Charles Ellicott Commentary Deuteronomy 32:10

"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." — Deuteronomy 32:10 (ASV)

The whole of this verse is in the pictorial present in the Hebrew—

He finds him in a desert land,
In a waste howling wilderness;
He compasses him about, He instructs him,
He guards him as the apple of his eye.

He found him. —This beautiful expression is common to the Old and New Testaments as a description of God’s first revelation of Himself to man. In the case of Hagar it is written (Genesis 16:7), the angel of Jehovah found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness. Concerning Jacob, it is written that He found him in Bethel, when Jacob said, Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not (Hosea 12:4; Genesis 28:16). A series of similar passages is closed by the three examples of the lost sheep, the lost money, and the son that had been lost, and was found (Luke 15:0).

He led him about. —The more common meaning is given in the margin. Rashi has this remark: “He caused them to remain around His glory (Shechinah), the tent of the congregation in the middle, and four standards on the four sides.”