relates, that the living in their aspect did not much differ from the dead, so that they were exactly in the condition Moses here describes, when he says, And the Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Verse 65. No ease - a trembling heart, and failing of eyes] The trembling of heart may refer to their state of continual insecurity, being, under every kind of government, proscribed, and, even under the most mild, uncertain of toleration and protection; and the failing of eyes, to their vain and ever-disappointed expectation of the Messiah.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(65) And among these nations shalt thou find no ease.—The repeated persecutions of the Jews by other nations in the time of their dispersion are among the most fearful and wonderful phenomena of history.

And failing of eyes.—“Looking for salvation, and it cometh not” (Rashi). How many years have they gone on praying that they may keep the feast “next year” in Jerusalem? and still the hope is deferred.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

65. shalt thou find no ease] The vb. is found only in Jer_31:2; Jer_47:6; Jer_50:34, Isa_52:4; its substantive in Isa_28:12.

no rest, etc.] Gen_8:9.

a quaking heart] The vb. occurs in Deu_2:25.

failing of eyes] With disappointment of hope: cp. Deu_28:32 and Lam_2:11; Lam_4:17.

pining of soul] Faintness of longing or of life; Heb. nephesh means either.

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.

Fearful, dejected, distrustful. The Jews are under continual alarms. (Calmet)

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).

Neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest; ye shall have no settlement in the land whither you are banished, but there you shall be tossed about from place to place, and sold from person to person, or, Cain-like, wander about like a vagabond.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 65-69. Mental torture as a result of sin.

The picture here drawn is true in an especial sense of the Jews in their state of exile, maddened, affrighted, and kept in continual torture and suspense by the persecutions and miseries they have been made to endure. We apply it to the state of the ungodly generally a state of internal misery resulting from transgression.

I UNAPPEASABLE RESTLESSNESS. (Ver. 65.) The sinner is destitute of peace. (Isa_57:21)

1. There is nothing to give it. No inward source of comfort. No perennial spring of satisfaction.

1. There is everything to take it away.

1. An evil conscience.

2. Sense of God"s displeasure.

3. Inward disunion and anarchy.

The consequence is that the sinner cannot settle, tie does not feel at rest. He cannot be happy or contented in any place or occupation. Like a patient tossing under fever, he thinks that his uneasiness arises from his position, whereas it is his disorder. (Cf. "Childe Harold," 1:4, 5; or words of Tiberius to his senate to write to you, conscript fathers, or how to write, or what not to write, may all the gods and goddesses destroy me worse than I feel that they are daily destroying me, if I know.")

II FEAR AND TREMBLING OF HEART. (Vers. 65, 66.) "The wicked flee when no man pursueth". (Pro_28:1) The guilty conscience is full of terrors. It "does make cowards of us all." Gives rise to groundless fears. (Joseph"s brethren, Gen_45:3 Gen_50:15) Morbid working of imagination starting in sleep (Richard III), fancying sounds and movements (Macboth). Works despair. (Saul, 1Sa 28) It unnerves and unmans.

III LOATHING AND WEARINESS OF LIFE. (Ver. 67.) A sated despairing feeling, incapable of removal or alleviation. Ennui. Unbearable dragging on of time. I may say that in all my seventy-five years I have never had a month of genuine comfort. It has been the perpetual rolling of a stone, which I have always had to raise anew" (Goethe). Cf. "Childe Harold," as above

He felt the fullness of satiety, Then loathed he in his native land to dwell;

or Matthew Arnold"s lines

On that hard pagan world disgust And sated loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell," etc. J.O.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Neither shall thy foot have rest - Ye shall have no settlement in the land whither you are banished, but there you shall be tossed about from place to place, and sold from person to person, or Cain - like, wander about.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

General Information:

Moses speaks to the Israelites as if they were one man, so the words "you" and "your" here are singular. (See: Forms of You)

there will be no rest for the bottoms of your feet

Here the phrase "the bottoms of your feet" refer to the whole person. AT: "you will have to continually wander because you have no permanent home where you can rest" (See: Synecdoche)

Yahweh will give you there a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a soul that mourns

This is an idiom. AT: "Yahweh will cause you to be afraid, without hope, and sad" (See: Idiom)

Your life will hang in doubt before you

This is an idiom. AT: "You will not know whether you will live or die" (See: Idiom)

translationWords

nation

rest

heart

mourn

life

fear

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

לא תרגיע means, THOU SHALT FIND NO REST, as (Isaiah 28:12) “This is the rest (המרגעה)

לב רגז means, A TREMBLING HEART, as the Targum has it: דחל, fearing. It is similar in meaning to (Isaiah 14:9) “The nether-world from beneath trembleth (רגזה) for thee”; (Exodus 15:14) “The peoples have heard, they trembled”; (II Samuel 22:8) “The foundations of heaven trembled”.

וכליון עינים AND A FAILING OF THE EYES — The phrase is used of one who expectantly looks for help and it does not come (cf. v. 32).

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.