Deuteronomy 32:24

Deu 32:24 [They shall be] burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

Ver. 24. Burnt with hunger.] Which makes men’s visages blacker than a coal. {Lam 4:8}

With burning heat,] i.e., With the burning carbuncle, or plague sore. See Hab 3:5.

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.

Verse 24. They shall be burnt with hunger] Their land shall be cursed, and famine shall prevail. This is one of the arrows.

Burning heat] No showers to cool the atmosphere; or rather boils, blains, and pestilential fevers; this was a second.

Bitter destruction] The plague; this was a third.

Teeth of beasts - with the poison of serpents] The beast of the field should multiply upon and destroy them; this was a fourth: and poisonous serpents, infesting all their steps, and whose mortal bite should produce the utmost anguish, were to be a fifth arrow. Added to all these, the sword of their enemies - terror among themselves, De 32:25, and captivity were to complete their ruin, and thus the arrows of God were to be spent upon them. There is a beautiful saying in the Toozuki Teemour, which will serve to illustrate this point, while it exhibits one of the finest metaphors that occurs in any writer, the sacred writers excepted.

"It was once demanded of the fourth Khaleefeh, (Aaly,) on whom be the mercy of the Creator, 'If the canopy of heaven were a BOW; and if the earth were the cord thereof; and if calamities were ARROWS; if mankind were the mark for those arrows; and if Almighty GOD, the tremendous and the glorious, were the unerring ARCHER; to whom could the sons of Adam flee for protection?' The Khaleefeh answered, saying, 'The sons of Adam must flee unto the Lord.'"

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

(24, 25)

“Consumed[8] with hunger, and devoured with pestilence, and bitter destruction—

[8] Or, possibly, “Regaled with hunger, and fed with bread of pestilence and bitter destruction,” &c.

I will also send the tooth of the beasts upon them, with the poison of crawling things of the dust.

Outside the sword bereaveth, and in the chambers terror:

Both young man and maiden, the suckling with the man of grey hairs.”

God’s four sore judgments are all depicted here—“the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence.” With Deu_32:25 comp. Jer_14:18, “If I go forth into the field, then behold the slain with the sword! and if I enter into the city, then behold them that are sick with famine! yea both the prophet and the priest go about into a land that they know not.”

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

The sword without,.... Either without the city, the sword of the Roman army besieging it, which destroyed all that came out or attempted to go in; or in the streets of the city, the sword of the seditious, which destroyed multitudes among themselves:

and terror within; within the city, on account of the sword of the Romans, and the close siege they made of it; and on account of the famine and pestilence which raged in it, and the cruelty of the seditious persons among themselves; all these filled the people with horror and terror in their houses; and even in their bedchambers, as the word signifies, they were not free from terror; yea, from the temple, and inward parts, and chambers of that, which may be referred to, terror came, that being in the hands of the seditious; they sallied out from thence, and ravaged the city, and filled all places with the dread of them; and many, no doubt, through fear died, as well as by the sword and other judgments; which it is threatened

shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also,

with the man of gray hairs; none of any age or sex were spared, even those unarmed; not the young man, for his strength and promising usefulness; nor the virgin for her beauty and comeliness; nor the suckling for its innocence and tenderness; nor the aged man through any reverence of his gray hairs, or on account of the infirmities of old age, but all would be destroyed; and never was such a carnage made at the siege of anyone city in the world before or since; no less than 1,100,000 persons perished in it, as Josephus relates (e).

(e) De Bello Jud. l. 6. c. 9. sect. 3.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Birds. This refers in a particular manner to those who are deprived of sepulture, and hung on a gibbet, chap. xxvii. 26. Josephus (Jewish Wars vi. 12,) informs us, that the multitude of Jews who were to be crucified, was so great, that sufficient wood could not be procured to make crosses for them, nor was there place for them to stand. Hebrew, "they shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat;" (Haydock) or with the disease called the carbuncle. (Calmet) --- But the Septuagint and Chaldean explain it of "birds." (Haydock) --- Bite. Septuagint, "with a painful contraction of the nerves." Chaldean, "infested with evil spirits." --- Beasts. Thus God forced the people of Samaria to obey his law, 4 Kings xvii. 25. --- Fury, "venom." (Pagnin) (Menochius)

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).

With hunger; with famine, which burneth and parcheth the inward parts, and makes the face black as a coal, Lam 4:8.

With burning heat; from fevers or carbuncles or other inflaming distempers.

Serpents of the dust, who feed upon the dust, Gen 3:14, and lurk in it, that they may surprise unwary passengers, Gen 49:17.

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

24. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat — Consumed with fever and dire pestilence — with the poison of the crawlers of the dust.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 24, 25. The evils threatened are famine, pestilence, plague, wild beasts, poisonous reptiles, and war. They shall be burnt with hunger, etc.; render: Sucked out by hunger, consumed with pestilential heat, and bitter plague; I will send against them the tooth of beasts and the poison of things that crawl in the dust. When hunger, pestilence, and contagious disease had wasted and exhausted them, then God would send on them wild beasts and poisonous reptiles. Shall be burnt. The Hebrew word occurs only here; it is a verbal adjective, meaning, literally, sucked out, i.e. utterly exhausted; LXX, thkomenoi limw. Tooth of beasts and poison of serpents; poetical for ravenous and poisonous animals. (cf. Lev_26:22) Shall destroy; literally, shall make childless, shall bereave, viz. the land which is thought of as a mother whose children were destroyed. The verb is here sensu prsegnanti, shall bereave by destroying, etc.. (cf. 1Sa_15:23; Lam_1:20; Jer_18:21)

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

With hunger - With famine, which burns and parches the inward parts, and make the face black as a coal, Lam. iv, 8. Burning heat - From fevers or carbuncles, or other inflaming distempers.

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

מזי רעב — Onkelos rendered this by “swollen by famine”. I have, however, no convincing proof for this meaning. In the name of R. Moses the Preacher of Toulouse have heard that it is the same as שעירי רעב, “hairy through hunger”, for an emaciated person grows much hair on his flesh.

In the Aramaic language the term for hair is מזיא, as e.g. in the phrase (Megillah 18a) “who was busying himself with his hair (במזיא)".

ולחמי רשף This means, the demons fight with them (לחם means “to battle”), — as it states, (Job. 5:7) “As the בני רשף fly upwards”, and they are the demons (Berachot 5a).

וקטב מרירי means and the destruction caused by a demon whose name is מרירי. The word קטב denotes “cutting off”, “destruction”, as in (Hosea 13:14) “I will be thy destruction (קטבך) O grave”.

ושן בהמת [I WILL SEND FORTH] THE TEETH OF CATTLE [UPON THEM] (i.e., even the teeth of cattle, not only of wild beasts) — It indeed happened once that lambs bit people and caused their death (Sifrei Devarim 321:8; cf. Rashi on Leviticus 26:22).

חמת זחלי עפר THE FURY OF THOSE CRAWLING IN THE DUST — i.e. the poison of serpents that crawl on their bellies upon the ground as the water trickles (זחל) upon the ground. The root זחל properly denotes the passage of water upon the dust, and it is similarly used as here of the passage of anything that proceeds in a shuffling manner upon the ground.

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.