John Calvin Commentary Deuteronomy 32:24

"[They shall be] wasted with hunger, and devoured with burning heat And bitter destruction; And the teeth of beasts will I send upon them, With the poison of crawling things of the dust." — Deuteronomy 32:24 (ASV)

They shall be burnt with hunger. He now turns to some particular modes of punishment, not, indeed, to list them all, but only to present such examples of them as to inspire the people with greater terror, since mere generalities would not have sufficiently affected them.

He mentions three particular scourges—pestilence, famine, and the sword—on which the prophets constantly elaborate when their object was to apply the Law to the actual use of the people. This is why they commonly use many of the expressions used by Moses.

He indeed introduces other punishments, which the prophets also mention; but in essence, what he says is this: that the Israelites should feel that God was armed with all the punishments which were all too well known from experience, and by these He would utterly destroy them.

First, he says, that they should be dried up, or rather roasted with hunger.²⁷¹ Instead of pestilence he uses the words burning (uredinem), and bitter destruction: and before he speaks of the sword, declares that He would send out beasts and serpents, so that on the one hand, open violence should attack them, and, on the other, secret snares. Amos has also imitated this figure:

The day of the Lord (he says) is darkness and not light: as if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him (Amos 5:18–19).

To war, and the cruelty of enemies he adds another evil, namely, terror: and this is, indeed, a greater misery worse than death itself, when we tremble within with terror, for it would be better to be killed ten times over bravely fighting in battle, than to be consumed with constant fear, as by a lingering death.²⁷²

Let us learn, then, from this passage, that, whatever perils surround us, and whatever adversities, they are God’s weapons, and that they do not occur by chance to this or that person, but are directed by His hand. Thus it is the case that He not only stirs up enemies against us, but fierce and harmful beasts also; that He shuts up the heaven and the earth; that He infects the atmosphere with deadly disease; that, in a word, He brings out from all the elements various means of destruction.

But if it is true that the godly are involved in similar punishments, since they suffer from hunger and want, and are not exempt from any evil (for even Paul acknowledges that he had himself experienced what God here denounces against those that wickedly despise Him, for he says that he was troubled without with fightings, and within with fears (2 Corinthians 7:5)), we must bear in mind that all adversities are in themselves signs of God’s wrath, since they derive their origin from sin.

However, through God’s marvelous provision, it happens that for believers they are exercises of their faith and proofs of their patience. Hence we often see God’s children afflicted along with the ungodly, but to a different end; though nevertheless, all adversities are proofs of God’s wrath against the reprobate. On this point I have spoken at greater length in treating of the curses of the Law.

²⁷¹ Professor Liebig has pointed out the dreadful fact, in singular confirmation of the expression here employed by Moses, that “when a person is starved to death, he is, in fact, slowly burnt, as, during the process of starvation, a slow combustion of the body takes place.”

²⁷² Un accessoire pire que toutes los morts du monde, quand nous maigrissons et sommes minez de frayeur;” an aggravation worse than all the deaths in the world, when we are wasted away, and preyed upon by fear. — Fr..